Farmers Insurance Open 2023
Overview
Dates: January 25, 2023 to January 28, 2023
Location: California, USA
Course: Torrey Pines (South and North)
Course Par: 72
Course Length: 7765 yards
Prize Purse: $8700000
The West Coast swing continues as the Tour stops in San Diego for the Farmers Insurance Open. The 2022 edition was a notable one for FormGolfer followers as Luke List broke his duck with a dramatic playoff win over Will Zalatoris. We were keen on both playoff contenders last year, so who are we tipping to come out on top this year on the notorious Poa Annua greens of Torrey Pines?
Results
A great way to finish January with Max Homa winning for us at 25/1 to make it a profitable first month of 2023 and put us nicely in front on the season-to-date. It was a thrilling final day, with Homa fighting back from five shots behind third round leader Sam Ryder and three behind Jon Rahm to ultimately win with a degree of comfort. His tee shot at 16 was one of the shots of the season so far and once his birdie putt dropped it put him in control. It was hard on Ryder, who had looked the winner for much of the week and held it together until the final four holes on Sunday – in fact he only really played one hole poorly, but that was enough for Homa to seize his opportunity.
Three of our other four more speculative selections made the cut, but none really threatened to add to our returns. After some frustrating near misses in recent weeks it was lovely to get our first W of the season on the board. Having nailed the Farmers winner two years in a row, we’ll be trying to follow up and do the same at the AT&T Pebble Beach this week .
Preview
The Farmers was certainly good to us last year, with Luke List winning at huge odds and for good measure we were on Will Zalatoris too, so the playoff was a relatively relaxing watch. List was ultimately the better result for us, so it was great to see him hit one of the shots of his life in the playoff, putting his approach to within a foot or so.
This time around, I thought I had a decent strategy in mind, but my first look at the market quickly put paid to that, with all of those who jumped out as potential selections looking to be priced about right or much too short to seriously be considered as value. Rahm, Finau, Schauffele, Zalatoris, Morikawa would all have been of interest had the price been right, but while all are quite plausible winners, they’ve been tightly priced, taking up almost 50% of the market between them. Even Jason Day, who I thought might be rather more under-the-radar for this, is put in at a similar price to the likes of Sungjae, Montgomery, Homa and Si Woo, all of whom you might have thought would be shorter than the Aussie. So I’m going to ditch my original plans and look elsewhere for the value.
Torrey Pines (the South course in particular) can play as a bit of a monster, but we need to bear in mind that this isn’t a US Open set up, which means it should be possible to play from the rough. Distance off the tee will be a big asset, as will an ability to get something out of the tricky greens. Poa Annua isn’t a surface that’s used very often, and can often be frustrating as well-hit putts can bobble on the imperfections. Conventional wisdom is that Poa can be a leveller on the greens, but what I found most interesting is that strokes gained putting has been a big predictor of success here, albeit it can throw up some surprising names towards the top of the putting stats (notably Luke List last year). With that in mind it’s no great surprise that this event tends to be one in which the same names have repeated success, none more so than tournament favourite Jon Rahm.
Outrights
| Player | Points | Type | UK Odds | Places | Outright US Odds |
| Taylor Pendrith | 2 | each way | 80/1 | 8 | +9000 |
| Will Gordon | 2 | each way | 125/1 | 8 | +12500 |
| Alex Smalley | 2 | each way | 80/1 | 8 | +8000 |
| Robby Shelton | 1.5 | each way | 125/1 | 8 | +15000 |
| Max Homa | 2.5 | each way | 25/1 | 8 | +2500 |
The first thing to mention is that this tournament runs Wednesday to Saturday, so make sure you get your bets on in time!
This week’s market is pretty top heavy, with half a dozen or so big names taking a big slice out of the market. It’s possible that a few of them will drift to a more appealing price over the next couple of days, but for now my preference is to throw a few darts at bigger prices at some of those with realistic prospects of landing a top 8 finish and stake in such a way that one big performance will be enough to get us in profit for the week.
My idea of the best value this week is Taylor Pendrith (2pts each way, 80/1, 8 places). Trending upwards following his return from injury, he has two top 20s from his last six starts and is fourth on the tour in overall driving. This is primarily built on distance rather than accuracy, but with the rough set to be at manageable levels this week, it should be a big weapon for him. Further encouragement comes from a top 20 in this event last year, showing at least a degree of comfort on these courses. A narrowly missed cut last week doesn’t bother me in the slightest given the very different nature of the test that awaits at Torrey.
With a similar profile to Pendrith is Will Gordon (2pts each way, 125/1, 8 places). Gordon was putting together a string of decent finishes prior to missing the cut on the same number as Pendrith last week and is also one of the strongest drivers in this field. Both players get a touch wobblier the closer to the greens they get, so perhaps this is a good week to have them both onside, since if either has a “Luke List week” on the greens, they could go very close to winning this.
Our third pick is Alex Smalley (2pts each way, 80/1, 8 places). Smalley’s gains off the tee are more modest than our first two selections, but he appears to be really starting to improve now, as four top-25s in his last five events shows – form that stacks up nicely against anyone bar the biggest names on show here. He made the cut last year despite putting horribly; while that stat would be a slight worry, he appears to be a far more complete player now and he has more upside potential than many in this field.
Robby Shelton (1.5pts each way, 125/1, 8 places) came scything through the AmEx field over the weekend, ultimately finishing in the top 10, and the signs are that much like Smalley, his career is on an upwards trajectory. Whilst his driving is definitely a concern, a top 20 in the 2021 edition of this event (only three shots off second place) despite losing ground off the tee, coupled with the progress he’s shown since, indicates that he’s no forlorn hope to show up on the leaderboard this week.
Finally, I’ll put forward Max Homa (2.5pts each way, 25/1, 8 places) as my idea of the best value from the top of the market. Close to the top of the overall driving stats, he seems to have carried his great form from last season into the new year judged on his third place in the Tournament of Champions. He certainly has less to prove in terms of recent winning form than some of those around him in the market (the likes of Sungjae, Hideki, Day and Montgomery, for all that each of those are perfectly plausible winners). A couple of decent Farmers finishes on his CV completes the case for including him. For all that his price doesn’t scream value, I’d rather be taking 5/1 for him to finish in the top 8 than for Rahm to win the event outright.
That said, Rahm is clearly the most likely winner and the rightful favourite, but winning three on the bounce on the PGA is a pretty rare event – even Tiger in his prime wouldn’t have been doing that on a regular basis. If he wins it’ll be hard not to kick ourselves as passing up something so obvious, but there are few players in history you’d have got rich backing regularly at around 4/1. I was very interested in putting up Tony Finau again and anything like 16 or 20/1 would definitely have merited inclusion, but at closer to 12/1 I’m happy enough to pass him over. I was looking for a market over-reaction to Morikawa having blown a big lead in his last outing, but he’s priced as though he had comfortably converted the victory in Hawaii. So I’m happy enough with our picks and hopefully at least one of them will give us some fun going into the latter stages on Sunday.
A great way to finish January with Max Homa winning for us at 25/1 to make it a profitable first month of 2023 and put us nicely in front on the season-to-date. It was a thrilling final day, with Homa fighting back from five shots behind third round leader Sam Ryder and three behind Jon Rahm to ultimately win with a degree of comfort. His tee shot at 16 was one of the shots of the season so far and once his birdie putt dropped it put him in control. It was hard on Ryder, who had looked the winner for much of the week and held it together until the final four holes on Sunday – in fact he only really played one hole poorly, but that was enough for Homa to seize his opportunity.
Three of our other four more speculative selections made the cut, but none really threatened to add to our returns. After some frustrating near misses in recent weeks it was lovely to get our first W of the season on the board. Having nailed the Farmers winner two years in a row, we’ll be trying to follow up and do the same at the AT&T Pebble Beach this week .