Florida Swing Has Again Reminded Us to Save Some Bankroll For the Back-Nine on Sunday

We collectively might not have learned much about winning professional golf tournaments over the past three weeks, but we were certainly reminded of some tired tropes.

Don’t count your chickens until they hatch. 

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. 

It’s not over ‘til it’s over. 

No matter your favorite hackneyed cliche, this season’s Florida Swing has once again proven that foregone conclusions rarely exist on Sunday afternoons at PGA Tour events.

In fact, like any good thriller movie, just as soon as we thought we knew what was going to happen, these plots took another turn.

Let’s start with the Cognizant Classic. After years of coming so close at PGA National, Shane Lowry led by three strokes with three holes to play, only to hit a pair of untimely water balls and eventually lose to Nico Echavarria.

“I thought I had it,” Lowry would later say. “I thought I was going to win.”

One week later at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Daniel Berger grabbed the lead midway through the opening round and still led by four at the turn on Sunday afternoon, then by two with three holes remaining. He wound up losing to Akshay Bhatia in a playoff.

“It’s tough to win,” Berger lamented. “It’s tough to battle.”

All of which served as a delicious precursor to this past weekend’s Players Championship.

Ludvig Aberg held a three-shot advantage entering the final round and was still in control before his second shot on the par-5 11th hole. Without warning, though, he rinsed the approach into the water, then — much like Lowry — hit another into the hazard on the next hole, sealing his fate as Cameron Young came from behind to steal the victory.

“It definitely stings a little bit,” Aberg admitted.

Again, perhaps we didn’t learn anything new from this latest three-week stretch — and the players themselves undeniably know how difficult it is to close out tournaments, especially after holding a lengthy lead — but it’s a strong reminder that weird stuff happens when we least expect it.

It should also serve as a sign for bettors.

There’s undoubtedly a subsection of those who wager on golf that spends the first few days of every week studying and researching, then makes outright selections in hopes of cashing a ticket on Sunday evening. And that’s it – no live wagers, no hedges, no mid-tourney hunches.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but these last three tourneys have left a trail of breadcrumbs which spells out the need to save some bankroll for the final round, when wild things tend to happen, especially in recent weeks.

At each of those events, the eventual winner could’ve been had at surprisingly long odds during Sunday’s back-nine.

Granted, you would’ve had to foretell that the leader was about to collapse, but the point is, those opportunities have been available and just because a specific conclusion seemed inevitable doesn’t mean we can’t invest in a cruel twist of fate for the current leader.

For anyone who had an outright play on Lowry or Berger or Aberg and was counting their winnings before the drama took place, this idea should ring true.

Tiger Woods was often inevitable when he held a final-round lead. Scottie Scheffler often is, too, at least on those occasions when he’s got his best stuff.

So often, though, there’s no such thing as inevitable during final rounds, when the unexpected tends to happen more than we’d ever believe.

We’ve received three more reminders of that notion over the past three weeks, proving again that golf tournaments are difficult to win and bettors should keep their options open down the back-nine stretch.