90 Degrees | Episode #37 Why Weather Is Overrated in Golf Betting & British Open Preview

On this week's episode of 90 degrees, it's the British Open, so what type of golfers do well here? The difference in betting media between touting versus teaching? And a guy you've probably never heard of could one day become the face of golf. That and more on today's episode of the 90 degrees podcast. Welcome to the 90 degrees podcast where we take an inside look at the sports betting industry. If you can't tell by everyone's excitement on social media, it's British Open Week in the PGA tour. And I wanted to talk a little golf. That's why I'm happy to be joined by today's guest, Spencer Aguiar, pro-better senior PGA analyst for Roto Baller, co-host of the Better Golf Pod and award-winning golf fighter, Spencer. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate you having me on. I think a show like yours is incredibly important to the growth of this industry. Like way too much of the content that gets released into the ether is extremely tout-centric in its approach. Like we can obviously discuss my background more as the show goes on. But I essentially got into the content creation side of the space in 2018. One of the things I've always preached which is what you do on your show from day one here is that while I will give you my thought process, I'll give you an in-depth answer into why I'm making a play. My model has always been that I am not here to teach not tout. I'm a really big believer that someone's ability to sustain long-term growth with their bank girl always is going to stem from their capacity to find value before a number moves. We're talking really thin margins that are getting even tighter in the world of golf. The increased whole percentages in some of these markets have been wild. It's why I have my model that I released to provide some semblance of help for anyone out there if you want to land on some iteration of what you think of this board. But I think what you're doing with your podcast is everything that's right in the sports betting world, man. I appreciate it and you know buttering the host will get you everywhere in this business. I actually the first thing that I notice about you is Spencer's you look very young and golf tends to be an older generation viewership sport. How older are you when you start getting into watching golf? Do you want to take a guess on how old I am right now? Two baby faces guessing their age. I'm going to sit just based on that. I'm going to say you're in your late 20s. I am 33. Okay, and I'm 36 and we're just bragging about how young we look. Were you young starting golf or you didn't get into golf later in life? I got a late start into golf. I don't play the sports. I've always viewed that as a good thing because I don't carry any of those preconceived notions. But it became something that I started building a model for and handicapping around 2011. We were talking very quickly before we went on air and it looks like you know you have Scotty Wind and you know the ground you fill lock. I'm sure there's a ton more that I'm missing from that list there of the bobble heads in the back. But I essentially played poker semi-professionally through high school and college. I did that throughout the poker boom until Black Friday hit in 2011. I tried the transition to live poker since I had just turned 21 at the end of 2010. I thought that was going to be my path I wanted to take in life. But it didn't really take me that long to realize that lifestyle wasn't going to be for me. It was one thing when I was behind an avatar on the computer and didn't have to take money from someone face to face. It's another when I saw how it affected them and I'm born and raised in Vegas. I'm very data intensive and everything that I do. I think sports betting was a really nice pivot point for me to look into at that point. It's something that I had been doing far longer than I should have been by the time I was 21 at that point. So it was a really nice situation for me to wear. Sports betting was the natural pivot and I was handicapping all sports when I started this and we can talk more about the golf and how I made the transition there. But since you do have those poker bobble heads in the background, I will bring up this story very quickly because I think you'll get a kick out of it. So one of my really good family friends was the late great Chip Reese who I'm sure you are aware of. Legend, legend. I actually, I might have a small head. I can't recall. There's a couple hiding just around the corner there. I mean, if you ever are selling it, you could put the most outrageous price. I will pay you for that bobble head. I'm going to look out to the blog because I'm also a businessman. Like for those that don't know chips, one of if not the greatest poker players of all time, we used to travel with him on his private jet to Montana. We would stay in his home when we would vacation. You'd have Doyle Brunson, Hux seed, anyone else from that era. That would be around. I've always been around this world, even when I didn't realize what was going on at like the age of six. And I might be the only person in the world that can give this story of how they won their first bet. But the first wager I ever won, we were sitting around the campfire. I'm probably, I'm probably six or seven years old at this point. And chip's son name was Casey. He unfortunately passed a handful of years ago himself. But he bet me that I couldn't eat a certain amount of marshmallows. I probably ended up being the real loser in this bet at the end of the day because I ate the number of marshmallows that I needed made me sick afterwards. But he went, grabbed the money from chip, paid me the money. So the first wager I ever won actually ended up metting me profit from chipery. So I think that when that's your answer that you can give, it's kind of just destiny that you're meant to be in this sports betting world. Sure. And you're like loss, your loss vague is born and raised. And I'm like, it's, it's almost got to be like a right of passage in that city. Like you can't ignore it, right? Gambling is what built this city. And let's not pretend that that's what it wasn't. So you're seeing right from young you had influences in the whole gambling atmosphere. Exactly. Like when I was in middle school. So this would be 12 or 13. There's another chip story here. I'm sitting in there. I'm student made for the office in there. Chip comes in. We're playing Blackjack. Chip taps me on the shoulder and he's like, are you winning? Like it's just a normal thing in Las Vegas that chip locks into school, into a middle school. And it's a Spencer. Are you winning today? It's like, yeah, I'm up. And he's like, oh, continue what you're doing right now. So Vegas is a very interesting town. It gets a bad stigma in a lot of ways with it. And I think most people are good. You obviously have some that are what gives the bad light to it. And I think in our space in general, and this is why I said, I believe your show is so great. There are so many people out there that are in here just to make a quick dollar. And the provide things that are not tangible for long term success. And that was what was so important for me when I started as I never wanted to be that person that is touting plays and trying to give this information. Like obviously, like I said at the beginning, if I give a play and I give you the information, that's great. But I want a person to always be able to build their own numbers, their own model to figure out their own answers. If you want to ask ideas and you want to get better on how to do all those things, that's wonderful. But numbers move quickly. Books have different prices, specifically in the golf world here with different matchups and things like that. And it is very important that everybody out there, like we all do it for different reasons. I do it for a professional reason. There's people out there that do it for fun, but no matter what your answer is, you want to try to be making money with it. And the more information that you can provide for the general public and the better people can get, I think this space grows more naturally that way. So that's always been my mentality behind it. I agree with you. Like anybody who tells you going to the casino and losing a few hundred dollars as fun is lying, going and winning some money is always the fun part. I want to talk to you about what goes into a golf model. But you said something a little bit earlier about you tried betting a lot of different sports and then eventually you decide to refine yourself into golf. Were you good at betting other sports or were you bad and then you found yourself betting golf? No, I was good at everything. I mean, I'm built a model throughout the board, but I think golf is really interesting. So my life is different now than when I initially got into the space. Like you said, I was handicapping everything when I started the volume and the need to find every minimal edge my model with pinpoint was very important. That changed for me in 2019 when I began to make more of a name for myself in this golf industry. And a lot of times the best markets are going to be your niche markets here. You look at a Sunday NFL slate, something as small as a half point or a full point in deviation. That might be your most significant edge if it crosses through a key number. For golf, the markets were so weak every single event that landing 60% plus throughout the year on head to head wagers wouldn't have been on common practice. I think books didn't understand the need to switch pricing to land on these course specific blueprints. They would throw out these automated numbers for each player's player weekly where they never really deviated to account for skill set changes or course divergences that would come into play. I would say it's probably equivalent to football, I guess, where let's say the Kansas City Chiefs were playing. They would be favored by the same total weekly, even if Mahomes wasn't the one taking snaps or you know, the team that they're playing is better or worse than the week before. It's like that's almost how the golf world was just because it was we won't use Tiger Woods because I guess Tiger Woods is at a different level. But just because it was Dustin Johnson, like there are courses that Dustin Johnson's going to be better on than other venues and books were just releasing these very static blueprints out into the space where like every single time this player is going to be price around this range and it was a really simple market to take advantage of for a long time. I think that's changed exponentially this season. I don't necessarily believe at lands under that niche market expectation anymore, but there's still a significant edge. You just probably have to be a little bit more selective than usual. I talked about the increased hold percentages in all sectors. That's something that has been really hit hard in the golf world here. But I think if you shop around enough, you can always find those mistakes. Yeah, and you want to talk about sportsbooks confident or not, you know, our sponsor pinnacle. If you want to go bet six figures on a football game, they'll give it to you on Sunday. Right. And then but golf, you know, you might get a couple thousand in a matchup if you're lucky. So it should tell you where the sportsbooks are most confident. Let's talk about modeling golf because I don't bet golf. I don't like to bet sports that I don't do well in or I don't win in. What goes into like a model like is the first thing you're considering the course does that is that we're so all right, we get core specific and then like without giving away the whole recipe, what are some things that you have to attribute for to build a golf model? Yeah, so it's always core specific for me. We're in Europe now. So a testing Europe makes favor scrambling some of those other parsading metrics. That means we would want players who can salvage a score during those tournaments. Conversely, some of these wide open American tracks, they might end up accentuating distance or birdie making skills. I think it's really difficult question to answer in a vacuum situation since no two models are going to be built exactly the same way. Everything I do is always extrapolated to predict outcomes for the event in front of the players that week. I never go into a contest with a bias that a particular metric must be weighed into the mix. It's always something where I take the long term strokes game data from a course historically. I mathematically recreate that model to fit the test that's in front of the players. I think if you do it any other way that you're just creating flawed numbers and that is what we're trying to avoid here. But a lot of what I do to I guess answer your question is I will look at the last five years of the track. I will look at the top 10, 20, 30, 40 on the leaderboard. How did they gain their strokes? What was the dispersion of scoring like between your four critical metrics of off the tee approach around the green putting? Is it a venue where players are making birdies and bunches? If it is, is it wide open enough that if you look at comp corollary courses, can you find an edge that way? Is it a venue where three putt percentage in Europe? You have these really large greens. You have these wide open conditions where you don't have the protection that you would have on some of these tracks in Europe where you're on the coast. You have this wind that's going to come into play. You have to worry about three putt percentage on these wide open greens. So I'm always starting from scratch on every build. I think for this might be a different answer than some people would give. I am much more a person that does everything by hand. I'm not automating anything inside of my sheet. Every single change and move that gets done, I am the one that's implementing it onto it. So I never take the cookie cutter easy way out of this is my power rating on a player or this is what I think a fair price is in general. It's always going to be that core specific answer that's going to push me in that area of tournament tournament. Hey, I want to talk to you about pinnacle. pinnacle is the world's sharpest sportsbook and available to betters in Ontario. Find out what professional betters have known for decades. pinnacle is where the best betters play. Must be 19 plus an Ontario. Please play responsibly not available in the US. Okay, how important is form like because you say you look at five years worth of data, but here's the thing about golf. When a guy is on like Rory's very hard to beat when he's playing as a game and then he'll go 12 months, 15 months of not being on his a game. How much do you weigh form versus five years of data? I would say for me, so the three ways that I break it down would be form course history and a statistical profile. The statistical profile for me will always make up somewhere between 50 to 60 to 65 percent of my weight. That's where the majority is going to come into play. Form for me is more of that 20, 25, 30 percent. So I am looking at and I formed to me is I run it in a weighted sense, but I will pull up the last 10 tournaments that have been played. It doesn't mean that players last 10 tournaments, just the last 10 weeks of events. I will recalculate those numbers into how I think it should be fit there based off of if I want to run it a little bit more limited sample size or if I want to run it more of those 10 tournaments. And then the course history one is the intriguing answer to it because I think people massively overweight course history. There are tournaments where it's indicative, think if you look at an event like the masters. So if you look at a gust of national, that's of course that's highly predictive, probably the most predictive of any venue that you can find. I will amp up some of those weights there, but I think in general, and that's something that is out there in the public eye and I think once sportsbooks have an idea of course history and current form and some of these other things, like it's harder to find value that way. I do think current form matters, but I'm more so looking for the golfers where the value shows in my model to where the form is there enough where it's pushed them up the sheet, but maybe not necessarily to the point where the sportsbook has caught up to what is happening. Got it. And it's just hate to say it's not just math. There's also a lot of instinct and feel to what you're doing is deciding which tournaments to ramp up a little bit more of history. Like that's that's the art of building a model, right? Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. I am I am somebody who does live and die by my model. If I don't have value, there is nobody in the world, whichever person that you respect up there, like unfortunately, they couldn't convince me to go against what my model says, but it does come down to the ability to I guess it's very mathematical for me to answer that first part of the question. So I am using a lot of math there. I meant the weights, right? Because it's what the number that spits out, okay, you can say that's the number that I'm going to go with. That's my, you know, my Holy Jesus number, but it's the weights of how you weight your model and what is important. Like that's that's where the art of building a model comes in, right, deciding what is the most important and how much of an impact you should have on the final number. I think that's a fair way to say it and that's kind of what I was talking about earlier where I am very hands on with every single move that gets made and there's every single percentage that is placed in any single spot. There's rhyme and reason from a mathematical answer of why I'm doing it, but yeah, I mean my exact science of it is not going to be the same exact science that better X is going to be putting out there with the way that he's building it. And I think that's where you can get your edges is when you're able to create numbers and obviously the more books that you have at your disposal, the better it's going to be there with it, but you're always trying to find a mathematical edge at the end of the day with it. Okay, let's talk about all the markets you can bet and golf because there's a ton. There's like outrides, top five, 10, 20 head to head, make miscut or like just under over a score round. What are some like when what is your gambling portfolio look like on any given tournament? I think the two big mistakes people making golf betting would be one, they have terrible bankroll management. That probably goes for all sports. I don't think that's a golf specific thing. And then two, they have way too much exposure in the outright market. I know everybody wants to hit that long shot wager, but a proper betting portfolio should always be built with the majority of your exposure in those higher win percentage or lower hold areas. That's going to be the pre and internment matchups as the majority of my cards. I like the top 40 market inside the placement board. The whole percentages there have been increasing, but pricing is still generally soft. And then I guess just to go back to the head to head point, one of my strategies has always been finding fade candidates over a golfer that I'm strictly looking to back. It gives you multiple opportunities to win the wager when you can take on a golfer that your model dislikes with the player that is grading profitably against them. Like to me, probably the biggest answer would be miscut equity. I think that's the largest opportunity that you can season those matchups weekly. There's not necessarily a quota that I'm trying to hit of a difference. If I need this percent in matchups, I need this percent in placements. I need this percent in outright. I will say that I don't like to be more than a unit in outrights for the week. And I think that's even pushing a lot of ways. Like I better unit to win around eight units somewhere between like depending on where the value is seven to 12. I say would be like the core of where I'm landing there. But I think people go egregious with that answer to where if you look at their portfolio for the week, half of their money is tied up in futures. And one of the problems that comes to that even beyond anything else. And this is the answer that I always give people is golf is a really difficult sport to hedge. Like you have cash out option sure. But I am not a believer in hedging. You start taking your equity off the board once you're doing that. And I always tell people that if you're hedging in these future spots, you're betting way more money than you probably should be in these situations. Like you might want to reevaluate your outright portfolio in those situations. And by just doing that, if all of a sudden people have less exposure in the outright market and you put more of that money and more of that exposure that you want into matchups, I guarantee you're going to see your ROI increased. As you get better with it, you just want to become more and more profitable with that answer. But the people that are living and dying by outrights, you can go cold for two, three, four or five, six months. And you can't withstand that. And that is what we're trying not to do. We want some sustainable growth. Not this. I hit one week and I lose the next 10. Yeah, exactly. All right. I've heard like time of day that you tee off can be important based on obviously what the weather looks like later in the day. And then you also have to turn around where you got a bet right away where you got to play on Friday right in the morning. Is that a huge part of your handicapping process looking at time of day or even the weather? Not not necessarily for me. I'm not as big on the weather as most people. It's going to matter a lot more for tournaments like the open championship when you look into the lack of protection that I've talked about previously. Like yeah, your American course is probably tend to be more tree lined and less exposed to coastal gusts. It doesn't mean that you don't have some that are brutal when you play in various spots in the country. But I've always viewed it as a situation where once the books know the weather edge, it's already overinflated and reflected the numbers to begin with. And it goes back to kind of this answer that I gave for current form or course history with it. Weather is very fickle. And I think when you have a fickle answer that comes into play, like trying to think the best way to give this answer where it makes logical sense. Like where if you thought you had a perceived edge one way, it can just as quickly become the wrong side of the draw. If something changes or things get worse weather-wise where it forces around to be suspended, I worry that people sometimes build models that are so highlighted to where yeah, the PM AM wave is clearly the wave you want to be on. And none of us are meteorologists. Look, we can look at a wind finder. We can try to figure it out. I think it works well for individual round matchups obviously. I think it works well for showdown contests for DFS. I think those two things, yes, you want to look for as short of a time frame as you can. But when we're building out for four days of a tournament, a lot can change between the start of the event on Thursday and then when somebody's team off on Friday. And that's not even taking to account the Saturday and Sunday rounds. And you sometimes get tournaments and it's probably more prevalent in Europe once again where you'll tee off on Sunday and the afternoon guys which are the guys in the lead will be 40, 50 mile per hour winds and they're going to get blown off the course. And it's you wanted your guy near the top. If you could have promised that they were one of the leaders, you would have taken it at the time. So I think it's one of those things that people overweight in models. It doesn't mean that it's not important. But I build it one time before the event and I pretty much leave it there unless we're talking about individual bets on like around one matchup or whatever it ends up being. I like about golf is it's almost like four separate betting events because Thursday happens and then all right, I've got new data and also I've got new line ups based on new spreads. It is like is it so busy words like all right Thursday's a wrap and now you're like okay, I got to get ready for Friday. I got to look at the new numbers and input this new data like there's four separate unique betting events in one tournament right. I pretty much work twenty for seven. I think to be a good sports better in general, you need to be on top of the numbers. And as you said with golf, it is broken down into where you have multiple occurrences. And you know, even if you want to take it a step further, there's five because there's the pre tournament stuff that you're going to talk about before any of the rounds even come into play with it. And there's the ability to find edges here and there. And I think one of the things people do when they build a model, which is one of the things I've been trying to push is the internament data clearly matters. But it needs to be slowly infused into your model. Somebody will build a model from a pre tournament perspective and you had all these reasons and yeah, maybe you were wrong and you need to make slight deviations to account for it and you want to put in the new stats that you have. But I've seen one of the common mistakes people make is that you'll build your model for pre event. You'll land with let's say Rory number one on the model. Rory goes in plays day one and let's just say his ball striking is terrible and ball striking is what you care about for round two. And I've seen people put such an egregious amount of weight on that round one ball striking that all of a sudden now Rory is an underdog in your model to every single person out there in the space. And it's like, well pump the breaks little bits one round. There's a reason why you're trying to build out for extended data. One round one tournament even shouldn't be causing these massive differences to take place. So I think the internament bets are probably where the biggest edge does come into play. I would say that's where the books have not caught quite caught up. They've gotten a lot better there. But I would still say that if doing that correctly, I don't see a reason why you couldn't be pushing 58% plus on your head to head matchups. There's very big errors that are coming into play where I will find numbers here and there that are off by 40, 50, 60, 70 points from where they should be. I think it just comes down to knowing what you're looking for though at the end of the day with it. All right, I've heard of this being an edge and I want to know if you've ever explored it or a golfer is doing really well. Just let's call him an unknown or playing way above his level. A lot of people, because there's betting opportunities throughout the year to bet the four majors even months in advance. A lot of people will bet that golfer that's hot in some future majors because the books have not adjusted. These are pre tournament prices and knowing that by the time the tournament he's off is going to be half the price that he was once upon a time. Is that something that you've ever done? Yeah, futures markets for these majors. That's the one nice thing about them is they're up year round. I am running data throughout the entire year and I have a special Masters, US Open Championship, PGA Championship model where I will update it throughout the year. I will see where I have a proper price based off of these players and every Sunday night I will go in from the tournament before I will update my data moving forward with it and I will have what I have a proper price to be at that time. I think there are a lot of edges to be found where futures betting is tough because of the whole percentages that I've talked about. If you can find mistakes in the market that have not been accounted for or what you believe to be a mistake and sometimes it comes with the answer that you just talked about where there's a player that is currently in form. Maybe he's won the golf tournament and he's sitting there for the Open Championship at 100 to 1 even though your model thinks he should be 40 to 1 and the book has been accounted for like the upside that he's actually presenting. So I think it's something that people should be doing anytime that you can get look ahead markets specifically if you're betting outrights here you want to be looking at that. All right let's talk about recreational money in golf because here's the thing I've got buddies who bet golf but here's all they bet are the four majors. That's it everybody wants the majors and because of it we know that the more bets the book takes the better informed their number is are there bigger edges in smaller tournaments as opposed to these majors that are so sharp based on how much money is flowing in. There's a massive difference like I'll take it even a step further than what you said. There's a larger edge in these non elevated events because of that same reason. If you could give me a substantial enough data size on every single player in the field I would rather bet let's say high school golf just because I would be able to find an edge like the liquidity in the market and the massive big that they're going to take up front in many of these majors. It's just not going to produce the best betting boards. There's going to be certain books for the Open Championship where they're a whole percentage now that we've gotten into the week of the tournament. You might have them up in the 170% range like that's absurd. The matchups typically become infinitely worse also for these majors. My advice always is have as many books at your disposal as possible. That's an answer that you would also give if you were betting any other sport but the one big difference and I alluded to it a second ago is that shops are going to offer different head to head matchups between different places here. They do that for all events. It's not a major championship thing. It just always becomes a situation where you're trying to pick off your random edges here and there with matchups varying from shop to shop. Obviously majors get the clickbait headline when you're able to hit something. I hit Wyndham Clark at 100 the one during the US Open. That's all anything anybody wanted to talk about that week. Wasn't one of my best gambling tournaments I've ever had before. The matchup markets went south. The placement bets weren't that great. I had a lot of exposure to Wyndham Clark and it gave me a profitable tournament and that's the clickbait headline that always comes is oh Spencer hit Wyndham Clark 100 to one at the US Open but I think these bottom of the barrel tournaments will always be better than these majors if we're talking solely about value at the end of the day. Hey the easiest way to improve is the sports better is use multiple sports books and always get the best odds. We recommend using an odds comparison tool like Bet Stamp. Bet Stamp compares odds across every sports book for games, futures and player props. Save time and money by checking Bet Stamp before you bet. Download the app today. If you're looking to sign up for a new sports book account please check out the offers available at betstamp.app forward slash circles off or hit the link in the description. If you sign up through this page it helps support the show. Now back to the rest of the episode. All right it's major week but I want to know of the four majors. Do you have a favorite to watch and also a favorite to bet on? Probably is the same answer for me. I would say the US Open I would expect most to say the Masters. I think that's the common consensus. If you were to pull 100 people you probably get the majority that would say the Masters. Historically I've gotten crushed at a gust that almost translates into the biggest loss I take every single year. Don't know why that reason necessarily is it's the one tournament of the four that plays at the same venue. You would think that would help me even if we're talking about a more difficult major championship market for all the reasons I just talked about a second ago but that has been a difficult one. The open championship that's probably hard to fully appreciate just because we're in the United States. There's the time zone change. PGA championships never quite done it for me and then I just like the rotation for the US Open. You always get this similar blueprint that you can find on the players even if the courses are changing yearly. To me that is the most true quality of golf that you can find. I guess naturally based off of money here that's been the one I've been most successful at. Whether or not that's the reason I give it that's maybe for a different podcast here but I think US Open are fun. I'm an agent of chaos. I love saying Andrews give me the British Open and I'm going to I'm going to tell you like take it one further. I don't bet golf but I will bet something so that I can watch the tournament and you know rather than bet one of the smart golfers that you know are more steady. I love jumping on the Jordan speed roller coaster. There's nothing like it in sports. The highs are super high and the lows are insane and that's what I like to do. Tell us about the British Open because it's this week. What is the tournament about what kind of golfers excel at something like this? I want to touch on the Jordan speed thing very quickly before we move on. So I'm not going to give a dollar amount to this but the biggest swing I have ever encountered in my sports betting life came during the 2015 US Open. So I guess this would be a negative answer about the US Open. That's at Chambers Bay. I had Dustin Johnson and I don't know if you remember that tournament. Dustin had like seven feet to win the tournament for Eagle on the final hole. Missed the putt and then had a couple feet coming back to force it into a playoff against speed. Missed that putt. I had so much exposure to Dustin Johnson in any iteration of any market that you can talk about including for DFS contest. That was one of the most painful things. So unfortunately I don't know if I share the same love of Jordan speed for that reason. He caused me a lot of pain there but if we're talking specifically about the Open Championship there's a lot of differences of that venue that you would find there that you wouldn't get elsewhere. Obviously the time zone change that's at least something worth noting. There's that lack of protection from the wind on these link style courses. You typically get these large green complexes where off the tee prowess needed gets reduced because of the strategic nature. When you mix that with the short game returns all of that kind of gives you this unique skill set requirement. I do think whether always becomes the most significant factor of any of the four majors that we're talking about. It makes it harder because certain waves have had the propensity historically to just get blown off the course and it kind of goes like if you like Jordan speed and you like mayhem the Open Championship is exactly where you find that chaos with it and I think Jordan speed is a really good fit for an Open Championship for all those reasons. You want players that can scramble. You want the ability to try to maneuver through these courses. Now I don't know how much I trust Jordan's speech putter at this point like every single tournament it seems like we're watching him miss from two feet and I guess that's the roller coaster ride that you alluded to that you just never know quite what you're going to get. It's one shot he's dangling off the edge and he might fall over the clip clip at Pebble Beach. The next second he's like getting the most miraculous shot you've ever seen falling down and then you know he's missing putts from like an inch in so opens are challenging though because of the weather. I always worry a little bit just that you need as much information as you can with the weather in these tournaments and as I said I'm not a person that is so looking to find weather edges that you have to make a little few changes and be cognizant at least of what the disparity comes into play at an Open Championship with that. Oh yeah oh yeah and as far as the speed stuff goes some people get their adrenaline jumping out of airplanes and skydiving and some people like to you know drag race and I like to get my adrenaline rush by betting on Jordan speed on the major weekend that's how I get my fill. Okay do you have without like we're I'm not asking you for picks but are there one or two golfers that you have an elevated interest in this weekend it could be for a high or a low reason that you say to yourself you know what I think these are two intriguing names to watch out for this weekend at the British Open. It could be for the good or for the bad. I guess I'm a masochist with some of these players that every single week my model seems to have value on the Zander Shoffley's Patrick Cantley's Max Homas. I do think that because it is not held on you a soil you are going to see a drift in the market on all of those players. I've always said that if you can find Cantley and Shoffley in particular at 25 to 1 or higher which at the time of recording this there are still numbers out there where you can find those prices. I always said that that's too high. You'd have to find a very wrong course fit for them to start drifting past that number for me and open championships are really good for them. We can talk about why some Americans don't find success. Those two do because of their short games because of their Shoffley in particular and Max Homa too like those two golfers you look at Strokes game off the tee. There's US Opens where you can just bludgeon the ball off the tee and some of these guys take a negative effect. Cantley is a great driver of the ball. I'm not going to include him into this mix but when you look at it open championship because we're talking about strategy off the tee and you have these fast firm fairways where the balls can roll out forever there's always a decrease in dispersion of scoring off the tee. It's why you get some of these European golfers that are really crafty with their short games. Think of a Cameron Smith for example. He won the open championship last year. He's as erratic off the tee as possible but the ability to be able to club down he gets the roll out. The short game is immaculate. The putter is as great as it can be. That's the skill set I'm looking for is can you find me the golfer that is able to take advantage of certain faculties of their game that maybe they wouldn't necessarily have in a different major here and I think Cantley and Zander or two golfer is that kind of stick out to me there. Terrell Hatten if you're looking for a European name Max Homas 60 to one in the market at this point right now depending on how he finishes in the Scottish open you know we'll see where that number goes but yeah it's just it's an interesting it's an interesting board with some of these Americans that I think might drift a little bit too far. All right um I remember where I was when I heard the news that golf and live uh the PGA tour and live merged and what was the most shocking about it was we never even heard a whisper of it like it kind of like bang here's the news absorb it nobody knew what it meant because it was so uh it had to trickle out slowly do you have any strong thoughts about what happened with the live split and the merger? Not really it's obviously unfortunate that it initially split up the best players in the world you would prefer to see the best playing the best when possible. Everyone's going to have their own reasons for why they either left or stayed. I'm not going to be one that's going to judge them for whatever decision that they deemed to be best for themselves in their families. I do hope that as time moves forward that we do get some more clarity here it's still kind of wide open right now to where you have the senate hearings and we'll see if they pass the bill to where this can move forward with it and uh these two tours can merge but it's challenging right now it took a lot of the steam that golf had and that's also one of the reasons I guess to like backtrack to one of the first questions that you even asked me here. I stopped all sports one because of the niche market thing of what I was covering from a content creation standpoint but I think there's a really big ceiling for golf and it goes to your answer that you gave of you can split this into every single day is its own separate entity here and when you look specifically at the content that I am creating over at Rodo Baller football's king like you're not going to beat football in this country that's that's understandable uh baseball would be second for the site golf is the third biggest driver at on the Rodo Baller website we surpassed NBA we surpassed any of your mixed martial arts sports um I think that's upside is what's really intrigued me when I decided to make that move and a lot of the wind got taken out of the sale unfortunately when when these players got split up you you never want to say I can't watch Dustin Johnson or I can't watch Brooks Capka play and it was very unfortunate and I I have a bad feeling that golf continues to step in their own way through every single turn that we make here and um we can't have that if we want to continue growing that sport to wear like I said we're not going to get the football or baseball but I think there's a realistic possibility that we can push this further up where there's more eyeballs and as gambling becomes legalized in more states throughout the country and as everybody has it it's kind of that easy fill in market when football seasons off golf just runs year-round there's really no off time with it and when I said I work 24-7 like I legitimately work 24-7 from January to the end of the year like you have two weeks at the end of the season but it's pretty much start and go and every single week that if you want action and you want the ability to try to get an edge and you want the ability to gamble on these sports golf is the perfect fit there you know uh one of the uh intrigues I think with golf is people like Tibet tournaments right it's the big reason why March Madness is so successful people love betting in the playoffs people do playoff brackets it's that whole finality right we're gonna get a winner whereas sometimes regular seasons can feel drawn out like it's just one out of 82 games and it's not as meaningful and the one thing that golf captures is every weekend is a tournament is its own tournament to bet and you're betting within the tournament and you're going to experience it as a tournament as a whole and I think that's part of the intrigue that golf provides that other sports don't sticking with the live thing for one second because you know there's a lot of great golfers that never crossed over guys like Tiger Woods and the rumored one billion dollar offer that he got and Rory McElroy who's been a vocal critic and even he said on the first day of the Scottish open that if live golf was the only option to ever play again he would retire John Rom was another and Jordan speed and some of the bigger name Scotty Sheffler um am I cynical in thinking that there was some sort of financial arrangement because I can't believe that they would let Dustin Johnson make 400 million and Phil Mickelson make 600 million and then they get nothing and now they're back playing in the same tournament again it almost feels like they had to have been made whole in order for this to all move forward do you share my cynicism or my thought process there I think from day one there's been a lot more that has happened that the public probably doesn't know about I would imagine even from the start of this and we've heard this during some of the Senate meetings like they were talking about Tiger and Rory owning ownership stake in some of these live golf teams I'm not a believer that just overnight all of a sudden Rory didn't know what was going on or Tiger didn't necessarily know what was going on and it's like oh now we've made the merger maybe they didn't know what that exact second when it happened and yeah it might have been an overnight deal but there's been a lot of these back alley sort of conversations that have been had we're obviously speculating on exactly what would have happened to make this okay and maybe we don't have an answer to that yet I mean we haven't seen the live players back I mean they're not legally allowed to come back yet until we pass everything through but um we haven't necessarily seen that answer to what as going on and if there's going to be a suspension that ends up looming or you know maybe we do find out like things don't stay secret usually like usually somebody tattletails and slips some information out there and all of a sudden you you hear that Rory got X amount of dollars to make this okay and all the players split X amount of the pie to make sure everybody was happy here I would assume there's going to be something like that that is going to go on or or has already gone on but as I said it's all speculation at this point but I would lean we're both betting men here I would push the line in the favor that much more in the favor that something has happened all right um you mentioned Wyndham Clark uh and six months ago a lot of people wouldn't have known who Wyndham Clark is and I'm talking about casuals and then when you win the US Open you become known and you also mentioned Cameron Smith and casuals would not have known about the great golfer with a mullet but eventually became a household name is there any golfers right now that you think the casual viewer doesn't know about or isn't fully familiar with that you think in the next year or two is going to start popping up and making an impact on the majors how gross do you want to get with this answer because I mean we can I can give the cherry picked answer that I want gross like I don't want Will Zalatoris who I think is like borderline I think casuals kind of know him because he's you know had some top 10 finish I want to know a guy that I've never heard of that I I think you're making up the name and pulling the rub the wool over my eyes that's what I want to know okay perfect so and unfortunately I wish we would have done this show before the US Open I would have given you the Wyndham Clark answer there like I he was ready to just boom through the space and I think that that's something that's going to stay and like if I was going to give you just some casual basic answer Tom Kim Cameron Young those are two players that are kind of already made runs with Cameron Young like he's coming second a couple times but no let's get really gross with this like I'll try to think of players that are outside the top 100 right now that I that mine in what let's actually let me bring up my model I can tell you on my model who some of the biggest deviations from official world golf ranking would be to the players that where I have them so let me sort this really fast all right so I think a guy like Stephen Yeager he has a really intriguing skill set if he can clean up with the putter he's outside the top 100 in the world currently he grades as a top 30 golfer in the world for me Ludwig Aberg he is fresh out of college I think he's one of the best prospects I've seen in years I don't know if he starts competing to win a major in a year or whatever the time frame you said there was but the sky is going to be the limit for him I guess these two would be more under and look I mean I think if you're following golf every week obviously you're going to know these two players this may not be a common name for some people up there but saw hit the gala Minwuli those are two players with very big upsides in my model for what the potential that they have and then the last name I'll give is I'll say Alex Smolley we've seen a recent search from him where he's gotten himself into the top 70 of the world I love his ball striking ability the one thing I worry about is his ability to score on par 5s on some of these more challenging tracks if he can't do that he never takes that next step but like the Yeager answer he's a top 30 player in the world for me inside my model and that's always something that's important when I when I'm looking for some of these guys in the future all right you gave me five names I'm a casual viewer so I'm your perfect audience I knew two of them I knew Minwuli and I knew the gala just because there's just this weird thing we're like we're watching the fourth round of golf tournament and you know just hovering around at top 12 top 15 and putting in solid performances but I didn't know 60% of the names that you named so I think I think you hit the nail in the head as far as the diving deep and getting ugly about some names we wouldn't know I want to ask one last question Ty year has been the face of golf for as long as he's been around and now it's become like a special event whenever he does play um we had a little period over the last little while where like speed had a run and Rory had a run and John Rom and seems like Scotty Shefflers on his run right now but no one has like had a sustained run on top for like a long stretch with the competition being like so more robust it's like it feels like there's like 15 20 really good golfers now our is the era of one golfer dominating for a decade over if not is there anyone that's in today's game that you think has a shot of at least having a run like a five year run where they're really at the top of their game they can knock off five six majors in a five year span if somebody's going to do it and this is kind of a cop out of answer because he's number one in the world um probably Scotty Sheffler what he is doing this season is historic we're talking Tiger Woods Esk ball striking numbers if you take the difference in my model with the way that I run my tea to green stats and you compare him who's number one to I believe Rory who's number two for me there's like as large of a difference there from if you move from Rory to a guy like Brendan steel in my model and that's going to be a name that you know some people don't follow golf when you know who that is and that's the point that I'm trying to make here it's that Scotty's ball striking if he would just make putts and the putter has gone ice cold I don't even think he's a bad putter but he's been one of the worst putters in the world now for the last six months and that's why he's not winning golf tournaments you see him inside the top five on every single leaderboard he's putting the Tiger Woods stats together just unfortunately that part of his game with the putter has held them back but it's very sad because I truly believe that if you would have given him a baseline version of his putter that we had gotten from you know two years ago or a year ago I think he could have won two majors this year already and it's unfortunate that we haven't seen that high-end upside for him to where he's winning some of these events but I don't think he's going to go anywhere you can't strike the ball like he does and not keep yourself up there and then I mean if you're just looking for an absolute wild card that you know you say in three years that this guy's the number one player in the world and it's taken over golf I'll point back to that Ludwig Aberghancer that I gave I think he is the last prospect that got me this excited would have been John Rom when he came out of Arizona State I think he is at that level of good to where we look at this in two three years and not only is it a top 10 player but he's pushing to be the number one player in the world when you have the distance that he has he's going to have to clean up some of this inability that he has with his putter in a short game and if you can't tell I'm the type of person that I want to find ball strikers I'll live with the putter I like it is what it is with it obviously you need to make putts to win golf tournaments but find me the pristine ball strikers that can do that weekend and week out just because putting is such a volatile statistic day-to-day with it that if I can find these guys that do have that plus prerequisite for distance and then have the ability to score at a level that my model is pumping it out that really like the top players aren't even comparing to I'd say Sheffler is the one that grades there right now and then yeah Ludwig let's see where he's at in a year or two because I think he could be very special all right I'm going to be I've already forgotten his last name but I will never forget his first name and that's going to be somebody I'm looking up for I had a buddy who said Scotty Sheffler is the oldest 26 year old in the world and he goes he lacks the sizzle like Tiger obviously had the flare and the sizzle and Rory and spieth and even rom had like a little bit of it and he goes Sheffler is just consistently boring but he's just so good at golf right now if he was more over the top this run that he's on would have gotten so much more attention he is a boring golfer the most exciting part about him is how different and quirky his game is he does things that are unconventional his feet are moving he's flying off in the air when he's swinging his driver I you know like the feet never settle in one spot with it and that's what makes him the most fun is just that he's different in that way but from a personality sense and I think he seems like the nicest guy in the world and I root for him every single week from a non gambling perspective because I think he's a good dude but he doesn't necessarily move that needle for the casual person out there that's tuning into golf where yeah a John Rom you might turn on the television and John Rom might be cussing himself out he might be cussing somebody out in the crowd he might be breaking a club and that's the opposite of the Tiger answer where Tiger just had that flare for the dramatic and he was able to give you you know I've said this before of anybody who's ever played any sport I think Tiger gave you exactly what you wanted as a sports fan and that's what made golf exciting for people every single time not only did he perform and produce when the situation came but then he gave you that Tiger roar the Tiger fist bump uh he did all of those things that got the general public being like this guy is the greatest thing I've ever seen before and then he backed it up by winning and um that's what makes it so challenging is that personality wise like you kind of have to be the complete package to get people super excited and that would be more so where I would say I don't know if there's anybody out there that can match that level with it well Spencer I feel better informed after talking to you about golf I don't know though when I uh decide to put in my bed so that I can have a sweat I don't know if I can get off the Jordan speed roller coaster because I I need the adrenaline fill but I am going to consider some of the names you mentioned today in today's podcast I want to thank you man I really appreciate you having me on as I said at the beginning of the show keep doing what you're doing um everybody out there could use a show like this to become a better better at the end of the day so um I really appreciate you having me on man I appreciate it that Spencer Aguiar Pro Better Senior PJ Analyst for Roto Baller co-host of the Better Golf Pod and award winning golf fighter and this has been 90 degrees hey that's it for me another edition of 90 degrees is in the books I want to thank my guest Spencer Aguiar Pro Better Senior PJ Analyst for Roto Baller co-host of the Better Golf Pod and award winning golf fighter I want to thank the sponsors of this show pinnacle and bet stamp and I want to give thanks to my producer Jason Cooper thanks for listening do me a favor before you go like the content subscribe share comment we'll be back next week with another guest on the 90 degrees podcast where we take an inside look into the sports betting industry that's it for me hope you enjoyed until next time