2025 H1 Performance review
FormGolfer review of H1 2025
Well, we certainly experienced the whole spectrum of emotions during the first half of the year, but when the dust settled it ended up being a case of business as usual, with a healthy profit of 242 points and a return on stakes invested of 34%.
The headline numbers really don’t tell the story though. By mid-April we were facing in to our worst run of results since we started and we were starting down the barrel of a deficit of almost 200 points on the season. Golf is by nature a volatile medium though, with the odd shot here and there making a big difference to the numbers. If you are consistently identifying value week-to-week though, the results will come, and as with any investment, it’s long term performance that matters.
When things finally turned around for us in late April, they did so with a vengeance. We got the ball rolling with Andrew Novak and Ben Griffin’s win in the Zurich Classic at 25/1, followed swiftly by Scottie Scheffler in the US Open (5/1) a couple of weeks later and the following week Ben Griffin did us another favour, winning the Charles Schwab at 50/1. These results brought us close to parity for the year by the end of May. If May was a recovery month, June was off the charts and turned into our best month since we got started back in 2021, yielding a profit of over 250 points. The undoubted highlight (and possibly our all-time finest pick) was JJ Spaun surprising the whole golfing world by picking up the US PGA at a mighty 125/1 (significantly bigger was available if you were brave enough to go win only!). His victory was well-deserved, given the awful luck he had to endure in the early part of round 4, and his winning putt on the final green will live long in the memory, particularly for those who backed him. Whilst it was tempting to sit back and enjoy that result, we went in again for the next event and Keegan Bradley did the business for us at 40/1 in the Travelers. All told May and June were exceptional, but incredibly could have been even better, with both Sam Burns and Max Greyserman both having very makeable putts to win in the Canadian Open and Rocket Mortgage. Had those putts dropped, we’d have been looking at 7 outright winners from the last 8 events in the first half of the season!
So, although we were undoubtedly helped by one huge-priced winner, it’s worth noting that we’d have still shown a decent profit even if JJ Spaun hadn’t won, and we certainly had our share of bad breaks along the way too.
In the final analysis, a great first half of the year. Whilst it may have taken a strong constitution to weather the storm of the early season, it served to show how important it is to take a long term view, maintain a staking plan that allows for difficult periods, keep the faith when things aren’t going your way and trust that the underlying analysis is sound.
We’re now showing an overall profit of just over 1500 points since we started a little over three and a half years ago – had you started with our recommendation of a 1000 point bank, you’d have grown it by 150% in that period. And our overall return on stakes invested since we started stands at 44%. That’s a record we are proud of and will keep working hard to maintain through the second half of 2025.
Above all, we hope you’re enjoying your membership – naturally it’s always better when we show a profit, but we also aim to make your interest in golf well-informed and enjoyable.
The FormGolfer team