Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2026 American Express, which gets underway Thursday in La Quinta, Calif. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see promo from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both free-to-play and daily fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.
After its Hawaiian debut, the 2026 PGA Tour campaign touches down stateside in La Quinta, Calif. for the American Express. Call this the calm before the storm as it is Torrey Pines, Phoenix, Pebble Beach, and the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club to follow and wrap up the West Coast Swing. The American Express is a Pro-Am that is contested over three courses. Each golfer will play the Nicklaus Tournament Course, La Quinta Country Club, and the Pete Dye Stadium Course once before the top 65 players and ties make the cut, which is decided after 54 holes. The final round on Sunday will be played at the Stadium Course, which is the only course of the three that has ShotLink data.
Pro-Ams, three course rotations, 54-hole cuts, typically lackluster fields, and a shortcoming of data has the American Express ranking rather low in my PGA Tour tournament power ratings. It is also a tournament, in all my years, for which I have never landed on the outright winner. The results here are very random. Scottie Scheffler has been a regular here in recent years and while this is the one of the weakest fields he competes against all year, he’s never won here and even missed the cut in 2021. Sepp Straka is your defending champion and he makes a lot of sense here. Jon Rahm is a former winner and was the betting favorite but other than that, we have had four winners that went off at triple-digit odds, far higher than 100-1, in the last seven years.
2026 American Express odds: Scottie Scheffler leads favorites in season debut
One bit of information that does seem to make some sense is the fact that 15 of the last 17 winners of the American Express, played in at least one of the tournaments in Hawaii beforehand. All three courses in the rotation this week are relatively short at around 7,100 yards. Each is a Par 72 and they all have Bermudagrass greens – which are dormant in this part of the country this time of year – and have been overseeded with Rye Grass and Poa Trivialis.
Let’s remember, this is a Pro-Am, so the golf courses are set up relatively easy for the amateurs. There is very little rough to speak of and the greens run much slower than what the pros typically face. While neither distance nor accuracy off the tee has proven to be especially important this week, I did look at Good Drives Gained. From there, it is all about hitting greens in regulation and Strokes Gained: Approach. La Quinta Country Club and the Stadium Course have some of the smaller greens on Tour. Taking advantage of the Par 5s is a must. This is a birdie-fest and making par or worse on the long holes sets one back versus the field. The par 4s here measure between 350-450 yards. This is another area where scoring has to be done — and that ties into another category I considered this week, Birdies or Better Gained.
It is difficult to tie any correlations to the golf courses at the American Express. The Pete Dye Stadium Course can be compared to other Dye designs but the connection is not as strong as it is between some of his other Tour venues. One can look at Phoenix and Las Vegas and use the desert angle but there hasn’t proven to be much there either. As far as the layouts, Memorial Park in Houston and Corales Golf Club, home to the Corales Puntacana Championship, seem to have the most similarities for me to the Stadium Course, where half of this golf tournament will be played.
With this week being more of a crapshoot and having a history of higher priced winners, I stayed away from anything too short and gravitated toward longer shots. Four of my five selections played in Hawaii last week.
Pierceson Coody (80-1)
Coody finished 13th last week at the Sony Open and I like the way he got there, by shooting a 64 in the final round. He was third last season on Tour in Total Driving, fourth in Greens in Regulation, and fourth in Birdie Average. Over the last 24-rounds, he ranks No. 1 in this field on the Par 5s and is fourth on the 400-450 yard Par 4s. He putted really well last week in Hawaii too, ranking 24th and gaining nearly 2.5 strokes on the field.
Denny McCarthy (90-1)
We don’t have to worry about putting with McCarthy, who is one of the very best in the world. He’s finished as high as sixth here at the Amex, has been fourth at Corales, and 11th in Houston. He ranked 16th in the field last week at the Sony for SG: Off the Tee. Over the last 24 rounds, he is top 25 in this field on approach and top 20 on the Par 4s from 350-450 yards.
Patrick Rodgers (92-1)
Will the man from Indiana finally get his first PGA Tour win on the heels of the Hoosiers winning the College Football National Championship? The game was sharp in all areas last week in Hawaii and it resulted in a third-place finish. He’s had success out here on the west coast in the past and maybe that is related to attending Stanford University. Over the last 24 rounds, Rodgers has been excellent on approach ranking 20th in this field for SG: Approach and 26th for Greens in Regulation Gained. The putter has typically been his bugaboo but last week at Waialae, Rodgers gained over four strokes putting and that was 14th best in the field.
J.T. Poston (100-1)
Here we enter the world of the triple-digits and we do so with another top-notch putter. Poston did not play last week but in his last start, back in mid-November, he finished seventh at the RSM Classic. He’s been excellent here in La Quinta with finishes of seventh, sixth, and a 12th last year. He has won in a desert birdie-fest before too, with a victory in Las Vegas in 2024.
Lee Hodges (150-1)
Hodges took sixth last week in Hawaii and has been as high as third here at the American Express. He also finished 11th last season in Houston. That is two straight top-10 finishes for Hodges who closed out 2025 with a fourth-place finish at the RSM Classic. Let’s hope his putter stays hot as he was second in the field last week, gaining almost eight shots on the field with the flatstick.
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