Our expert likes Taylor Pendrith's chances this week.
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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 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which gets underway Thursday in Pebble Beach, 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.
It’s been quite the run in these parts, beginning with an outright winner on Kevin Yu last fall at the Sanderson Farms Championship. The latest windfall, Harris English last week at the Farmers Insurance Open, gives us three outright winners since the Hero World Challenge in December. Like they say, stay hot.
From high atop the cliffs overlooking La Jolla shores, we travel up the coast to Carmel, California for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This will be the second Signature Event of the 2025 season and the second straight week in which the players face Poa Annua grass greens.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is back, hand fully healthy that he injured while cooking over the Christmas holiday. World No. 2 Rory McIlroy is here, also making his 2025 PGA Tour debut. A former winner here at Pebble Beach, Jordan Spieth is also in the field this week after undergoing surgery on his wrist during the offseason.
This is the second straight season that the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am has been a Signature status event. Wyndham Clark is your defending champion after last year’s tournament was cut to just 54 holes due to inclement weather. Prior to last year, the tournament involved a three-course rotation and a 54-hole cut on Saturday. Now, it is similar to last week at Torrey Pines, where it is only a two-course rotation and three of the four rounds are played at the host course. Each player will play one round this week, on either Thursday or Friday, at Spyglass Hill, three rounds at Pebble Beach, and there is no cut for the 80-player field. The players are joined by amateurs on both Thursday and Friday.
Spyglass Hill typically plays slightly more difficult than Pebble Beach. It is more protected from the wind with tree-lined fairways and less coastal exposure. Spyglass is just a touch over 7,000 yards. Pebble is just a hair under 7,000 yards. The fairways are wide and the greens are the smallest putting surfaces on Tour. While we have seen some bombers win here in the past — Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, and Davis Love III — it is not a golf course that can really be overpowered. It is more about hitting these small greens in regulation, scrambling when you miss them, and finding a hot Poa-Annua putting week.
In total this week, I looked at Strokes Gained: Approach, Good Drives Gained, Hole Proximity from 75-150 yards, Par 4 Scoring (350-450 yards), Par 5 Scoring (500-550 yards), Greens in Regulation Gained, and Scrambling. For correlated courses, I used Silverado in Napa where they play the Procore Championship (another Northern California location at which we have seen some crossover with Pebble Beach in the past); Port Royal Golf Club, another coastal location, where they hold the Bermuda Championship and then TPC Southwind, TPC Summerlin, Hamilton Golf & Country Club, and St. George’s Golf & Country Club.
I landed on five players for an outright win this week and played each for a top-20 finish as well.
Taylor Pendrith (55-1)
This was the first name that jumped off the board at me this week. I played him last year at the Farmers Insurance Open and he recorded a top-10 finish, which he did again last week, and I felt this might be the right time to get back on board with the quickly improving Canadian. He really nails it in the stats this week. He hits a ton of greens, is excellent on the par 4s and par 5s, and is really able to dial in the wedges from 75-125 yards out. He earned his first Tour win last year and also has a top-10 finish here at Pebble Beach in 2023, two top-10 finishes at the Bermuda Championship, and two also at TPC Summerlin.
Maverick McNealy (55-1)
McNealy is always a player I consider when the Tour heads to the Monterey Peninsula. He grew up not far away and also graduated from nearby Stanford University. He’s finished fifth and runner-up in the past at Pebble Beach and also has a runner-up finish at Silverado in Napa. He has excellent finishes at all of the other correlated courses too, including a seventh last year at the Canadian Open at Hamilton Golf & Country Club. Like Pendrith, McNealy also recently earned his first-ever Tour victory at what happened to be at a shorter, coastal course in Sea Island. Over the last 36 rounds, McNealy ranks third in this field for SG: Putting (Poa Annua).
Viktor Hovland (60-1)
It has been quite some time since I have backed Hovland but I’m wondering if this venue might be the right time to do so — along with a price that is pretty crazy for a guy that ranks ninth in the OWGR. Hovland finished 12th here at the U.S. Open in 2019 and won the U.S. Amateur here at Pebble Beach the year prior. He has won five times in his career on coastal golf courses and finished 13th here in 2023. Hovland also just finished runner-up back in August at TPC Southwind — that is a great sign, on a correlated course, for a guy that has been struggling to find his game. A comfortable venue where he’s had tremendous success, just might be the cure.
Viktor Hovland at the 2024 PGA Championship.Getty Images
Robert Macintyre (65-1)
First and foremost, Bobby Mac won the Canadian Open last summer at Hamilton Golf & Country Club — one of our correlated courses. The forecast this week is not calling for much wind but a seaside, chilly, cloudy, location with possible rain on the way, feels like a great fit for a Scotsman, who has also been lights-out at the Scottish Open, finishing 1-2 the last two seasons. I worry that he’s never been to Pebble Beach before but again, this environment is one that I believe will suit him quite nicely. Macintyre performs very well on the par 4s and 5s, and has a terrific short game, ranking 14th on Tour last season in Scrambling and 35th for SG: Putting.
Thomas Detry (110-1)
This is the second time this season I have taken a stab with the man from Belgium. Similar to a few others on this week’s card, I believe Detry has been playing his best golf recently. He comes off of a 15th-place finish at Torrey Pines last week and was fourth here at Pebble last year. He’s also finished 12th at Silverado and has been runner-up at Port Royal Golf Club. He ranked 10th on Tour last season for SG: Putting and last week, he was eighth in the field for Greens in Regulation.
Who Chirp Golf players are picking this week
Top 3 Chirp Golf player picks for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.Chirp
A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Brady Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on X at @LasVegasGolfer.
