Horses for Courses: Can Brooks Koepka’s iron play carry him to success in Canada?

J.T. Poston winning the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday was a reminder of exactly how good these golfers can be on their best day. It also served as a reminder that just because a golfer might not have his best stuff leading into a tournament, if he is a good course fit, all it takes is four really good rounds, and he can hoist the trophy.

Poston is a great example of that. He had only two top-25 finishes in his last 13 events, none inside the top 20, and four missed cuts. Yet he goes out, shoots the round of the day in the second round, and basically turns the tournament into a two-man race.

That said, we now turn our attention to the RBC Canadian Open, hosted at TPC Toronto.

While we love to build models and find value based on model rankings, it’s safe to say that due to the limited data at this golf course, many golf bettors will be going off form, satellite views, and flyovers.

The one thing I noticed from watching this golf tournament last year is that this 7,389-yard, par-70 course is long, but forgiving. You could describe it as a parkland-style course, but the Doug Carrick-designed layout is more on the wider side, especially compared to what we’ve seen over the past few weeks. Ryan Fox (+5000) won this tournament at 18-under in a playoff against Sam Burns (+1500) last year.

Based on the satellite imagery, the fairways are relatively wide and easy to hit. There are a few trickier doglegs and some bottleneck holes that make longer drives difficult, but I had a hard time finding a real separator off the tee. This is a driver-heavy course, where driver was used 81.4% of the time last year, compared to the TOUR average of 70.1%. Driving accuracy was also 5.9% higher here than the TOUR average.

So many of the golfers were playing from the fairway, and even those who missed the fairway didn’t really have that high of a missed-fairway penalty. Because of that, it really came down to who hit their irons the best.

The 6,500-square-foot greens aren’t small by any means, but they’re not massive either. I’d consider them just about average, which means golfers were able to play fairly aggressively from both the fairway and the rough.

Another thing I noticed was that only one golfer was inside the top five in putting for the week. Matt McCarty finished first in putting and finished T4, but the winner, Fox, finished 24th in putting, while Burns finished 13th.

And let’s not forget, this is a TPC course. A rule of thumb for me is that you want to weight ball-striking very heavily at TPC courses. The way they are designed rewards shot-makers.

I’m going to keep my approach very basic this week. I want to attack golfers who are coming into this tournament in really good form and golfers who are striking their irons well. So, the first metric I’m going to look at is simple - Strokes Gained: Approach.

Sure, if you want to dig deeper, you can use proximity buckets, and that’s totally fine. But I wouldn’t fall too in love with those buckets because the course conditions will be vastly different this year than last.

Here are the best golfers in SG: Approach over the last 36 rounds via BetspertsGolf:

• 1. Collin Morikawa
• 2. Brooks Koepka
• 3. Wyndham Clark
• 4. Tom Kim
• 5. Justin Rose
• 6. Alex Fitzpatrick

Brooks Koepka (+3000) is on this list of golfers who have been dominating on approach, but he hasn’t really contended much. Maybe once. But it feels like every event he has played, outside of the PGA Championship, his irons have been smoking hot.

For Koepka, it has never really been about the ball-striking. It has only been the putter. He has gained strokes putting in only two of his last six events. But if Fox can win this tournament with a neutral putter, so can Koepka.

However, the golfer I like, and the golfer I’m going to bet on to win at +4000, is Alex Fitzpatrick.

When Alex Fitzpatrick and his brother won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, there were rumblings around the golf community that it was either unfair or that he was undeserving of his PGA TOUR card. I love the fact that Fitzpatrick has all but shut that talk up with how well he has played.

He has some nice finishes on some really tough courses. He finished T9 at the Cadillac Championship, solo fourth at the Truist Championship, and T6 at the Memorial Tournament. Outside of a T75 at the PGA Championship, he has been nothing but a top-10 machine.

What’s been nice for Fitzpatrick has been the irons and the ball striking in general. He has been a big gainer on approach, and his driver is lethal. The biggest issue for Fitzpatrick has been the putter. He has lost strokes putting in three of his last four events, but as I said earlier, the golfers who finished high here last year proved that you can contend or even win this golf tournament with a neutral putter.

At +4000, I think Fitzpatrick is providing more value than some of the guys priced in the 20s.

This next metric is slightly correlated because approach play is calculated into the overall strokes gained bucket, but I’m going to look at who has been the hottest golfer over the last 24 rounds. So I’ll be measuring Strokes Gained: Total over the last 24 rounds.

Here are the golfers who rank the highest:

• 1. Eric Cole
• 2. Wyndham Clark
• 3. Kristoffer Reitan
• 4. Matt Fitzpatrick
• 5. Collin Morikawa
• 6. Sam Burns

Best value on the board

Eric Cole to win (+5000), Eric Cole First Round Leader (+6100)

I have forgotten about all those difficult times.

There was a while when I was on the Eric Cole (+5000) Train, and it felt like every time we got close to the destination, the train would derail and need months of maintenance to get back on track. I have forgotten about those difficult times and forgiven the operator for any issues I endured in my travels because the Cole Train is here, chugging down the tracks, with a first PGA TOUR victory quickly approaching.

Over the last five events, there haven’t been many golfers better than Cole. He finished eighth at the Memorial Tournament, runner-up at the Charles Schwab Challenge, had a T6 in Myrtle Beach and finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open.

What’s great about what Cole just accomplished is that a few of those courses don’t really fit his off-the-tee game.

Cole shouldn’t be a golfer who racks up strokes off the tee. He’s not overly long, and he tends to spray it. But his approach play has been very good, and his putter has been ridiculous. That’s what has made him so dangerous over these past few weeks.

Now he plays a golf course with wider fairways and shorter rough, which should eliminate some of the danger for him. I also love the larger greens here compared to the ones he has played recently, because he will have longer irons into them. He’s a good putter, so basically all I want from Cole is for him to be on the dance floor and let the flat stick do the rest of the work.

I also took a little stab on him to finish as the first-round leader.

While it has been quite some time since he has actually captured a first-round lead, his metrics aren’t all that bad. Over the last 18 months, he is fourth in birdie-or-better rate across 19 total tournaments. He is also first in that time in first-round strokes gained.

Of course, if you make that sample size smaller, the numbers aren’t as much in Cole’s favor, but he is still inside the top 15 in most of the important first-round metrics like birdie-or-better percentage, average finishing position, and strokes gained.

So, at +6100, a number that is $20 better than his outright price, I don’t mind backing a fast start for Cole.