Olympics Golf 2024: Course Preview & Rithmm Best Bets

There is only one week left in the 2024 PGA Tour regular season before the FedEx Cup playoffs start, but before we get into all of that, we have Olympics golf this week!

Added back into the summer Olympics schedule back in 2016 after being away for over 100 years, golf is a sport that makes perfect sense for the Olympics, and the competition consists of a 60-player field that competes in a stroke-play format over four days to determine the winner, just like a normal tournament.

Current defending gold medalist Xander Schauffele is back to defend his title (medal?) at Le Golf National, which was the host of the 2018 Ryder Cup and has served as the host course of the Open de France, a yearly DP World Tour event.

Let's dive into my 2024 Olympics course preview and of course, the best bets according to my Rithmm model that we'll be following this week.

2024 Olympics Golf Course Preview

Le Golf National is not going to be familiar to the four golfers representing the United States, but plenty of the rest of the field will recognize it. It has been a yearly stop on the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) and played host to the 2018 Ryder Cup, which means that roughly half of this field has played on it in the last decade.

Now, there are some changes since the Ryder Cup, most notably the rough that was completely absent during the Ryder Cup and made it nearly unscoreable. That rough is back for this event, in three different cuts of a Ryegrass/Fescue mix. Getting your ball in play off the tee will be absolutely paramount due to this.

Another factor is the 10 water hazards that surround the course. The water comes into play on 13 of the 18 holes and places an increased importance on your ballstriking being pure.

Despite being a links-style course in design, it draws structural comparisons to a a number of similar stateside courses like TPC Sawgrass and Harbour Town, mostly due to the abundance of water-guarded holes and the short, second shot-focused style of strategy that it demands. Other comp courses that make a lot of sense are the recent trio of Canadian courses that have hosted the RBC Canadian Open: Hamilton, St. Georges and Oakdale, due to the Bentgrass agronomy with an emphasis on driving accuracy.

Rithmm Models used for 2024 Olympics Golf Course Preview

In every Course Preview, we’ll be diving into Rithmm’s proprietary model to help you build the best betting model for that week’s course! Rithmm has its own AI model that it generates based on thousands of sims, but you also might want to build your own model, so that’s what this section is for.

When we get into Rithmm’s modeling aspect, it has five customizable sliders that you can mess around with: Recent Performance, Par 5 Performance, Par 4 Performance, Par 3 Performance, and Course Fit. You can adjust these to your heart’s content, and make it reflect the way you see the important stats.

My model for the 2024 Olympics Golf at Le Golf National is below:

We're back overseas this week, and I'm treating Le Golf National similarly to how I treated the other major venues this year.

The French course is very interesting in its layout. As I noted in the course preview above, it has a links-style construction to it, yet brings features to American and Canadian courses such as large water hazards and the Bentgrass agronomy. It's a very strategic golf course that makes you think, which is why I am using a very tight dispersion for my Rithmm factors this week.

All of the factors are going to be weighted similarly, but let's start with Course Fit and Recent Form.

These two often go together on any major or elevated event track, and that doesn't change here, as any course that hosted a Ryder Cup is bound to be very difficult and force you into using all of your skillsets. That includes knowing how to handle water hazards, when to club down on the many non-driver holes, and how to handle the three cuts of rough. Recent form can be tricky given that some of the players in the field do not have status on a major tour, but then you know where to draw the line, don't you?

After that, excellence across all three distances of holes is key. Par 4 scoring will be somewhat emphasized, as the final four holes of Le Golf National are referred to as "The Gauntlet" and contain three challenging Par 4s.

Best Betting Picks for the Olympics Golf 2024

It’s time to build our Rithmm betting card for this week. We’re going to go into each of Rithmm’s favorite picks for Top 20/10/5 based on my model, and whether I agree or disagree with it.

Top 20: Carlos Ortiz +150 (54.4% Rithmm Win Probability)

Ortiz is a natural choice for this pick, despite never having played Le Golf National before. He has gained on the field in driving accuracy in seven of his last eight events, and he also comes into the event in solid enough form, with a win and a T9 in two of his last four starts.

Top 10: Victor Perez +500 (22.3%)

According to Rithmm's AI Model (not my personal model above), Perez is by far their favorite top ten bet of the week, and I like it too. Perez, despite missing the cut at The Open a couple weeks ago, is having a solid recent stretch of events, with a T3, T10, and T12 in three of his last six events. Those weren't throwaway events either; they were the RBC Canadian (third), the Memorial Tournament (12th) and the Genesis Scottish Open (tenth).

Perez has history at Le Golf National as well, with a 18th and 30th-place finish on the resume in four starts.

Top 5: Joaquin Niemann +400 (29.3%)

Niemann's T58 at The Open is really an aberration. He got two quad-bogeys from poor circumstances and without those, finishes T16 and has a much rosier view to his final major of the season.

He's been in solid form recently, with a second-place finish at LIV UK, a T6 and T3 in three of his last four starts. He's never played Le Golf National, but has been hitting his irons beautifully and has been accurate with the big club lately.

Outright Winner Pick for the Olympics Golf: Jon Rahm +1000 (11.1%)

He might be back finally, everyone.

Jon Rahm has been seemingly forgotten about this season by plenty of people. The criticisms were warranted; he hadn't won a single event since moving over to LIV Golf at the start of the calendar year had played relatively awful in the majors.

Then came The Open. Rahm played exceptionally well, finishing at T7 while gaining strokes across the entire board despite getting the bad end of the weather multiple times at rainy Royal Troon.

In his past four starts since withdrawing with that pesky foot issue, Rahm has posted T3, T10, T7 at The Open, and of course, his maiden LIV win last week at LIV UK, winning by one over Joaquin Niemann. He has gained on the field in driving accuracy in all four events, so it looks like he's clicking in his own game finally.

Rahmbo also has sold course history at Le Golf National. He played here in 2017 and 2018, finishing tenth and fifth. Of all players that are in the Olympics golf field that have played at the course at least twice in the last eight years, Rahm ranks first in total strokes gained on average.

I think Rahm has every chance to win this event, and we're getting a price that Rithmm believes we should swing on.

There was a time last year where I though that despise Scottie Scheffler's rise, Rahm was the best player in the world and the scariest to face down. Scheffler has answered nearly every question yet, but a part of me still wonders...

AI Caddie Picks for Round 1

The AI Caddie is an awesome Rithmm tool that allows you to go hole by hole with any player you choose and it will show you a chart of how likely that player is versus the field to get any score on a hole.

Closing Remarks on 2024 Olympics Course Preview

With all of the major championships finished, we now move on to the race to the FedEx Cup Playoffs! Le Golf National is a perfect venue the week off before the final leg of the 2023-24 PGA Tour regular season, and it's going to be a great week. I hope that my best bets & course preview gives you all the insights and predictions needed to make informed wagers.

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