You Can Bet the Superbowl Now. Maybe Soon You Can Bet The Players.

Gambling is coming to golf.  Not the kind you do with your friends on the golf course. The kind that they have been doing in Europe forever. We just don’t know when the official state-wide kickoff will be in Florida.  It could be two years.  It could be 5 years.  But it’s headed our way.

The Match, which was a pay-per-view experiment Thanksgiving week starring Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, was the first, high-profile, golf event where money could be put down while the golf was happening.  Some of it, honestly, was stupid betting, like being able to bet on the shirt colors for both Woods and Mickelson.

But one web site:  https://www.oddsshark.com/golf/tiger-woods-phil-mickelson-match-betting-props   had some golf-related bets like who would have the lead after nine holes, who would be closest to certain pins and who would have longest tee shots on certain holes.  That sort of betting makes sense to people who follow golf.   

The key for golf bettors is that there are stats that are available on golfers. The PGA Tour has been assembling countless stats on performance of each player for several seasons through its Shotlink system.  

 

Soon, you might be able to bet on players to hit a shot within a certain distance of the flagstick because of those stats.  

For example, the PGA Tour’s Shotlink program has Tiger Woods' stats for last year (2017-2018 season) as 3^rd in shots to the green from 50-75 yards, 4^th in shots to the green from 75-100 yards.  Woods was 4^th in putting from 15-20 feet, and 4^th in fewest putts per round.  See here for Tiger Woods: https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.08793.tiger-woods.html

So, if Woods is playing someone  who is 10^th in those categories, the money bet would be on Woods.  But that doesn’t mean those will necessarily be the betting categories.

What did happen last fall to move the conversation forward, at least internationally, is that the PGA Tour penned a deal with a new division of IMG  ( the sports management and more company that was originally founded by the late Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormick) to have its Shotlink data distributed to bookmakers outside the U.S.   

Can the U.S. be far behind?  It’s a state-by-state issue.

ESPN is tracking progress here; http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/19740480/gambling-sports-betting-bill-tracker-all-50-states .

For now, you’ll have to be satisfied to sit back of the 17^th hole at The Players and make those dollar miss-make bets on whether or not a golfer will hit the green.