As the PGA Tour’s Florida leg opened Thursday with the Honda Classic, prognosticators pointed to Floridians Brooks Koepka and Daniel Berger as favorites due to their proximity to the event.
Joaquin Niemann, who won last week in Los Angeles, and hot-starting Sungjae Im were also drawing experts’ attention.
But professional sports bettor Rufus Peabody analyzed his simulated data and stayed quiet.
“I keep my head down,” Peabody told USA Today Sports+ this week. “The people who talk publicly, selling their picks, I don’t pay any attention to that. Think about it. Why would you sell your picks?”
Peabody, a professional gambler since 2009, devised a quantitative model that runs 250,000 simulations on the Honda Classic, factoring in a multitude of conditions like weather and player skill, along with hole and course difficulty.
With those outcomes, he set out to wager as robustly as possible at domestic and foreign sportsbooks. When Peabody takes action, it often results in significant adjusting of worldwide odds.
In addition to betting on international golf events, he targets around 12 players in U.S. tournaments, focusing on the golfers he favors in head-to-head matchups, which most online shops offer.
To help cover the risk on some longshot players, Peabody bets on them as an “each-way” proposition that allows up to 1/4 returns for those who post a top-five finish.
“If I have an edge, I’m looking to get down as much as I can,” Peabody said.
That is the beautiful duality of golf.
Gentlemanly and distinguished on the surface, wild and risk-filled once the shots start flying.
The four major sports draw far more betting traffic at online sportsbooks. But the smaller, yet rising, crowd of astute and deep-pocketed sports gamblers is embracing golf as their betting sport of choice.
“I used to bet baseball and football, but as the markets became more efficient it became clear I needed to specialize more,” Peabody said. “I could still turn a small profit with baseball but given all that I put into (the research), it’s almost not worth the time.”
Golf has provided him far richer returns.
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