Trading On Golf for Beginners

5 Hot Tips for Golf on Betfair

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Steve Taylor is a sports trader and accredited exchange course presenter who is currently working as a trader for one of the UK's leading bookmakers.

Trading Golf for beginners including 5 hot tips

Trading quotes based on full field event of 132 players or more.

This does not apply to reduced fields, such as WGC events (World Golf Championship) etc.

Golf is a very slow moving market, and early in the event it can be difficult to get a bet on for a substantial amount, particularly the European Tour.

The leaders early in the tournament will provide the best trading opportunities on the first couple of days and players sitting in third and fourth on the leader board are often the easiest to back and lay rather than the more fancied Top 20 players.

Getting started for golf traders

1: Some of the online bookmakers are slower in updating their odds during live play during the first three rounds than Betfair. This provides a great opportunity to place a back bet with an online bookmaker and a lay bet with Betfair.

Look for a more than 10% pinch of the market as you need to take the Betfair commission into the equation.

For example — Richard Bland holed his second shot on the Saturday of a tournament in Switzerland 2016. Betfair odds dropped dramatically to approximately 4.00 to lay, yet the corporate bookmaker still had Richard at 12.00 to back. (Don’t forget to avail of any bookmaker signup bonuses while you are at it).

Trading Golf on Betfair

2: If the weather forecast is nice and conducive to low scoring, and there are 20 players within 4 shots of the lead, and the leader is not leading by more than 1 shot, then look to lay the 1st round leader or one of the favourite’s in contention from the mornings Day One play.

Place your back bet before these players commence play in the afternoon on Day Two.

This way you give the whole field on one side of the draw the chance to play two rounds, while the player you have laid has only played one round. Players on the course usually have a huge advantage over those in the clubhouse!

For example — 2017 Career Builder Challenge, Harold Varner finished seven under after his morning round, and with all the points mentioned above favouring a lay. When he putted out, he was 15.00 to lay and within a
few hours he was already out to 25.00 to back. Imagine the odds he was before he commenced play in the afternoon on Day Two!

Naturally the opposite betting pattern happens in poor weather conditions or a very difficult scoring tournament. For example — A typical brutal U.S Open or course or British Open weather.

It’s hard to beat the player your eyes are focused on watching during play. You have got to take the TV delay into consideration, which seems to be longer on the PGA Tour than the European Tour. You can however pinch the market on a player or player’s odds that will be impacted by the outcome of the player you were watching.

Remember — when one player’s odds shorten, another player’s odds must drift, and vice versa!

3: Keep in mind — Poor tee shots into hazards, out of bounds, trees, greenside bunkers or deep rough, spectacular holed shots, greens hit in under regulation or shots to within close proximity of the hole (4ft or less), are usually the best for trading.

You can get a slight head start to the poor tee shot point, as a ball is in the air for over 6 seconds on average. If you know there is trouble on one particular side of the fairway and you know the player has hit his ball into
the region, then you can quickly assess how this will impact another player’s odds and place your bet.

It is also imperative to have trading software, I use Bettrader.

4: When trading golf, you can also use statistics to your advantage, below are some that you might find worthwhile.

0-3 feet putts holed – greater than 99%

4-6 feet putts holed – greater than 80%

7-10 feet putts holed – greater than 50%

Outside 20 feet putts holed – less than 10%

Leaders leading by a shot entering final round average worse than the PGA Tour Average Scoring and 75% don’t win. You can also research if a player is a poor leader or good leader.

A player that has had a very good career has won 10 times in more than 300 starts, that is less than a 3.5% strike rate. I like to lay players that find themselves in a contending position than have either never won or rarely win.

I like this strike rate to be less than 1%, particularly if they get in contention late on Day two or early Day three, as there is still a lot of golf still to be played.

On the European Tour in 2016, the probability that a winner came from leading after the Day One was less than 6%. However 80% of winners came from the top 10 after Day two and 68% came from the top 5 after Day two.

Only one player in 34 full field events won back to back events on the European Tour. Sometimes players are very short priced after they have just won for the next start.

5: All in all with the internet at hand and plenty of stats websites, it has never been easier for a golf punter to work out where the value lies at any given time in a tournament. By using software such as BetTrader Trading Software you can also reduce the amount of time it takes to place your trades.

Remember one important point, particularly in tournaments around the world, there is always a time delay with TV pictures and someone is always ahead of you. If an offer on the exchanges looks too good, it probably is. You can afford to let it pass, there will be plenty more opportunities throughout the year.

Be lucky!