🐍🏀Mamba Madness

📢 Fore, Please:

The week of March Madness has always been a weird one for me. I get looped into a world that I know very little about. It all started six years ago when I made a simple video about “making the mathematically optimal bracket”. That video did well, the ensuing brackets did well and now — the most watched video on my YouTube Channel each year has nothing to do with golf.

It’s thrilling to try to solve the impossible math problem that is the bracket and I’m grateful that so many others enjoy it too. This year’s video went live earlier this week and you’ll see me write a section or two about it below.

Don’t worry, I won’t try to become a full-time Bracketologist.

Thanks
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Rory McIlroy: $11,500 | 116.5 PTS
Lucas Glover: $6,800 | 105.0 PTS
Akshay Bhatia: $7,000 | 102.0 PTS
Bud Cauley: $5,700 | 101.5 PTS
JJ Spaun: $6,700 | 101.0 PTS
Tom Hoge: $6,100 | 95.5 PTS
TOTAL: $43,800 | 621.5 PTS 

 🤑 You Could Literally Win $1,000,000

We’ve been awesome at filling the PGA Listener Leagues on Splash and we are rewarded, once again, with a solid guaranteed purse — $15,000 this time.

Additionally, Splash is running a monster $1,000,000 guaranteed March Madness Survivor League. Pick a winner each day, move on. Last entry standing, wins.

1) Valspar Listener League (Tiers | $20)
I’m ready to donate my $100 via five entries. Lowest score gets dropped.
Join: https://bit.ly/4hUHvIN

2) $1,000,000 Guaranteed NCAA Survivor
I played this contest last year and found it incredibly fun. It’s a combination of NFL Survivor and PGA One & Done but it feels like a sprint because the entire NCAA tournament is packed into such a tight time period. This will continue to be one of the fastest growing contest types in the space.
Join: https://bit.ly/354HvIN

🧮 Entering The Matrix

Quick note — I’ve updated the ownership projections on RickRunGood.com to a new system. This is an algorithmic calculation that I’ve been testing the last few months. It’s performed well and also allows me to have a more consistent release cadence. Moving forward the goal for ownership projects are to update:

• Tuesday Morning

• Tuesday Evening

• Wednesday Morning

• Wednesday Evening

• (Additional updates as needed)

⚾ Rory Has A New Pitch

There has been a lot of talk recently about Rory McIlroy having tapped into his “complete game”. I interpret this as Rory not only maintaining his already impressive arsenal but now adding to it.

The most common observation is the new creativity shown by McIlroy on approach shots. He not only appears to be taking more conservative targets (missing in better spots) but he’s also showing off a variety of flighted and off-speed iron passes. The prime example being the flighted 9-iron that he hit on No. 17 in the playoff at THE PLAYERS — the shot that effectively clinched him the title.

From a statistical standpoint, McIlroy has seemingly found a new gear on his approach play. It might not necessarily be available every week, but he’s locking into it much more frequently than at any point in his career.

McIlroy gained 7.78 strokes on approach at THE PLAYERS. That was the 15th time in his career that he’s gained at least seven shots on approach in a single event. Out of those 15 occurrences, nearly half (7) have come since the start of 2023.

In his first 12 years as a professional, he accomplished the feat eight times and now he’s done it seven times in the last 22 months — seems like something!

As you can imagine, when he does this, the finishes are pristine. His worst finish was a T10 and he won four of those 15 events.

Let’s say it altogether now — ‘this is the year Rory wins the Masters!’

🏁 Close Finishes!

Innisbrook breeds close finishes. Both eight of the last ten AND 12 of the last 15 editions have been decided by either one stroke or in a playoff. That’s astonishingly consistent closeness. And there’s actually a statistical reason why.

The Valspar Championship has the sixth smallest score distribution of all PGA TOUR events since 2000. Think about the PGA Championship or even THE PLAYERS Championship. You might see scores of 62 and 82 on the same day. That’s a big dispersion of scores and both rank inside the Top 5 biggest distributions.

Valspar is on the other end of the spectrum. The scores are often bunched here which leads to those close finishes coming down the stretch. The three events with the smallest distributions:

1) Sony Open
2) Wyndham Championship
3) Sanderson Farms

🚀 Houston, We Have A Problem

During my March Madness video this year, I chose the University of Houston as my highest leverage National Championship selection. They have the third highest probability of winning the whole thing (per Nate Silver’s projections) at ~15.5%. The public is significantly under-selecting them, currently in only 8.5% of brackets submitted thus far. Contrast that with Duke who should win the tournament ~18.5% of the time but have been chosen to do so by 28% of the public.

I settled on Houston, but they are not the only viable option for this game theory technique.

Selecting Auburn would be a really fair and reasonable thing to do. They are projected to win it all about 12% of the time and are being selected that way just a few percentage points more frequently (14%). Technically, that’s “bad leverage” but not by much! They should be a very strong consideration for you.

If you want to get even friskier — both Alabama and Tennessee should be on your radar. Each are only being selected to win it all ~3% of the time with probabilities to do so over 5%. Their overall win probability is why I opted to go with Houston but both teams would be a really strong option in large leagues.

I used a simple spreadsheet for my numbers, but PoolGenius does this better than anyone in the world. They have a suite of March Madness tools that are constantly being updated. Like the O&D tool, you can enter your own personal league details and scoring to get custom recommendations. You can also choose your risk tolerance and see which paths are best for your own situation. As usual, they have given us the best possible discount — up to 60% off in some situations, thanks to our existing relationship.

Link: https://poolgenius.teamrankings.com/rick-discount/

🥇 Time To Straka

There is a two-headed monster that is leading the O&D selections for this week. Tommy Fleetwood and Corey Conners are each commanding 20%+ of selections at the time of this writing.

Both are fine options but you don’t need to play either. Fleetwood could be used at the Canadian Open, Scottish Open OR a Major Championship (if you like pain).

Conners could obviously be used in a few weeks at the Texas Open — twice a winner.

I’m quite fond of Sepp Straka who now has the third shortest odds to win this event (+1600) and is being selected 8.6% of the time. His game is as sharp as it gets and, outside of TPC Deere Run, there isn’t a reason to save him for the future.

🍃 The Windy City

I’m certainly no meteorologist but the Thursday PM - Friday AM wave looks like they are in for a smackdown.

I can’t remember seeing a wave chart that looks this targeted against one wave. It’s almost personal at this point! Those sustained winds of 15-17 MPH are almost isolated entirely on the Thursday PM - Friday AM wave. There has been a little movement where Friday AM might not be as bad but sportsbooks have taken action on this information.

As soon as tee times were released, there was a sizable shakeup in the odds board — with longer odds for players in the bad wave and shorter odds for those in the better situation. This has been in the forecast for a few days, Michael Kim was tweeting about it on Monday.

I’ve loaded the weather waves into the RickRunGood Custom Model if you want to create lineups with all one wave or a minimum number of golfers from each. It’s also handy to just be able to see everyone’s wave in one spot. Here are the top players in the field and their wave for this week: