As much as I (and others) have bellyached plenty about small-field, no-cut events this year, there’s zero chance I can hate on this one. Things take on a different meaning when it’s for God and Country.

While some top players are missing due to qualification rules and country participation limits, the field is still very solid at this incredible course.

I don’t remember a ton about the 2018 Ryder Cup outside of the lopsided score, but there are still plenty of other more recent results here to go on when deciding if there’s any value going against Scottie/Xander/Rahm in the betting markets.

Ron put together a nice chart of course history for the golfers in the field who have been here on a regular basis.

Some thoughts and info on the course from the preview:

Le Golf National (Albatros Course)

It’s a course with varying complexities as it combines the traditional style of a links track with the modern features of target golf and the plentiful water hazards of a Florida-style design. While there are significant mounds and humps and undulations across the layout, four decades ago the property was flat farmland. The building of the course required 300 trucks per day of materials from downtown Paris for three years to add elevation to the land. So many water hazards were created because the clay silt of the Parisian basin does not drain well. And it has such few trees because when it was built, it needed to be ready to host the French Open in 1991.

Le Golf National has regularly been one of the toughest courses in the DP World Tour rotation with the average winning score across the past ten French Opens playing around 11 under par. At last year’s French Open, only four players managed four under-par rounds. “The course itself is such a wonderful test,” said former European Ryder Cup captain Darren Clarke. “It’s fair. If you get too aggressive, there’s a lot of water in play.” Links-style pot bunkers line both the fairways and surround several greens.

Many believe that Le Golf National resembles TPC Sawgrass in numerous ways including its amphitheater stadium-style viewing areas, its shorter length, its emphasis on accuracy and strategy over distance off the tee, and its risk-reward drama on three of the final four holes, including two island greens at 15 and 18. As Phil Mickelson said about the course before Europe’s beatdown of the U.S. in 2018, “I think it’s phenomenal because it’s got the best viewing of any golf course I’ve seen, as well as the risk-reward. The last four holes are spectacular.”

Finding the fairway off the tee is paramount as the course has very narrow fairways combined with penal rough that is a blend of ryegrass and fescue. The rough was never in play for the 2018 Ryder Cup as Le Golf National superintendent Lucas Pierre explained that the first cut of rough (2.5 inches), the second cut (3.5 inches), and the third cut (4.7 inches) were eliminated at European captain Thomas Bjorn’s choosing. All three cuts have been re-implemented for this tournament. Though the width of the fairways hasn’t changed, the effective landing areas will be more forgiving with the first cut back in play. “For the Ryder Cup, the course was very narrow with the natural rough much closer to the fairway,” Pierre told Golf Digest. “It will be opened a bit more for the Olympics.”

Off the tee, golfers will be forced to strategize and gameplan. Bomb and gouge with driver is not a viable option. “It’s not go to the tee, hit driver as hard as you can,” said Jon Rahm. “It actually makes you think.” With water in play on so many holes, clubbing down is a smart choice on numerous holes. Poor decision-making and errant drives cost the Americans dearly in 2018.

When Alex Noren won the Open de France here in 2018, he hit 75% of his fairways and greens, and his average driving distance was 13 yards shorter than his season average thanks to a more conservative strategy. When Justin Thomas finished eighth here in 2018 in preparation for the Ryder Cup he only used driver seven times all week saying, “It’s just a hard golf course. It’s very narrow. You have to hit the fairways to have birdie chances. You can get it snowballing pretty quickly out here if you’re not careful.”

While many consider performance off the tee the most important test, with so many players likely hitting their drives to the same spots, many consider Le Golf National a second-shot course. “It’s not a driver golf course. It rewards good iron play,” said Graeme McDowell who won twice at Le Golf National in 2013 and 2014. The greens contain numerous quadrants that slope in all directions which allow for tricky pin placements (including near the water’s edge) and make proximity to the hole a difficult task.

Greens are quite large at an average of 7,535 square feet and are a mix of bentgrass and poa annua. They were set at a very slow 10.2 on the stimpmeter for the 2018 Ryder Cup but are expected to be much faster at anywhere between 12-13 for the Olympic event. Greens could be on the softer side as the Paris area has had one of the wettest years in recent memory with 23 inches of rain through the first six months of the year.

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Model

I built a simpler model after talking to Noonan today about the betting Livestream. Incorporated most of what we talked about, using some more specific splits to try and determine who I liked.

• Ball Striking on courses we’ve labeled as “less than driver” heavy

• Overall Proximity on courses with LARGE greens

• Around the Green Play

• Putting on Bentgrass

Want guys who can club down and still play positional golf well, not just hit the greens, but hit it close, and have their short game in some sort of working order.

As usual, Scottie is at the top, but it further confirmed a few guys that I had mentioned this morning as bet-ons.

So, while it’s hard to wager against the two top Americans, I have a handful of positional bets I like heading into the week.

Tommy Fleetwood Top 10 +120
Shane Lowry Top 10 +160
Alex Noren Top Top 10 +170

…and mostly because I watched a 6-year-old clip of him flushing some balls here in a Sunday singles match against Tiger Woods (but also because he played some fine golf last week):

Jon Rahm Top 5 +190

If you want to try your hand at some light golf data modeling, just click the banner.

Weather

Not only wet and rainy the next few days, but the area has experienced more rain than normal for most of the summer apparently, leaving the course fairly soft. Winds don’t seem to be an issue this week and the chances of rain are greatly diminished, if not completely absent, after Thursday.

This official weather chart from the PGA cuts off Sunday but it’s looking pretty similar to Saturday: nice.

With only 60 golfers and the plan to send them out in threesomes for all four days, I don’t see a weather/wave advantage forming here in France.

News and Notes

Plenty of memes and fun poked at these photos. Still not sure whey they made them deadpan it like this.

Fun fact (I think) from the official PGA media site: They always list what the holes will be if there is a playoff, but since this is a bit different, they have listed:

“18-16-17 (repeat); 17-18-16 if bronze playoff”

This means that in the case of a two-way tie for first, the top two golfers would head back to 18 to decide who gets gold and who gets silver. On top of that, if this were the case plus there were multiple golfers tied for third place as well, they would have CONCURRENT PLAYOFFS going on.

I dug in to find info telling me pretty much what I expected, but also stumbled upon this fun nugget. We may have MORE golf in four years when we head to Los Angeles.

Speaking of the women’s event, I’ve started to scrape some LPGA data to see if I’ll be backing anyone next week against Nelly in the women’s event. It starts next Wednesday, finishing up on Sunday. Same start time (3 AM ET) as what we’ll see this week.

The Ladies will play it as a par 72 rather than the 71 it’s set up as this week, and of course, the distance will change: 6,374 yards compared to 7,174.

I’ll throw some info on the women’s field and any bets I make in next week’s Wyndham edition.

As always, bet responsibly, have fun, and go Team USA.

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