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 Valero Texas Open which gets underway Thursday in San Antonio. 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.
This year marks the 10th consecutive year that the Valero Texas Open will provide the final tune-up prior to The Masters. The tournament dates back to 1922 but began being held at its current location, TPC San Antonio, in 2010.
In case you missed it, we have been tuning up for the Masters as well with five plays already in-pocket.
The Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio is a very demanding Greg Norman design. It’s a standard par 72, stretching to over 7,400 yards, where driving accuracy trumps driving distance. The overseeded Bermudagrass greens are undulated and on the slower side to protect from the frequent Texas winds. Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, Approach, Par 5 Scoring, Greens in Regulation, and Scrambling have proven over the years to be some of the most important elements for success at this course.
The four par 5s, as a collection, are among the most difficult on Tour. The fairways are relatively narrow and tree-lined but the rough is not especially long.
The weather is an interesting factor this week, with the forecast calling for temperatures anywhere from the high 60s to the low 90s over the four days. It appears that the wind will pick up on Friday and through the weekend and both Friday and Saturday are predicting a chance of thunderstorms. Depending on what the weather does, we’ve seen winning scores here range from 12 under to 20 under par. The Westgate SuperBook here in Las Vegas has set the Under/Over proposition this week at 270.5, meaning 17.5 under par.
Correlated courses are hard to come by this week as TPC San Antonio is a very unique layout. I do believe similarities and crossover success exist however with TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, Port Royal Golf Club (home to the Bermuda Championship), and Silverado in Napa (Procore Championship).
There are 27 players in this field who are already in next week at Augusta National. The rest of the field will be trying for the “Win and Get In.” The handicap of trying to figure out who is a better bet this week is a tough one — going with a player who is already in next week’s field versus a player who is not. I did swerve the big-name favorites in Ludvig Aberg, Patrick Cantlay, and Tommy Fleetwood, but ended up with five selections who are not yet in this year’s Masters and one that already is — all unintentionally. While it is an interesting twist, I stuck to the process as per normal and did not pay it much attention.
Denny McCarthy (30-1)
McCarthy is the shortest shot on our card this week and is already qualified for next week’s trip to Georgia. He lost in a playoff here last year to Akshay Bhatia and has two additional top-20 finishes at this event. He also pencils out as one of the very best in the field at our correlated courses. His short game is one of the best in the sport and he is very solid on approach and in Bogey Avoidance. McCarthy is 8-for-8 in cuts made this season and the results of his last five starts have been 16-5-48-18-14.
Bud Cauley (45-1)
Cauley suffered major injuries from a car crash in 2018 and has just been making his way back on to the Tour in the last few seasons. He’s always been a very good player and that is starting to show itself once again with consecutive sixth and fourth place finishes at the Players and Valspar Championships coming into this week. He has previously finished top 10 here, at TPC Summerlin, and in Napa. He is good just about across the board in the stats this week, including sixth in this field for Greens in Regulation Gained over the last 36 rounds.
Lee Hodges (66-1)
Nothing nearly as serious, but Hodges is returning from injury as well, nursing a rib injury that has kept him on the sidelines since the WM Phoenix Open. Like Cauley, Hodges too was a collegiate golf star at University of Alabama. He returned action last week in Houston and finished 11th. That is after two top-10 finishes already this season. Hodges finished sixth here in 2023 and as a part of the Korn Ferry Tour, also took 14th here back in 2020, when another Alabama player, Davis Riley, happened to win. He is another player that is incredibly solid in the stats this week, including eighth in this field for SG: Par 5s.
Andrew Novak (66-1)
It has been a bit of a mixed bag with Novak lately. Normally a premier ball striker who ranked 23rd on Tour last season for SG: Approach, currently ranks 137th in that category. In 11 starts so far this season, he has missed six cuts. At the same time, he’s finished top-15 in two Signature Events and took third at the Farmer’s Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. We’re banking on the good Novak to show up this week, one who has finished ninth here before, 24th in the 2020 KFT event, and was runner-up last fall at the Bermuda Championship. Two important areas have been excellent over the last 36 rounds – fifth in this field for Scrambling and third in SG: Par 5s.
Rico Hoey (66-1)
Hoey is No. 1 on Tour in Total Driving, ranking 51st in Driving Distance and 16th in Driving Accuracy. Over the last 36 rounds, Hoey is 33rd in this field for SG: Approach and is eighth for Greens in Regulation Gained. He’s had very good success at the correlated courses and comes off an 11th-place finish last week in Houston, where he closed well, shooting a round of 64 on Sunday. Hoey’s weakness is with the putter but historically, we have seen a number of very average to below average putters win here in the past.
Victor Perez (90-1)
The Frenchman has made four straight cuts and his last three finishes have been 18-22-18. Last week in Houston, Perez opened with a round of 66 and finished with a round of 65. He ranks 13th on Tour in Driving Accuracy and over the last 36 rounds, is 18th in this field for Greens in Regulation Gained. He’s top 35 in both Scrambling and SG: Par 5s, and ranks fifth for Bogey Avoidance.
Who Chirp Golf users are picking this week
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