GOLF MODEL TIPS: THE 2025 CHARLES SCHWAB

Scheffler cast aside any doubt about who the game’s top player is, with a commanding tee to green performance setting him up to run away with his third Major title and first outside Augusta. Despite finishing well back, Rahm was the only real challenger and entered the back 9 neck and neck with the champ. Unfortunately he fell to bits over the “Green Mile” while Scheffler turned around a poor opening 9 with a Tiger-esque close out down the stretch. Rahm traded low for what would’ve been a solid profit on the top tip.

Moving onto this week’s event, we’re heading back to Texas for the Charles Schwab Challenge at the historic Colonial Country Club. While the LIV contingent have left, we’ve still got a decent smattering of PGA talent, headlined by the big dog Scheffler. A resurgent Berger slots in behind the obvious favourite, with Fleetwood, Spieth and Matsuyama the remaining household names.

The classic parkland track is played as a par-70 across a leisurely 7,209 yards. Tree-lined fairways, many featuring tight dogleg turns, mitigate the ability for bombers to overpower that modest figure. Missed fairways are heavily penalised here with rough about the thickest you will see outside of a Major Championship. The doglegs will see players clubbing down at a lot of tees, evening the field significantly for the short knockers.

The green complexes have undergone significant renovation, with heights lowered and bunkering added to provide further defence to the below average sized targets. The track should be looking greener than it ever has thanks to an upgraded irrigation system to keep the Bentgrass greens, very unusual in this part of the world, firm and fast.

Switching it up this week as I’ve been writing up these adjustments in the opposite order they are calculated in the mode. For new readers, I take a look at how previous performances in particular shots gained categories translate to performance in those same categories on this track. This allows the use of a heap of data points even for courses with minimal history, although that certainly isn’t an issue this week. We end up with a picture of which particular skills are required for success at a given track and use that to apply positive or negative overlays to a player’s baseline assumptions based on where their strengths lie.

The off the tee shots gained category is broken up into distance and accuracy components and it’s no surprise to find the distance component is much less important here than on a regular week. Basically, players who gain an edge by hitting it further than everyone else aren’t going to gain that edge here so they will receive a negative overlay to their expected performance, while the reverse is true for the short hitters. We also find a stronger than usual importance around the green play, likely due to the smaller than average greens being missed more than usual.

The result is some very big adjustment to the field’s shortest hitters. THe biggest ones are over a half stroke per round and are being applied to the field’s older members and probably aren’t relevant for punting discussions. Looking a bit further we find Aaron Rai and Brian Harman take in smaller but still significant bumps based on their good course fit. At the other end, the big hitting Aldrich Potgieter will need to find other ways to score this week.

After taking into account how well a player’s strengths and weaknesses fit the course profile I also see if there’s any further residual error that can be explained by an affinity for the exact layout being played. This approach requires a lot of appearances before it’s relevant however given this venue’s storied history, there are some monster sample sizes to fit course history adjustments to.

Leading the way is local Jordan Spieth, a prior winner here who has outperformed his expectation by almost a whole stroke per round across 46 runs. While this is impressive, it still only translates into him receiving around a sixth of a stroke bump to his baseline. This big reduction is a reflection of the random nature of golf – just because a player has done well historically doesn’t mean their next performance will be just as good, even if they love the track.

Pretty subdued volumes flowing through after the bonanza of last week. Scottie opened at a crazy low $3.50 and has barely moved despite around one third of total flows going through under his name. Berger has seen just one tenth of the interest however has been backed into second favouritsm however the model says he still has further to go.

Spieth disappointed yet again at the PGA and isn’t finding any love this week without the sentimental money flowing for him. He’s drifted since open but it still a ways off where the model has him pegged.

He’s a mile ahead of the field in class, but Scheffler’s odds aren’t worth a look from a value point of view. Instead I’ll be headlining the plays with a guy who could’ve given it a shake last week if it hadn’t been for some woes on the putting green.