Golf Goes Wild: The Surprising Rise of Heckling and Betting

It was already the best weekend of Drew Mathews’ life, even before the final putt dropped. The then-28-year-old financial systems analyst at Lockheed Martin—a former mini-tour player—had just married his sweetheart, Amanda, and driven their entire wedding party from his home in Florida to Nashville and back. The wedding festivities had prevented Mathews from watching a single shot of the Masters telecast, but it didn’t matter. A second life-changing moment was about to happen whether he knew it or not.

Mathews had Google Maps open on his phone, navigating the last stretch of I-75 outside Gainesville, Fla., when notifications began popping into his Twitter account. He ignored them as long as he could, until his eyes finally saw the news: Patrick Reed had won the 2018 Masters, and Mathews had picked the winning lineup in a fantasy-sports betting game called the DraftKings Millionaire Maker. The groom was about to collect $1 million.

More golf fans than ever are dreaming of payoffs like that these days. DraftKings, FanDuel, and other daily fantasy sports (DFS) are just part of a golf-gambling boom. Interest in betting on golf tournaments is surging in Las Vegas and elsewhere, with active encouragement from the professional tours. Gamblers in many states are using mobile-phone apps such as William Hill, Bet365, FanDuel, and BetMGM to place legal bets on golf.

To further satisfy golf gamblers, the PGA Tour and European Tour are rolling out a new game with IMG Arena that allows fans to place live bets on players on par-3 holes, including a live video feed overlaid with betting odds. Though there was a soft launch at the end of 2020, it will unveiled in early 2021.

Since 2018, 21 states and D.C. have joined Nevada in permitting legal sports betting. Gamblers legally bet more than $13 billion on sports in 2019, up from $6.6 billion in 2018.

Gambuzza cites the PGA Tour’s integrity policy, established in 2017, which aims to protect players on its six worldwide tours from the potential influence of sports betting. It restricts a player or caddie from gambling on any professional golf tournament. And it has hired a company called GeniusSports, which helps monitor betting activity across competitions. If it saw any abnormalities in the golf market, it would notify the tour. GeniusSports hasn’t noticed anything yet, according to a tour spokesman.

Eventually it could spread to more than just two par-3 holes per tourney. At this year’s Players Championship, canceled after one round because of the coronavirus, the PGA Tour had planned to broadcast every shot by every player on the NBC Sports Gold direct-to-consumer digital platform. Production costs might keep the tour from attempting this at every tournament on its schedule, but if it can efficiently show every shot at a handful of events, gamblers would almost certainly pay for that type of feed.

“Golf as a gambling product is the best or second-best to football,” says fantasy sports analyst Pat Mayo, who hosts a daily podcast. “You get four days of competition out of one bet or one lineup. Once people on a wider scale start to see how much fun betting on golf is, golf gambling will grow even more.”

Betting, especially golf, is NOT for everyone - It is REALLY hard to pick who is going to win a golf tournament. If you are going to bet golf you have to be ready to have LOTS of losing or grinding smaller profits/losses until you hit an outright. If you are going to get frustrated or struggle with 3-4 months of losses you should not bet golf. For example, look at my performance in the last 15 months. Hot start, flat for 4-5 months, then hot again, then flat, then wins, then a bunch of losses into the end of the year.

Realistic expectations and approach - Gambling is not a get-rich-quick scheme and betting on golf is no different. The goal should be long-term profits. What I try to do is grind enough from all my non-outright bets to finance the outright bets or mitigate their losses. The reason for this is easy to explain…we are trying to make enough to keep ourselves afloat so when we hit an outright, the winnings are big profits! You may ask where I came up with such a brilliant idea and the answer is easy → The professional gamblers I know approach it exactly this way!

Golf betting results are correlated - If you bet the Bulls tonight -5 that result has zero impact on the Timberwolves/Lakers game, but in golf, if you bet Patrick Cantlay Top 10 and win that bet, well that makes it less likely your Akshay Bhatia Top 10 ticket can win as there is one less top 10 place to get. This is one thing I spend a lot of time on each week so make sure when betting golf your risk-adjusted returns make sense across your card. Similarly, you have to think about golfers’ styles as well. If you load your card with ball strikers and it turns out you handicapped it wrong and you needed strong / longer drivers, your whole card could be screwed from the jump so it is important to have balance.