Players Championship betting guide: 7 picks our gambling expert loves

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 Players Championship which gets underway Thursday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. 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.

Often heralded as golf’s “fifth major,” I prefer these days, sans LIV players in the field, to tab the Players Championship as golf’s greatest appetizer. This Thursday marks exactly four weeks until the opening round of the Masters, making the Players, the PGA Tour’s crown jewel, the undisputed world’s best precursor.

Taking place in the backyard of PGA Tour headquarters in Ponta Vedra Beach, Fla., the Players Championship has been held at TPC Sawgrass, one of golf’s most famous and widely recognizable venues, since 1974. Arguably his “Mona Lisa,” Hall of Fame golf architect Pete Dye designed the course and it has proved to be one of the best tests the players face all year. Truly, half of the holes set up for a preferred draw and the other half, for a fade. No two holes run in the same direction and 17 of the 18 holes feature a water hazard. Every type of player has won here before and from every spot on the oddsboard, from Tiger Woods, Matt Kuchar and Craig Perks to Fred Funk, Scottie Scheffler and Webb Simpson. The winner is especially difficult to predict because the golf course does not favor one discernible skill set but rather asks players to do just about everything well over the course of four days.

Some yardage has been added to the property recently and the 2025 edition will stretch to roughly 7,350 yards. The course plays to a par 72, features relatively narrow fairways, thick rough, and smaller sized Bermudagrass greens. Like so many Dye designs, the golf course is very positional, requiring players to find the best spots that avoid the trouble and allow for scoring opportunities. Miss your mark, and you can be staring at bogey or worse. Let’s not forget the closing stretch. Holes 16-18 are some of the very best in the game, with 17 being maybe the world’s most famous par 3, the island green.

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All of this being said, there are certainly some skill sets to focus on in putting together one’s handicap. It is interesting to note, however, that course history doesn’t seem to mean much. If you look at former winners of this event, most of them have also missed multiple cuts. It again speaks to Dye’s design. Just about everyone’s resume here is quite haphazard.

As we have spelled out over the last couple of weeks, the Florida Swing is synonymous with ball striking and I have looked at that once again along with Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, Fairways Gained, and SG: Approach. I have also looked at Bogey Avoidance, Scrambling, SG: Putting (Bermudagrass), and scoring on the Par 5s as well as on the Par 4s measuring 450-500 yards.

While it is one of the more difficult tournaments to predict, the correlated courses do provide some strong clues. Players that perform well on Pete Dye designs, seem to do so over and over again. TPC River Highlands (Travelers Championship) and Harbour Town (RBC Heritage) show a great deal of crossover success with TPC Sawgrass. A Donald Ross design, Sedgefield Country Club is another, home to the Wyndham Championship. Finally, I looked at the Copperhead course at Innisbrook — where we will be next week for the Valspar Championship, Sea Island (RSM Classic), East Lake (Tour Championship), and El Camaleon, the former home of the World Wide Technologies Championship at Mayakoba.

I have played each of the following selections for both an outright win and a top-20 finish.

Collin Morikawa (14-1)

I thought maybe with last week’s tough loss at Bay Hill, there would be some anti-Morikawa sentiment out there but it doesn’t seem to be the case as he looks to be a fairly popular choice to be right back in the mix again here in Ponta Vedra Beach. I’ve seen prices as low as less than 10-1 on Morikawa this week. I am not betting on Scheffler to three-peat, and I don’t want Rory. I thought about going back to Justin Thomas, as he was spot on for two days last week and then really crumbled over the weekend. He’s close but I’m not ready to go back to him just yet. Of those at the top of the board — or anywhere for that matter — Morikawa makes a ton of sense.

If there is anything that we can lean on in the handicap of the Players, it is probably current form and nobody has it much better than Morikawa, with two runner-ups already this season. He also finished runner-up at East Lake last year at the Tour Championship, has finished as high as 13th here, has two top-10 finishes at Harbour Town, and has top-15s at Mayakoba and TPC River Highlands. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 10th in this field for SG: Ball Striking, is fifth for both Bogey Avoidance and Fairways Gained, and ranks 14th in Scrambling.

Sepp Straka (42-1)

Don’t look now but Straka has ascended to the 13th best player in the world according to the OWGR. He really is emerging as someone in that conversation. Straka already has a win this season on a Pete Dye design: The Stadium Course at the American Express. He comes in this week off of 11th- and fifth-place finishes to begin the Florida Swing. He’s been 16th and ninth here at Sawgrass before, has two top-5 finishes at Harbour Town, a 15th at the Wyndham, and top-10s at both River Highlands and East Lake. Over the last 36 rounds, Straka ranks fourth in this field for SG: Approach and is fourth on both the Par 5s and the Par 4s measuring 450-500 yards. He ranks second on Tour in Greens in Regulation, 11th in Driving Accuracy, and is 50th for SG: Putting.

Aaron Rai (50-1)

Three things jump off the page to me when assessing Aaron Rai. Ball striker, laser-like accuracy, and a win last season at the Wyndham Championship. That alone is a pretty good starter kit for possible success at the Players, where he’s finished 35th and 19th in his only two tries. Rai is sixth on Tour in Driving Accuracy and 61st in SG: Putting. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 23rd in this field for both SG: Approach and SG: Ball Striking. 

Daniel Berger (55-1)

Sometimes we forget about a guy that was a top-15 player in the world just a few years ago before injury kept him off the Tour for nearly two seasons. Having attended Florida State, Berger has an affinity for Bermudagrass greens and has had a ton of success in the Sunshine State. He’s finished ninth here twice and also fourth twice and runner-up at the Cognizant Classic. He’s been third at Harbour Town, has two top-5 finishes at TPC River Highlands, and was runner-up just last November at Sea Island. That world class form of a few years ago is finally beginning to show itself once again as he has two top-25 finishes this season, a top-15, and a runner-up last month in Phoenix. Berger ranks second in this field for SG: Off the Tee and on the 450-500 yard Par 4s over the last 36 rounds. He is eighth in this field for Bogey Avoidance, seventh for Fairways Gained, and is 18th for SG: Ball Striking.

J.T. Poston (100-1)

The theme continues here with accuracy-based ball strikers and in the case of Poston, it is another guy who has tremendous history on the correlated courses to go along with an excellent short game. Poston has twice finished 22nd here at Sawgrass. He’s been seventh and a winner at the Wyndham. Four times has Poston finished top-10 at Harbour Town, he’s finished fifth at Sea Island, and runner-up at the Travelers Championship. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 25th in this field for SG: Ball Striking and 30th for SG: Off the Tee. He is 35th for SG: Approach and ranks 15th for SG: Par 5s. The current form is solid too, with a 12th at the American Express and a 16th in Phoenix.

J.J. Spaun (110-1)

We’ve talked about the randomness of the Players Championship, so I feel we have to have some live longshots on the card. For every Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy, and Davis Love III, there is a Stephen Ames, Tim Clark, and Jerry Kelly — all of whom have had tremendous success at this venue. We were on Spaun two weeks ago when he finished runner-up at the Cognizant Classic. He is currently having the best year of his career with that finish two weeks ago, a third at the Sony Open in January and a 15th-place finish at the Farmers insurance Open at Torrey Pines. He is a ball striker extraordinaire, ranking 11th in this field for SG: Ball Striking over the last 36 rounds and second for SG: Approach. He is 22nd on Tour in Greens in Regulation and seventh in this field for Bogey Avoidance.

Joel Dahmen (150-1)

Dahmen rounds out our three choices for triple-digit bombs or live longshots, if you will, and he too is playing some of the best golf of his career with two top-10 finishes in six starts this season. He is yet another choice of ours that fits the accuracy-based, ball-striking mold. Over the last 36 rounds, Dahmen ranks 16th in this field for SG: Ball Striking, 20th for SG: Approach, and is 17th for Fairways Gained. He’s finished 11th and 12th here at the Players in the past. He’s been 12th and 16th at Harbour Town and has top-5 finishes at both Mayakoba and Sea Island.

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