2024 Results: -131.18pts
Lifetime Results: +647.90pts
"Out of adversity comes opportunity" Benjamin Franklin.
If you had told me at the beginning of 2024 that we would be in a similar position to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola at the end of the year, we would have been confident City were on their way to a fifth Premier League title - and that we would have just enjoyed the same number of successive profitable Golf Betting Club years.
However, life has a good way of quickly reminding you who is in charge, and 2024 became our most difficult yet. Just as Pep is finding out, the challenge is now to review a strategy which once brought so much success, and adapt it to be successful in an evolving landscape.
PGA Tour has become a tough market
Reviewing our results, it has to be noted the majority of losses came from the PGA Tour (-101.89pts). It was a similar story in 2023, losing 107.61pts, and in 2022 with a loss of 62.28pts. Yes, this makes terrible reading, but in order to improve we have to accept our strategy needs adapted for this tour.
In 2020 when we launched GBC, we had tremendous success with long shot PGA Tour winners. The likes of Jim Herman and Martin Laird brought great rewards at prices over 250/1, and it was far more common to land triple-figure winners back then. Now it is a lot harder and that's probably down to a few different factors discussed below.
Signature Events and Scheffler Domination
Firstly, the introduction of the no cut 'Signature Events'. Smaller, major strength fields have inevitably led to shorter priced winners and we have been too slow/stubborn to adapt to this. We did hit a winner on the first signature event of the year, backing Chris Kirk in-play at 40/1, and this perhaps led us down a dark path. Nick Taylor surprised everyone at the Phoenix Open at 125/1 which was a big missed opportunity for us, but these became rare opportunities and Scottie Scheffler's win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational set a precedent for how the rest of the year would go, winning four of the remaining five (Rory McIlroy winning the other).
That leads us on to discuss the world number one, who recorded the 6th greatest season ever according to DataGolf. Nine wins in 21 starts is inevitably going to reduce the chances of landing value winners, and if he continues to improve with the putter, we should expect this trend to continue. Whether it's adapting the staking plan, or targeting the place markets instead, we will be adapting our approach in 2025 to find profit in these challenging high strength fields.
Low strength PGA events will continue to bring opportunity
We must acknowledge that although we failed to hit the target enough last year, value priced winners continue to occur outside the signature events and majors. The first couple of months of the season proved this, with Grayson Murray, Nick Dunlap and Mattieu Pavon winning three weeks in a row at enormous prices. The Fall is another run of events which offer big opportunity - Kevin Yu, Nico Echavarria and Rafael Campos all won at triple figures.
We were only able to land 60/1 Akshay Bhatia at the Texas Open, but hit the crossbar multiple times in these events. 70/1 Pierceson Coody lost out in a playoff at the Isco Championship having led after rounds one, two and three. At the RSM Classic, 45/1 Nico Echavarria went down the final hole as joint leader but made a bogey on the last hole to slip into a share of second place. 66/1 Lucas Glover missed out on a playoff at the Sanderson Farms Championship by one shot. Value remains in these events and will be targeted once more.
Majors
Similar to the signature events, the majors were cleaned up by the big boys with Scheffler, Schauffele (x2) and DeChambeau sweeping up. Another reminder of how strong golf's elite are currently. We finished the year -57.83pts for the majors, a stark contrast to 2023 when we were +103.1pts. We were unfortunate at the PGA Championship when our Bryson DeChambeau pick narrowly missed out on a playoff with Xander Schauffele to lose by a single shot. In general though, our major picks were not good enough and we didn't take advantage of the extra each way places available.
2023 provided more shock winners in the form of Brooks Koepka, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman, but Scheffler and Schauffele have taken the standard required to new levels and this will need to be factored into 2025 major picks. Our subscribers deserve to be watching the final round with at least a chance of celebrating the winner.
DP World Tour remains a profitable market for us
We made profit on the DP World Tour once again (+33.36pts) and this followed a profit of 176.6 in 2023. Similar to the PGA Tour, the cream usually rises at the 'Rolex events'. Rory McIlroy cleaned up in Dubai once again with two wins, Robert MacIntyre made home advantage count in Scotland and Billy Horschel showed again he is the king of Wentworth. We did make one of them count through catching Paul Waring in-play at 50/1 for the Abu Dhabi Championship.
It's the 'lesser events' though, which really are a great opportunity for 2025. With the new system of the ten best DP Tour players without PGA Tour cards leaving for the States, combined with the gap narrowing between the DP and Challenge Tour, more than ever opportunities will present themselves for big priced winners. We have made a point of brushing up on our knowledge of the Challenge Tour graduates for 2025 and expect a few of them to follow John Parry's win last week in Mauritius.
It's fair to say we were extremely unlucky to not add other winners to 175/1 Matteo Manassero, who won for us at the Jonssons Workwear Open. At the Bahrain Championship, 100/1 Ockie Strydom was joint leader with 9 holes to play but couldn't get over the line. 66/1 Jeff Winther missed out on a playoff by one stroke at the Open de France. 60/1 Antoine Rozner opened up a two shot lead in the final round in Dubai before McIlroy took control.
The last couple of months were particularly unfavourable for us. 90/1 Aldrich Potgieter held a three shot lead when standing on the 12th tee of the final round at the Nedbank Challenge but a triple bogey cost him dearly and a bogey at the final hole meant he also relinquished his chance of a playoff. 250/1 Ryan Van Velzen finished tied 2nd at the Alfred Dunhill Championship after making a bogey at the final hole when a birdie at the reachable par 5 would have given him outright victory. 125/1 Clement Sordet was tied for the lead standing on the 9th tee on Sunday in Mauritius but fell away.
Cream has also been rising on the LIV Tour
We finished the LIV Tour year +8.98, a slight improvement on a loss of 23.66pts in 2023. Like the top tier events on PGA and DP, it has become evident the gap between the 'top' players and the rest of the field is bigger than ever. The list of winners read Niemann, Johnson, Niemann, Ancer, Burmester, Steele, Kopeka, Ortiz, Hatton, Garcia, Rahm, Koepka, Rahm. Although we don't have the starting prices to hand, we are confident only Brendan Steele would have begun at bigger than 50/1, so again we need to our adjust our strategy accordingly.
Summertime Sadness
It has been touched upon in the above analysis, but it was the summer months which were particular harmful to our 2024. From June to October we lost just under 200pts. We lost over 100pts in this period in 2023 despite a very profitable year overall. This could be due to a mixture of factors. Firstly, a lot of the high strength fields gather in those months with a mix of majors, signature events, Rolex events and FedEx Cup events. We have already stated we performed poorly in these events last year and value is hard to come by.
Without trying to make excuses (because you don't want to hear any), the reality of juggling a tipping service and family life has to be recognised. We covered every single PGA Tour, DP and LIV event in 2024. A lot of these events come in the school holidays and there is a trend of poor performance in this period. Time and research are key in this business and on some of those summer holiday weeks it is hard to replicate the same amount of study time.
At the end of the day, the tips provided in that period this year were simply unacceptable and we couldn't blame anyone who lost a bit of faith in us. We weren't even knocking on the door, never mind finding a winner. In 2025, we may look to take target one or two events in these weeks rather than tackle two or three in a week.
Thankfully things picked up in the last two months and despite only bagging one winner we were all over the leaderboards every week which gives us renewed confidence for 2025.
Tipping Record
One area which also needs to be highlighted is that in 2024 we changed our service to only advise prices which could be found at multiple bookmakers. This is something most other tipping services aren't doing, instead inflating their record by advising a stand out price.
An example of this is our Ryan Van Velzen tip last month, where he was best price 350/1 but 250/1 generally. We now record the 250/1 figure despite many of our subscribers being able to access the 350/1 which was available.
This obviously reduces our profits but we recognise it is the fairest way to run the service as not all subscribers can find a stand out price. We will continue to do it that way in 2025.
Changes you will see in 2025
1. We will be adjusting our strategy for signature events, Rolex events, FedEx Cup and majors. This could involve less pre-event outright bets, more place market bets and more in-play focus.
2. In the event of a week with three events, we may decide to target two of the events with most potential for profit.
3. We will not be writing in-play blogs. Instead that time will be used to research our in-play tips, which will still be provided.
4. Tips will not be provided for the sake of providing a tip. If we don't see any value, then there will be no bet.
5. Our staking plan will be higher some events than others. This will be a more targeted approach based on our historical data.
All is not doom and gloom
Yes, 2024 was not the year we hoped for, but we are determined to make sure we learn from our mistakes and bounce back with a profitable 2025. The end of the year is a good time to reflect on how we've performed since setting up Golf Betting Club in June 2020. We're almost 5 years into the journey and since launch we are in profit of 648 points. That's a very healthy ROI of 10.7%. One bad year won't define us.
We do, however, feel for those who lost their hard earned money with us, especially those who were new to our service in 2024. You all deserved a better return. So, for the first time ever, we are offering the first three months of 2025 for FREE. This will give 2024 subscribers a chance to see what we are really capable of, and let new users sample our service without any commitment to sign up. If you'd like to receive FREE golf betting tips for three months between January and March, you can do so here.
All that's left to say is thank you for your continued support. A particular thank you to those of you who placed your faith in us by subscribing this past year.
We hope you have a Happy New Year when it comes!
Duncan & Neil
