American Express betting guide: 6 picks our gambling expert loves this week

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 regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the American Express, which gets underway Thursday in La Quinta, Calif. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data 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 making its traditional two-week start on the Hawaiian Islands, the 2025 PGA Tour season shifts back to the mainland for the beginning of the West Coast Swing. First stop: La Quinta, Calif., for the American Express.

The American Express is played over three different golf courses: the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West, La Quinta Country Club, and the Stadium Course at PGA West. Each player will play one round at each of the three courses before a 54-hole cut is made. Sunday’s final round is held on the Stadium Course. Nick Dunlap is your defending champion, winning last year as an amateur, the first player to do so on Tour in 33 years.

It is truly the ultimate resort course challenge. Pin positions will be very benign. There is little to no rough bordering the fairways. Oddly enough, in the middle of the desert, water is the primary hazard as roughly 20 holes over the three courses have water in play. The golf courses are relatively short. The Stadium Course is just a tick over 7,200 yards, the Nicklaus Course is just under 7,200, and La Quinta CC is just over 7,000 yards.

High temperatures are expected to be in the low 70s and not one of the four days is calling for winds above 10 mph. Yes folks, it looks like we have another birdie-fest on our hands in Palm Springs. The winning score proposition bet here in Las Vegas at the Westgate SuperBook is Under/Over 259.5 (28.5 under Ppr).

As far as predictability, we go from two very predictive tournaments in Hawaii to a complete crapshoot here in Southern California. ShotLink data is only available on the Stadium Course, so we are not getting many stats for 50 percent of the action. Four of the last six winners here have been at triple-digit odds. Dunlap, last year, was a 500-1 long shot. I was thinking about this the other day: Have I had an outright winner for every tournament on Tour over the course of my golf betting career? I’m pretty sure it’s not every event but it’s close, and I’ve certainly had plenty of close calls, if not a winner, at certain venues. Here at the American Express, however, I don’t even recall many close calls. It really is a tough one to make any sense of — and for that reason, I recommend dumbing-down the risk this week. I have my outright winner selections, and that will likely be it. I am not playing any finish position markets and will probably also stay away from any head-to-head matchups.

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That doesn’t mean I didn’t handicap the field though. Sure enough, the stats that I believe are most important this week are Strokes Gained: Approach, Birdies or Better Gained, Par 5 Scoring, Par 4 Scoring, Good Drives Gained, and SG: Putting (Bermudagrass). Pretty basic stuff. Find fairways, hit greens, make putts. 

In looking at each of the three golf courses this week, I came up with a handful that set up similarly: heavy on approach, favor driving distance, and with nothing really to speak of as far as accuracy or short game around the greens. That led me to Corales Golf Club, where they play the Corales Puntacana Championship, Valhalla, the site of last year’s PGA Championship, TPC Scottsdale, TPC Summerlin, and Silverado in Napa, where they play the Procore Championship during the FedEx Fall.

One more note. Fifteen of the last 17 winners of the American Express have played at least one week in Hawaii leading up. I am definitely a believer in having at least a few rounds of competitive action under one’s belt aiding in success here, versus this being a player’s first start of the season.

Kurt Kitayama (30-1) 

The UNLV Rebel is definitely familiar with desert-style golf and he’s recorded top-10 finishes at both TPC Scottsdale and TPC Summerlin. He played last week at the Sony Open, shooting three rounds in the 60s and finishing 37th. Over the last 24 rounds, Kitayama is sixth in this field for SG: Approach and he ranks third for SG: Par 5s. He is long off the tee and hits plenty of greens in regulation. It will come down to the putter, as it often does in a birdie-fest, and Kitayama was solid with the flatstick last week, gaining nearly a stroke on the field at Waialae Country Club.

Tom Kim (31-1)

It is interesting that Kim was a very popular choice last week at the Sony Open, as one of the pre-tournament favorites, but that is not the case this week and his price has drifted all the way into the 30s. That looks like very good value to me. This is a guy who finished sixth here two years ago and was a back-to-back winner at the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas. He also has a top-20 finish at TPC Scottsdale and was 26th last year at the PGA Championship at Valhalla. He ranks one better than Kitayama at fifth in this field on approach over the last 24 rounds. Also like Kitayama, he’ll need to find a hot putter if he is going to make a run this week.

Mac Meissner (80-1)

Now we get into the long shots because as I stated earlier, we tend to get random results at this tournament and tend to see big-priced guys come out on top. Meissner was a player I nearly landed on last week and he played well, finishing 21st at the Sony. Evidently, I am not alone in taking notice as I’ve seen a couple of others on him this week in the desert. Meissner goes even one better than Tom Kim, ranking fourth in this field for SG: Approach over the last 24 rounds, and was second in the field with the irons last week. He’s excellent with the wedges, is both long and straight off the tee, and is a decent putter. This is only Meissner’s second full season on Tour. He missed the cut here last year but I do like the fact that he’s played this event before, familiar with both the golf courses and the pro-am format.

Jhonattan Vegas (90-1)

The big Venezuelan has been around on Tour for well over a decade now and we saw him win for the fourth time in his career last summer at the 3M Open. In fact, his first-ever Tour win was right here in La Quinta when it was known at the Bob Hope Desert Classic in 2011. Since then, he’s finished as high as 11th here at the American Express. He has top 10s at both Silverado and Scottsdale, and has been as high as fourth at Corales Puntacana. He began 2025 at the Sentry in Kapalua and finished fourth. Off the tee, driving it long and straight has always been the strength of Vegas’ game. Over the last 24 rounds, he also ranks top 10 in this field on the par 5s and the par 4s. We’ll say it again: If he can putt this week, we should have a contender.

Henrik Norlander (150-1)

Like Kitayama, Norlander finished 37th at the Sony last week and shot three rounds in the 60s. He’s deadly accurate off the tee and ranked 11th on Tour for SG: Approach last season. He’s very solid in all the stats this week except for guess what? Yeah, he’s had struggles on the green, but he has finished as high as 12th here at the American Express before and also has top-25 finishes to his credit at both Corales and TPC Scottsdale.  

Matti Schmid (190-1)

We finally landed on a putter. Schmid can bang it off the tee, makes a bunch of birdies, and ranked 46th on Tour last year for SG: Putting. He tied for sixth along with Tom Kim here at the American Express in 2023. He was also third this past October at TPC Summerlin and was 11 at Corales back in April. He has a lot of talent and has been showing some signs of what he can do with it. In a watered down field and birdie-fest, I feel like 190-1 is too high of a price. 

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