Alex Miceli looks at the PGA Tour’s betting landscape and its most ghastly putting stats from last season, plus German winners on the DP World Tour.

Each week, SI Golf’s Alex Miceli will empty his notebook with thoughts from around the golf world.

Sports betting is either legal or pending approval in 37 states.

Many sports leagues, including the PGA Tour, believe that betting will be a windfall of some magnitude.

Most people equate to sports gambling to who wins or loses, but that’s just a tiny portion of what the leagues are hoping to exploit. Live in-game betting, which happens on every play or shot, is what leagues are betting to be a moneymaker.

Of course, sports betting in the U.S. is nascent pursuit since it was limited in the United States until 2018, when the Supreme Court in Murphy v. NCAA struck down the barriers to nationwide sports wagering by overturning the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.

© Provided by Morning Read on Sports Illustrated A fan holds up a sign reading “I Suck at DraftKings Golf” during the final round of 2020 Tour Championship. Adam Hagy/USA TODAY Sports

Since then, each state has had to figure out the landscape while different betting sites (i.e. DraftKings, BetMGM, FanDuel) got up and running.

Now betting is part of the sports landscape—but is it a good idea?

The Premier League in England is asking its clubs to phase out betting and gambling sponsors under a new proposal that would take effect within three years. 

The reason: since the U.K.’s 2005 Gambling Act passed, gambling has skyrocketed.

According to different studies, between 1.5 million and 3 million people in the U.K. admit having a gambling problem. Those problems have contributed to a higher suicide rate, more homelessness along with emotional, and financial repercussions.

According to a Public Health England report published in September 2021, gambling cost the U.K. at least £1.27 billion from 2019-20, including £619.2 million coming from the economic impact of suicide and £62.8 million from the cost of homelessness.

The report also found that people at risk of gambling harm are concentrated in areas of higher deprivation and may already be experiencing greater health inequalities. The review also found a clear link between higher levels of alcohol consumption and harmful gambling, with only 35.4% of non-drinkers participating in gambling compared to 74.4% of those consuming over 50 units of alcohol (equivalent to 16 pints of beer or large glasses of wine) per week.

With the PGA Tour pouring millions into gambling through its ShotLink product, it makes you wonder if those efforts are misguided.

Considering the Tour’s support of numerous charitable endeavors through its differing events, are those efforts in jeopardy by supporting gambling efforts?

In a golf.com story from earlier this year, Scott Warfield, the Tour’s vice president of gaming, outlines his perfect scenario.

“Where we’re moving is focusing more on the live,” Warfield said. “There’s three holes left, and a threesome is coming through. Who’s going to have the low score on this hole? Jon Rahm has 250 yards to the pin from the fairway on a par 5. Here are the odds he can get it inside 20 feet, 10 feet, five feet.”

Gambling is already big business for the Tour, with not one but six “Official Betting Operators”: BetMGM, betParx, bet 365, DraftKings, FanDuel and PointsBet.

Once the technology is in place, live betting, like metal drivers, will be here to stay, no matter the consequences. And whether it’s good or bad for the game will be an afterthought as the money keeps flowing.

For the best way to equate the Tour’s commitment to gambling, just look at the consumption of alcohol at Tour events, where the taps are turned on when the fans come through the gates and are not turned off until the end of the day’s play.

During that 12 or so hours of golf, the gallons of beer consumed is off the charts and a percentage of those consuming it eventually become belligerent and can affect the outcome of the event by yelling during a backswing or otherwise getting in someone’s ear.

The Tour has been loath to deal with the overserving issue, because not only is it a great money-maker, but with Michelob Ultra as the “Official Beer Sponsor of the PGA Tour” through 2024, how can they turn off the taps?

Even baseball stops serving after the seventh inning.

Can you really see the Tour curtailing gambling, even if the troubling numbers come close to those of the U.K.?

> Germany’s Yannik Paul needed a birdie on the 72nd hole to win his first DP World Tour event at the Mallorca Golf Open on Sunday.

Paul, 28, beat fellow countryman Nicolai Von Dellingshusen and England’s Paul Waring.

“I had a lot of really good chances the last couple of days but to finish like this is a dream come true, it couldn’t be any better,” Paul said. “I’m just so happy honestly, my girlfriend and I just worked a lot on my mental side, we were dreaming that she could be there for my first win and she was here now so it’s unbelievable.”

So, after the cheers died down, I wondered how many Germans have won on the DP World Tour.

The answer is seven, including Paul. How many can you name? Answer is at the bottom.

> Three-putting is maybe the most deflating thing a PGA Tour player can experience—unless they 4-putt or, God forbid, 5-putt.

I think 5-putting, even at this level, is cause for thinking about chucking the clubs and turning to tennis, but that’s just speculation on my part.

For the record, there were 9,663 3-putts, 140 4-putts and three 5-putts on the PGA Tour in the 2021-22 season.

Let’s get the suspense out of the way: the 5-putts were Kevin Na in the third round of the Masters on the par-3 16th hole and Cameron Percy in the final round of the RBC Canadian Open on the par-4 2nd hole, plus Keegan Bradley in the second round of the Players Championship on the 16th hole after reaching the par 5 in two (though he was assessed a two-shot penalty on the green for playing a ball from the wrong spot after a gust of wind moved it; the two shots were counted as putts).

Long-hitting Cameron Champ was the king of 4-putting last season, with a total of four, two coming at the Farmers Insurance Open, one at the RBC Canadian Open and one other at the Wyndham Championship.

The course with the most 4-putts was the Old Course at St. Andrews during the Open Championship with 12.

The lucky 12 included Adri Arnaus, Stewart Cink, Bryson DeChambeau, Padraig Harrington, Rikuya Hoshino, Takumi Kanaya, Chan Kim, Pablo Larrazabal, David Law, Hideki Matsuyama, Keith Mitchell and Xander Schauffele.

Interestingly, the par-4, 414-yard 6th hole is named Heathery and was responsible for four of the 4-putts on the Old Tom Morris layout and, oddly, three of the four incidents occurred when the player hit the green in regulation.

One last nugget from the 4-putts of last season, most came after hitting the green in regulation. Of the 140, only 15 4-putts came after missing the green in regulation.

So, what to glean from this? The bigger the greens, the easier to 4-putt? Or maybe putting for birdie isn’t all it’s cracked up to be since a majority of 3-putts came after hitting the green in regulation.

> As for those seven German winners on the DP World Tour, Bernhard Langer is atop the list with 42 wins in 510 tournaments played.

Then it’s Martin Kaymer (11), Alex Cejka and Marcel Siem (4), Sven Struver (3), Tobias Dier (2) and now Yannik Paul.

If you got Struver and/or Dier, consider yourself among the most ardent DP World Tour fans. Or maybe you’re German.