Texas Children’s Houston Open betting guide: 7 picks our 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 Texas Children’s Houston Open which gets underway Thursday in Texas. 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.

From Hawaii to California, from Arizona, to Mexico, to Florida, and now on to Texas, the PGA Tour has made 12 stops so far in 2025, with just two more to go before it reaches Augusta, Georgia. It feels like a three-month version of “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and Wally World awaits when we reach Magnolia Lane.

With the Masters now just a fortnight away, the anticipation seems to have transitioned into something palpable. Players are setting up their final two weeks of prep to their liking. The Champions’ Dinner menu has been published. The oddsboard is being bet into shape.

As we near ever closer and the pieces begin to fall into place, two final golf tournaments make up a large part of the puzzle, deep in the heart of Texas. We begin this week at Memorial Park for the Texas Children’s Houston Open with the game’s two biggest headliners, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, taking part in the festivities.

Memorial Park is a Tom Doak design and it is an excellent tune-up for major championship golf. It is a very long par 70, stretching to nearly 7,500 yards. The Tour returned to this venue in 2020 after a lengthy hiatus and Doak’s multi-million dollar renovation to the golf course, completed in 2019. This will be the fifth straight year that we are back at Memorial Park for another edition of the Houston Open. Carlos Ortiz, Jason Kokrak, Tony Finau, and Stephan Jaeger are your past winners.

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The course features large, overseeded Bermudagrass greens with closely mown run-off areas, making for a good pre-test prior to Augusta National. Fairways are wide and contoured and the rough is of average height. It is one of the more difficult tests on the PGA Tour rotation. Over the last four years, the average winning score has been less than 13 under par. There are significant winds in the forecast this week in the Houston area, along with possible rain on Thursday and Friday. The winning score proposition bet this week at the Westgate Superbook in Las Vegas is Under/Over 268.5, which translates to 11.5 under par.

Distance off the tee takes precedence to accuracy this week but shorter, more accurate drivers have fared quite well here in the past too. I emphasized Par 4 Scoring, Scrambling, Strokes Gained: Approach, and Greens in Regulation Gained this week. I also looked at Bogey Avoidance, SG: Ball Striking, Hole Proximity from 200+ yards, SG: Tee to Green, and SG: Putting (Bermudagrass).

As for correlated courses, I felt there were definite similarities with Southern Hills (2022 PGA Championship), Winged Foot (2020 U.S. Open), and Pinehurst No. 2 (2024 U.S. Open). I also looked at the Renaissance Club (Scottish Open), Narashino Country Club (Zozo Championship), and Silverado in Napa, home to the Procore Championship.

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

Maverick McNealy (50-1)

We have been on McNealy a couple of times already this season and with good reason. I believe he makes sense again this week with past finishes here of 20-19-27. He has also been 12th at the Zozo Championship, 16th at the Scottish Open, and has a runner-up finish at Silverado. Having finished runner-up earlier this season at Torrey Pines, we know McNealy can handle a big, long, golf course. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 19th in this field for SG: Ball Striking, 30th for SG: Approach, 14th on the Par 4s measuring 450-500 yards, and 14th in SG: Putting (Bermudagrass). After missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and at the Players Championship, I like that he comes in well-rested and should be ready to get back to the form that has seen him already record three top-10 finishes this season.

Thomas Detry (50-1)

Another guy we have been on previously this season — unfortunately, not when he won in Phoenix — but this is another big-boy golf course, the type that Detry has been known to flourish at in the past. In fact, he was runner-up here in Houston last year. Like McNealy, Detry too has done very well at Torrey Pines. He was 14th at the U.S. Open last year at Pinehurst and also, like McNealy, he can really putt. After missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and at the Players, Detry posted a promising 22nd place finish last week at the Valspar Championship.

Alex Smalley (60-1)

Smalley had been keeping a fairly heavy schedule, playing four out of the last five weeks, with multiple top-25 finishes already this season. He missed the cut last week at the Valspar Championship (on the bad side of the weather draw) and I’m happy to see him get a couple extra days off. He’s been as high as fourth here at Houston in the past and also has a 10th place finish at the Renaissance Club. He’s currently playing the best golf of his career and ranks especially high in nearly all our categories this week.

Keith Mitchell (66-1)

Mitchell is always a good fit when much of the handicap has to do with work off the tee. He is one of the very best when it comes to ball striking and driving the golf ball. He ranks 10th on Tour in Greens in Regulation and is 27th in Par 4 Scoring. He finished ninth here in 2022 and has missed only one cut in seven starts this year.

Harris English (80-1)

We landed correctly on English earlier this season at Torrey Pines. He finished fourth at the U.S. Open in 2020 at Winged Foot. He’s a tremendous putter and scrambler and with results like this, it tells me he can handle the length of this track as well. He’s only played here once before but did shoot three rounds in the 60s. He also ranks fifth in this field on the 450-500 yard Par 4s over the last 36-rounds.

Nick Taylor (90-1)

McNealy won at the end of 2024 in November. English, Detry, and now, Taylor, have all won in 2025. Taylor just missed the cut for the first time in eight starts, two weeks ago at the Players Championship. He has three top-10 finishes at Silverado in Napa and while length off the tee is not his strong suit, he is especially accurate and is a premium ball striker. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 15th in this field for SG: Ball Striking, sixth for SG: Approach, and is 10th for Greens in Regulation Gained. He is also fourth on the 450-500 yard Par 4s.

Nicolai Hojgaard (100-1)

I go back to Torrey Pines, where Hojgaard finished runner-up in 2024. It is not necessarily a correlated course for us this week but it is a test of length off the tee on a lengthy golf course, like we have here at Memorial Park. Former Houston Open champions, Tony Finau and Stephan Jaeger, have both done very well at Torrey Pines. Hojgaard has also finished sixth at the Scottish Open. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks sixth in this field for SG: Approach, fourth in Bogey Avoidance, and is 10th in Hole Proximity on approach shots from 200 yards or more.

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