First-round leader is a shootout, not a tournament. The FRL Simulator plays Thursday 50,000 times: every player draws from his own Thursday distribution — built from his first-round scoring record, adjusted for this week’s model fit and the weather in his exact tee-time window — and his FRL Sim is how often he comes out holding the lead.
Show / hide columns
120 players · Butterfield Bermuda Championship (Port Royal Golf Course) · 50,000 simulated Thursdays · FRL odds via our book feed (updated 2026-10-22 03:19:54 UTC) · wave forecast pulled Wed 11:59 PM ET
Values up front, ranks on tap. Best FRL Odds, Tee Time, Wave Edge and # of FRLs always show their values. The three scoring columns — FRL Sim, R1 Scoring Avg and Go-Low % — carry a toggle in the row above their headers: RANK shows where he stands in the field in that category, VALUE shows the number itself, and they start in RANK. Model, Form and History are ranks by definition, so they stay ranks. The Columns button above the table hides or restores any field, for a leaner board. Clicking a column header sorts by it.
The rank is a simulation, not a blend. A first-round leader bet pays on the single lowest score of the day, so an average is the wrong tool: the model gives every player a Thursday distribution — a centre and a spread — then plays Thursday out 50,000 times with whole-stroke scores. FRL Sim is his share of first place across those Thursdays, with ties split the way sportsbooks settle them (dead heat). The price in parentheses in VALUE mode is the dead-heat fair price for that share — compare it with the book’s price like with like. # of FRLs is his actual track record: outright or shared first-round leads over the last three seasons, in the stroke-play events in our database.
His Thursday distribution starts with R1 Scoring AVG: his strokes gained per first round over the last five seasons (the count beside it in VALUE mode is his sample; small samples are shrunk toward the field, so a hot 19-round record doesn’t outrank a proven 120-round one on its own). The centre is then nudged by his Player Pool model standing this week — form, fit, history and pedigree — and by his wave edge. The spread is his own, summarized by Go-Low Rate: how often his first rounds finish four under or better. That spread is the whole ballgame here — steady players with fine Thursday averages fall down this board, and volatile players who can shoot the day’s low round climb it.
Wave Edge is the weather in his window, not a flat AM/PM bonus: the hourly forecast (sustained wind plus gusts) from his tee time through his expected finish, compared with the field’s median window, converted at roughly a twentieth of a stroke per mph. Green is a friendlier window than the field gets, red is worse, and a dash means the edge is too small to matter. This week the largest wave edge in the field is 0.04 strokes — effectively no wave advantage on Thursday. The column earns its keep when a front splits the day; this week it doesn’t.
Why Go-Low Rate and not Birdie or Better %? Our database stores one row per player-round — there is no hole-by-hole data to count birdies with, and we won’t print a number we can’t compute. Go-Low Rate measures the thing an FRL bet actually needs: how often he produces a score that can lead. If a hole-level feed ever lands, the real birdie column can take its place.
Best FRL Odds is the best price across the books our first-round-leader feed carries — here, FanDuel and Bet365. DraftKings posts FRL prices but does not publish them into that feed, so a longer DK price can exist that this column can’t see. Tee times are course-local. Players with no first-round record in the window are simulated from the field-average distribution plus their model adjustment; their R1 cells show a dash rather than an invented number.