We don’t have much time to decompress from an incredible Masters tournament as the PGA Tour rolls on with its next signature event: the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links. While Rory is heading back home in his green jacket, the rest of the top players on Tour are ready to duel it out in another great elevated event. Let’s dive into the numbers for this week’s tournament with Bet The Number, the premier golf analytics platform.

The Course Blueprint 🗺️ 

Harbour Town Golf Links is a ball striker’s paradise. It has tight corridors and small greens, and complete control of your ball is a must. There’s no rain in the forecast over the course of the tournament, so it should get really firm as the week progresses.

Let’s take a look at this week’s model:

• OTT: The course features tight landing zones, and distance really isn’t much of a factor here. Accuracy is rewarded in the BTN Model with Distance from Edge of Fairway factored in. For those that like to get creative with their modeling, right misses are preferred on many holes here.

• APP: Harbour Town will have players hitting many approach shots between 140-200 yards, so this approach bucket has been given extra weight in the BTN model. The par 3s aren’t very long, and the only key shots from longer range will be second shots on the par 5s. The quantity of short approaches is pretty low as well. Look for mid-range iron players to outperform.

• ATG: The Bermuda grass is starting to show through here as the weather has warmed up which will introduce some grain around the greens, but nothing overly difficult. Players will mostly be hitting fairway chips and can even take putter for many of them.

• Putting: The course has small greens which makes lag putting almost non-existent this week. Look for mid-range putts to carry the weight and be the difference maker for players outperforming.

This week’s BTN Model favorite is (🥁 drumroll please…) Collin Morikawa. Collin is an excellent ball striker and shows green across the board this week. Can he get it done at the RBC Heritage?

Matchup of the Week (3-2) 🤼‍♂️ 

Akshay Bhatia (-115) ✅ over Taylor Pendrith (-110) on DraftKings

Tough board this week at the RBC Heritage, but we’re trusting our matchup tool and backing Akshay Bhatia over Taylor Pendrith. Harbour Town demands precision with tight fairways, small greens, and creative shot-making which plays into Akshay’s strengths. He’s been a bit up and down as of late, but he has two T10 finishes in his last 5, pretty strong short game numbers, and a T20 at Harbour Town last year. Meanwhile, Pendrith has missed the cut in 3 of his last 5 and has demonstrated pretty lackluster play in all parts of his game except OTT - which won’t help him much as Harbour Town is only a 2.8/10 on the Bomber’s Paradise meter. With course fit and consistency on our side, Bhatia’s our play this week.

Feature Spotlight 🔦 

This week’s Feature Spotlight: The BTN Score. When using Bet The Number’s custom model, you have the option to see results in either raw values, rankings, or BTN Scores. While raw values and rankings are self explanatory, the BTN Score warrants a closer look.

The BTN Score isn’t just a random stat; it’s a smarter way to compare players. The BTN Score measures how a player stacks up against the field in terms of statistical significance. Don’t worry, we won’t make you dust off your old stats text books - what this means for you is that the difference in BTN Score shows the true gaps between players.

Let’s take the Strokes Gained: Ball Striking numbers for this week’s field for example. Collin Morikawa is 1st in the model with a BTN Score of 9.9, and Scottie Scheffler is 2nd in the model with a BTN Score of 9.4 - a 0.5 difference between them. To get a 0.5 difference from Scottie, we jump down to Bud Cauley who is 6th with a score of 8.9. This means that the gap between Collin and Scottie at 1st and 2nd is the same as the gap between Scottie and Bud at 2nd and 6th, showing how dramatically Collin is clearing the field in this stat. This is the kind of situation where rankings fall short, as they don’t provide context to how significant the difference is between rankings. The BTN Score is the perfect solution to demonstrate the true magnitude of difference between players in every stat category in your model.

GS Luke’s Prop Preview ⛳️ 

GS Luke has been crushing it with the prop picks over on the BTN blog. Check out his RBC Heritage picks and analysis here, and stay tuned to his X for more GS Luke content.

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Best of luck this week!