Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, where we share our favorite bets for the upcoming action. This time around, it’s the World Wide Technology Championship, which gets underway Thursday at El Cardonal Golf Course, in Cabo San Lucas. Along with our 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.
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Tiger Woods isn’t playing, but they’re playing Tiger’s course.
For the first time since it opened, in 2014, El Cardonal, in Cabo, the first public-access course by Tigers Woods and his team at TGR Design, will have network cameras on it when it welcomes its first PGA Tour event this week.
The World Wide Technology Championship is a stop in the Fall Series of the Tour calendar, so the tournament won’t feature a long parade of A-listers. But enough stars are on hand to give the event some sparkle.
Ludvig Aberg is the favorite, at +900, followed by Cameron Young (+1,200), the 2021-2022 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, who is in search of his first Tour win. Sahith Theegala, a fan-favorite who recently captured his first title, sits just below Young on the betting board, at +1,600.
Golf prognostication is a tricky business, all the more so at events that lack an obvious alpha, where the talent is spread evenly across the range. But, as the man says, it is what it is. It’s our job to offer picks, and we’ve got three: a favorite, a contender, and a long shot.
Favorite: Sahith Theegala, +1,600
Theegala came close on several occasions before breaking through at last month’s Fortinet Championship. With the weight of expectations lightened, we look for him to play with a spring in his step. Though his driver has been misbehaving of late (he is 130th on Tour in strokes gained off the tee), the wide fairways of El Cardonal should offer more forgiveness.
Contender: Luke List, +3,000
From tee to green, List ranks among the class of this week’s field. The glaring weakness in his game is putting. But putting is streaky. Any Tour pro can catch fire with the flatstick, as List did when he won in Mississippi last month. At these odds, it’s too much to say that List is undervalued. But he’s also a player with a high ceiling, if he can find his way around the greens.
Long shot: KH Lee, +5,500
After slumbering through the late summer, Lee has shown signs of life in recent starts, including a T14 in Napa and a T7 in Las Vegas. A two-time winner who, despite a mid-season slump, notched four top 10s this season, Lee merits more respect this week than the odds reflect.
Who Chirp users like this week
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