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, a free-to-play mobile platform that features a range of games with enticing prizes, giving fans all kinds of ways to engage in the action without risking any money.
The run of beautiful coastal golf continues this week on the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing as we go from Torrey Pines in Southern California to iconic Pebble Beach in Northern California. It was a tough near-miss for us in this column last week with Nicolai Hojgaard (50-1) coming up one stroke short and finishing runner-up to Matthieu Pavon, the fourth consecutive triple-digit long shot to cash a winning ticket this season.
In 2024, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is a Signature Event. Eighty of the best players in the world are here for what will be a limited field, no-cut tournament. For the third week in a row, we will have a rotation of golf courses in play but that will not include Monterey Peninsula Country Club this year, which had been a part of this tournament since 2010. The 2024 edition will see rounds played on both Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill on Thursday and Friday, with Saturday and Sunday reserved solely for Pebble Beach.
Both of these courses are short by PGA Tour standards at right around 7,000 yards, and both play to a par 72. Spyglass Hill is the narrower golf course of the two with primarily tree-lined fairways and only a handful of holes that are exposed to the Carmel coastline. The fairways at Pebble are wide and will likely play even wider this week with rain in the forecast for all four days of the tournament. The greens at both courses are a Poa Annua surface, just like last week at Torrey Pines, but it is notable that the size of the greens at Pebble Beach are the smallest targets on Tour. Hitting greens in regulation will go a long way toward success this week, as will Scrambling, because there will be plenty of cases in which a green is missed and a player must get up and down to save par.
In recent history, we have seen Strokes Gained: Putting and Strokes Gained: Approach emerge as two of the most important metrics in determining success at this tournament. Driving Accuracy and Driving Distance aren’t nearly as much of a factor. I mentioned Greens in Regulation and Scrambling being important and I also consider scoring on the par 4s to be a key area of focus. The majority of the par 4s here measure between 350-450 yards. For correlated courses, I looked at TPC Southwind, St. George’s Golf & Country Club in Canada, Port Royal in Bermuda, Sea Island, home to the RSM Classic, TPC Craig Ranch, and Colonial Country Club, the long-time home of the Charles Schwab Challenge.
Sam Burns (45-1)
Three weeks ago, it looked like Burns was going to win the American Express but it was not to be when his tee ball found the water on the 71st hole of the tournament. He settled for a sixth-place finish with that final round 71 being his only round not in the 60s this season. He closed last season with three Top 15 finishes in his last four starts, so while he has not been perfect, it appears he’s getting close. Speaking of water, Burns has been one of the better players in this field in rainy conditions. Over the last 24 rounds, Burns is 19th in this field in Scrambling, 10th on the Par 4s between 350-400 yards, and 25th in SG: Putting (Poa Annua). Burns ranks first in SG: Total on the correlated courses I used this week with a win at Colonial, a runner-up at TPC Craig Ranch, and a fourth place finish at the Canadian Open at St. George’s in 2022.
Byeong Hun An (47-1)
Having attended Cal Berkeley in Northern California, I’m sure An is very familiar with the Poa Annua putting surface and like Burns, he’s also proven to be a good player in wet conditions. An has kicked off 2024 with a fourth place finish at The Sentry and lost in a playoff at the Sony Open. He ranks third in this field over the last 24-rounds on Par 4s between 400-450 yards and he’s eighth in hole proximity from 125-150 yards. An is also seventh in this field for SG: Total on courses of less than 7,200 yards.
Beau Hossler (60-1)
Hossler finished the 2023 season on a roll and he’s picked up where he left off in 2024, finishing sixth last week at the Farmers Insurance Open. Some of our key statistics this week: last week at Torrey Pines, Hossler was 11th in the field for SG: Putting, 14th on approach, 22nd in Scrambling, and 17th for Greens in Regulation. These numbers are all very similar to where he ranks in the field this week in the stats I considered. His last two trips to Pebble Beach have produced 11th and third place finishes.
Denny McCarthy (104-1)
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am format: All the 2024 changes you need to know
It wouldn’t be golf betting in 2024 if we didn’t have a triple-digit long shot on our card, right? Like Hossler, McCarthy too has been very good in his last two trips to the Monterey Peninsula, finishing fourth and 12th in his last two starts at this tournament. He also has three Top 10 finishes to his credit at the RSM Classic and two at the Bermuda Championship at Port Royal. Over the last 24 rounds, McCarthy is No. 1 in this field for SG: Putting (Poa Annua) and is third in Scrambling.
Alex Noren (135-1)
More triple-digits and more good short game. Over the last 24 rounds, Noren ranks fifth in this field for Scrambling. He is also ninth in Greens in Regulation Gained, eighth in Good Drives Gained, and is 14th on the Par 4’s between 400-450 yards. We also know that he can handle the Poa Annua, proven by his loss to Jason Day in a six-hole playoff at Torrey Pines in 2018. Noren has fared well at the correlated courses too, finishing 10th and 18th in his career at Sea Island, he’s taken 12th and 21st at TPC Craig Ranch for the Byron Nelson, and has finished 15th and runner-up at Port Royal in Bermuda.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout (135-1)
Bezuidenhout is yet another player on our card at triple-digits odds who owns an excellent short game but if you look at our plays this week, they are all good putters and scramblers, they all play well on other golf courses with similar characteristics to Pebble Beach, and they all come in with either good course form, good current form, or both. Bezuidenhout is no exception. Three weeks ago, he finished runner-up at the American Express. He was seventh in the field that week for SG: Approach, 10th in SG: Putting, 18th in Greens in Regulation, and No. 1 in Scrambling. In his only other start at Pebble, Bezuidenhout finished 14th in 2022, ranking fourth in the field that year for putting.
To begin this PGA Tour season, I’ve been on three players in four weeks that have finished one shot shy of a playoff or potential playoff. Sahith Theegala (Sentry), Russell Henley (Sony), and Hojgaard last week. If 2024 deals us a fifth-straight long shot winner this week, let it be one of ours.
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