With the Phoenix Open open complete, the stars of the PGA Tour head to Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles this week for the 2023 Genesis Invitational, where Tiger Woods will make his long-awaited return.
But we have our eyes on another former Masters champ as our long-shot bet to win. Here’s our pick, the betting favorites and everything else you need to know for the week.
Genesis Invitational odds: Long-shot bet
There are many types of long shots when betting golf tournaments. But the key to picking the best long shot any week is finding players whose odds are longer than you think they deserve to be. For us this week, that man is Adam Scott.
The ‘embarrassing reason’ Adam Scott won’t be at the Phoenix Open
The 2013 Masters champion’s odds-to-win the Genesis are +5500, which are better odds than you usually will find among our long-shot picks. But, crucially, it can be argued they are worse than Scott deserves based on his past performance.
Scott’s last four starts at Riviera look like this: T4, T38, 1 and T7. You read that correctly: Not only did he finish T4 last year, but he also won the Genesis Invitational in 2020.
And while he’s only played in two PGA Tour events this season (29th at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and T21 at the Sony Open), Scott had a solid year last season, missing only two cuts in 20 tries and collecting five top-10s, four of which were top-5s.
All of that makes Scott a great long shot pick this week. Should he pull off a victory, he could turn a $10 bet into $550.
How last week’s long shot fared
At last week’s WM Phoenix Open, we identified Rickie Fowler as our top long shot bet. At the time, Fowler had long odds of +8000, which improved to +6600 before the start of the tournament on Thursday.
While Fowler didn’t pull off the victory, he played quite well, outperforming his long odds to finish the tournament at 10 under, nine shots off Scottie Scheffler’s winning score and good enough for a T10, which means if you bet on him to finish in the top 10 as we did, you made a little money.
PAST RESULTS
2023 WM Phoenix Open: Rickie Fowler (Odds: +8000; Finish: T10)
2023 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: Beau Hossler (Odds +8000; Finish: T11)
2023 Farmers Insurance Open: Rickie Fowler (Odds: +10000; Finish: T11)
2023 Sony Open in Hawaii: Kurt Kitayama (Odds: +5000; Finish: T73)
2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions: Ryan Brehm (Odds: +75000; Finish: T35)
Genesis Invitational odds: The favorites
With all the top PGA Tour stars teeing it up again this week, the betting favorites share a lot of similarities with the very top of the Official World Golf Ranking.
World No. 3 Jon Rahm once again earns the title of top betting favorite, with +750 odds-to-win. Last week’s champion and new World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is tied for second with No. 2 Rory McIlroy at +1000.
Tour Confidential: Tiger Woods’ return, designated events, Augusta changes
Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele, who both had solid performances at the WM Phoenix Open, come in tied for third with +1600 odds-to-win.
Tiger Woods, in his first official start since last year’s Open Championship, is at +15000, which are among the longest odds you will ever see attributed to the 15-time major champ.
You can see the top 20 in Genesis Invitational betting odds as of Monday afternoon at the bottom of this post, or head over to BetMGM to see the full list of odds and bets for this week.
2023 Genesis Invitational betting odds (Top 15 and ties)
Jon Rahm (+750)
Rory McIlroy (+1000)
Scottie Scheffler (+1000)
Justin Thomas (+1600)
Xander Schauffele (+1600)
Max Homa (+1800)
Tony Finau (+1800)
Collin Morikawa (+2200)
Patrick Cantlay (+2500)
Sungjae Im (+2500)
Sam Burns (+2800)
Viktor Hovland (+2800)
Cameron Young (+3300)
Hideki Matsuyama (+4000)
Jason Day (+4000)
Jordan Spieth (+4000)
Matt Fitzpatrick (+4000)
Tom Kim (+4000)
Tyrrell Hatton (+4000)
Will Zalatoris (+4000)
