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 Hero World Challenge, which gets underway Thursday in the Bahamas. 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.
We wrap up our 2024 PGA Tour coverage here in this column this week with the Hero World Challenge, taking place at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas, and I promise you, I am not intentionally trying to pick who will finish runner-up for a fourth-straight week.
Theoretically, our chances of landing on an outright winner ought to be better. This field is only 20 players deep, and if it helps, I did land correctly on Scottie Scheffler here last year at around +400. It is a loaded field with all participants ranking inside the top 40 in the OWGR. Scheffler is back to defend his title and he’ll be joined by Ludvig Aberg, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns and Sahith Theegala, among others. Unfortunately, this week’s tournament host, Tiger Woods, will not be in the field due to injury.
Albany Golf Club is an Ernie Els design, opening in 2010, and first began hosting this event in 2015. It is a par 72, measuring just under 7,500 yards in length. The set up is unique with five par 5s, five par 3s, and eight par 4s. The fairways are on the narrower side, the greens are on the smaller side, and everything is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass.
The fairways are bordered by sandy waste areas and water. There are dunes as high as 30 feet tall. Els has compared it to both British Open-style courses and Australian sand belt golf courses. We don’t have ShotLink data recorded for this event but here is a look at the list of winners at this golf course.
2023 – Scottie Scheffler
2022 – Viktor Hovland
2021 – Viktor Hovland
2019 – Henrik Stenson
2018 – Jon Rahm
2017 – Rickie Fowler
2016 – Hideki Matsuyama
2015 – Bubba Watson
A few things jump out at me from this list. Excellent ball striking, total driving, British Open success, and WM Phoenix Open success.
The skill sets I looked at this week were Strokes Gained: Approach, Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, and Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass). I looked at Good Drives Gained, Scrambling, and Par 5 Scoring. And finally, I looked at Hole Proximity from 175 yards to over 200 yards. Obviously, we have five par 5s. The five par 3s average over 190 yards each and five of the eight par 4s measure between 450-500 yards. It all adds up to these players facing quite a few shots in that 175-200+ neighborhood.
As far as correlated courses, it was a bit of a challenge this week because I believe many of the courses that make sense are not often frequented by many players in this field, like El Cardonal in Los Cabos, TPC Craig Ranch, Port Royal in Bermuda and Grand Reserve in Puerto Rico. But I do find some likeness to TPC Southwind where all these guys tee it up for the FedEx St. Jude Championship. We mentioned familiarity with Open Championship courses and of course, TPC Scottsdale, home to the WM Phoenix Open.
Scottie Scheffler (+225)
Scheffler’s odds have been cut nearly in half this go-around but I still don’t believe it is an unfair price. It is basically half of what his price would be in a normal Tour event, yet the field is over 85 percent smaller in this case. Yes, not all 150+ players in a regular Tour event have a great shot at winning, but this Hero World Challenge field is weaker than what it has been in years past too. Bottom line, Scottie is clearly the best player in this field by a wide margin and I’m okay eating the short price. Over the last 36 rounds, Scheffler is No. 1 in this field in three categories I considered this week and is second in three other categories. Some might argue that he hasn’t played in quite a while. Well, the same was true last year when he won and similar in the two trips prior when he finished runner-up each time. He’s won in Phoenix twice, comes off a fourth-place finish at TPC Southwind back in August and has two top-10s at the Open Championship.
Ludvig Aberg (11-1)
Obviously, Aberg is one of the best players in the world but what led me to pick him here is the ball-striking, total-driving look that all or most of the past champions have. Aberg is fourth on Tour in Total Driving and 25th in Ball Striking. Over the last 36 rounds, he is No. 1 in this field in Hole Proximity from 175-200 yards and sixth from 200 yards or more. He is also an excellent scrambler and putter. We first saw him post knee surgery a couple weeks ago at the RSM Classic, defending his title. He was shaky at times but also shot two rounds of 64 over the four days. I believe he’ll be in the mix here and could give Scheffler a run.
Sam Burns (16-1)
Burns is No. 2 in this field over the last 36 rounds for SG: Putting (Bermudagrass). That has always been his best surface and it shows with a recent fifth-place finish at TPC Southwind and a third and a sixth-place finish in his last two trips to TPC Scottsdale. His last four starts on Tour have been 12-5-2-12. And no, I’m not worried that this is his first time playing this tournament because we have seen others win on debut, in Hovland in 2021 and Rahm in 2018.
Let’s see if we can close out the year with one in the win column — and we’ll see you back here in January, when they tee it up at Kapalua for the Sentry.
Who Chirp Golf players are picking this week
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