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Keeping score

Read The Line has posted 1,171 individual wagers this year producing a +18.3% net return. Outrights are the ultimate prize and our record of 36 wins since January of 2022 is incredible. But when they don't hit, the key is to balance our betting card with live in tourney bets. This weekend was a perfect example. Kurt Kitayama played well at the ZOZO and finished fifth, but that won't cash any outright tickets. As Kurt contended, we also added 10 live H2H matchups in rounds two, three, and four. We won seven of them and seriously buoyed our bankroll. Moments like this weekend remind me how important keeping score is. Here's a quick 2024 breakdown.

• 303 Outright bets, +39.6% return (10 wins)
• 421 Prop bets, +13.1% return
• 447 H2Hs, +8.7% return

We are almost finished with this campaign, and it never hurts to share with you where we stand. TEN more wins in 2024 are nice but making sure we always finish the year with a positive scorecard is what motivates me every single week.

Annika Sörenstam won the TOTO Japan Classic five times in a row from 2001 to 2005. The last four in that run were played at Seta Golf Course our venue this week. The TOTO has been contested at Seta 14 times. The first 12 times, the tournament was a 54-hole event. Since we can't compare total scoring, let's look by round. In 14 editions, the winners were 4.8 under par per round. Quick math, we anticipate the winning score to be 19 under par this week in Japan. Since we jetted over to Asia, we have seen Ruoning Yin win the Buick (-25), Hannah Green win the BMW (-19), and Yin (again) win the Maybank (-23). After three weeks, I think these LPGA stars have realized the theme, go low or go home.

TOTO Japan Classic starts in...

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50 Years

The LPGA has three tournaments left before the CME Group Tour Championship (includes the TOTO). Only the Top 60 qualify for the finals and the biggest purse of the year. For the 43 LPGA players in the TOTO field this is an important trip to Japan.

• The 78-woman field will be filled out with 35 players from the Japan LPGA.
• Everyone will play 72-holes, this is a no cut event.
• The purse is $2 million, and first place will take home $300,000.
• Fourteen of the Top 30 in the Rolex World Rankings are here.

This is the forty-seventh edition of the TOTO and the fiftieth anniversary of the inaugural Classic. This 54-hole facility has most recently hosted the 2020, 2021, and 2022 events (20, 21 were not co-sanctioned by the LPGA due to the pandemic).

The forecast this week calls for cool damp weather. We will see some rain pre-tournament and then a bunch on Friday into Saturday. Over 2.2" is predicted from this storm. Better pack that rain suit as conditions will be wet! The rain even extends into Sunday. Temperatures will reach 70, but I doubt it will feel that warm with a little wind blowing (8-12 mph). The ladies have competed in decent weather on this Asian tour until now, but it seems as if their luck has run out.

Golf starts on Wednesday night for one more week!

If that forecast holds true, the ladies will need to make a bunch of birdies in these soft conditions. This has historically been a 54-hole event, but starting in 2021 it extended to 72-holes. How do they go so low on this course? They start with the Par 5's. All four of them are reachable at an average length of 503 yards. Only five holes on the course have a penalty area, so these ladies will be swinging for the fences. The Par 3's present the toughest test relative to par as three of them are over 175 yards. Six of the Par 4's are under 400 yards making length a great advantage here.

Seta Golf Club’s North Course is a Par 72 layout with a scorecard measuring 6,616 yards. If you are familiar with the layout, the LPGA changed the routing in 2021. Here are the tournament hole assignments.

• Front nine (actual hole) - 1(1), 2(15), 3(16), 4(10), 5(9), 6(13), 7(14), 8(2), 9(3)
• Back nine (actual hole) - 10(4), 11(5), 12(6), 13(7), 14(8), 15(11), 16(12), 17(17), 18(18)

Much like Seowon Valley two weeks ago at the BMW, this course is hilly. Plenty of elevation changes give the advantage to more powerful players. I also believe there's a slight edge to the top-tier JLPGA players. They are at home and playing on grasses, conditions, and a course they are more familiar with. Throw in the unpredictability of the weather forecast and there's another edge. Forty-five percent of the field is from their tour, and they haven't traveled halfway around the world or adjusted to being thirteen hours off. You'll see it in our outright card, but a healthy mix of both sides of the field provides us with the best opportunity to win this weekend.

Many of the ladies competing are around that sixtieth qualifying spot for the CME Group Tour Championship. Will they have an extra incentive over in Japan to play harder? I'm sure they will and that was another consideration in building out our betting card. Here's a link in case you are curious (​CME Points)​.

Follow Sörenstam at Seta

There are a couple of trends I noticed while breaking down the North Course at Seta Golf Club.

• The first impression you get is there are no flat lies. The course is hilly and rolls from the first hole to the last. That's a crucial feature as it defines a need for excellent ball strikers. Uneven lies in bad weather will be a separation point in this field. I'm leaning more on ball striking than short game. Throw in receptive greens and the approach leaders will climb the leaderboard easier than the average iron players.
• The second trait I already touched upon is the length of Seta. Two of the Par 5's are under 500 yards and the overall length even with the elevation changes will not slow down these ladies. Length can get mitigated on some short courses, but this is not one of them. Annika won here four times in a row! In her prime she was one of the longest and most accurate players on tour. Those traits are definitely why she had such an advantage here.
• If you can move the ball from left to right off the tee, you'll love this course. nine of the fourteen tee shots meander that way. A right-handed power fader of the golf ball has a decided edge.
• A majority of the fairways are tree-lined. I took a long look at my charts for LPGA driving length versus accuracy. Strokes Gained OTT and Total Driving are perfect measurements for this characteristic. Need more proof, Ayaka Furue won here in 2021, and she is ranked fifth on tour hitting over 82% of her fairways.
• Par 5 scoring will be key. Most of the elite players will take advantage of them, but I'm stressing even more scoring. You have to go deep on these four holes just to keep up. In many ways, scoring on the 5s is a basic requirement at Seta’s North Course to contend.
• If you take away the Par 5's, eight of the remaining holes have approach shots between 125 and 175 yards. Those mid-iron shots will be critical all week. Thanks to the data I receive from KPMG, we know who the best ball strikers are in that range. Again, most of those approaches will be from uneven lies.
• The 2022 top 10 on the leaderboard gained an average of three strokes on the greens. It's less than approach, but still significant. Measuring the putts per GIR, and strokes gained scorers is vital to figuring out this week’s player puzzle.
• The smallest influence of the primary four strokes gained categories, don't lose sight of scrambling acumen. The ability to score from close range on these par 5s is key to contending.

Add it up and I come away with a very interesting list of familiar LPGA names and a star from the JLPGA. It took a bunch of time, but I looked at an endless amount of their tournament results and analytics to make these selections. Thank God for Google’s translator, reading Japanese is not a strong suit of mine.

Outright winners - TOTO Japan Classic

Fresh off a twelfth place finish in the Maybank, Linn Grant is lurking in Japan. Grant is ranked sixth in SG:OTT, last week she gained nearly four strokes on the field with her driver in Malaysia. This course is a perfect setup, her par 5 scoring and driver give Grant a huge advantage. Her last start at Seta GC she finished third. Top 10 in par 5 scoring and top 20 in BoB%, and great in bad weather. Linn Grant +2500

The elite JLPGA players will contend this week, and Sakura Koiwai's skill set is perfect for this place. She has two top 10s in her last three starts at Seta. Koiwai is a birdie machine; she is ranked fourth in BoB% and third in par 5s scoring on the JLPGA. Sakura is number one in total birdies. She scores through ball striking, ranked fifth in that category. Koiwai has 15 top 10s in 30 starts and two wins this season. Sakura Koiwai +3500

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Read between the lines

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Golf betting goes mainstream

Do you want to be a better bettor? Smylie Kaufman and Charlie Hulme do!

On a week where the PGA TOUR is taking a travel break, listen to Keith on The Smylie Show. Smylie and Charlie pepper your resident PGA professional about RTL's weekend wagers. Their thoughtful approach and accurate research really keeps the conversation fresh and entertaining. Both the YouTube and Apple podcast links are below. Enjoy! 🎧

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Inside the ropes at the 2023 Genesis Invitational

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