We just finished our second major off the year, and normally that would mean some time off in other sports. Golf doesn’t roll like that, which means we have another tournament to break down, even if the level of competition has severely dropped off. The Corales Puntacana Championship is about to tee off with a field of mostly lesser-known players looking to break through and grab a PGA Tour victory. This means it’s a wide-open affair, and we could see a guy with massive odds take this one down.
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PGA Betting: Futures/Outright Winners
Denny McCarthy 35-1
With a tournament like this there isn’t anyone who can be considered a strong favorite given how uncertain the field is up top. Most of the favorites have never even won on tour before, so to assume they will take down this tournament is a little much. That means we have a wide-open field full of interesting names to attack, and McCarthy is one of them.
It’s not to say McCarthy isn’t amongst the better players in this field, but he still is up to 35-1 across the PGA betting market. He has a fourth-place finish at this event from two years ago, and it is obvious that he is going to be one of the best putters on tour for years to come. Normally those big-time putters are so poor tee to green it doesn’t allow them to get in contention, but McCarthy lately has shown promise with the ball striking. He has gained on the approach in four of five events, and if you pair that up with his putting, that is the recipe for him possibly breaking through.
Henrik Stenson 40-1
This is going to be a quick summary, as there is little to point to in Stenson’s form that would make you interested in betting him. It has been quite a 2020, with only a handful of tournaments played and not much form to speak of. I was actually surprised to see him deciding to come down and play this event, but now that he is here we have to at least consider him.
Tournaments aren’t played on long-term form, but there is no argument that Stenson outclasses this entire field with his resume. He has played in hundreds of events with fields much stronger than this, and his odds are usually shorter than 40-1. There are reasonable questions about whether Stenson has the same caliber of game from the past, but against a field like this it is an easy backing in an outright market where we do not care about the downside.
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Top Five
Charley Hoffman 8.5-1
I am going to take a shot on a top five here with Hoffman, who is another player with a game possibly trending in the right direction. He comes into this event off an uneventful 56th at the Safeway, but before that the results were very boom or bust. He had two top-15 finishes at the Northern Trust and the Workday, while a pair of missed cuts were also included in the recent form. That speaks to the volatility he plays with, but that can be a positive when talking about top-five bets.
His stats are all over the place with no consistency in any single aspect of his game. That’s not to say he isn’t showing form, with almost seven strokes gained on the approach a few weeks ago at the Northern Trust. The putter is always the wild card with Hoffman, but even that is boom or bust lately, with an explosion of 6.1 shots gained putting at Workday and some other poor efforts. All of this adds up to a wide range of outcomes, and that makes this +850 price appealing in this spot.
Matchup
There are a bunch of individual matchups to break down if you are looking for less volatility. Another reason to bet a matchup is you are looking to short a specific player, and you can take several head-to-heads with him in there hoping he doesn’t find the weekend.
Emiliano Grillo (-120) vs. Adam Schenk
The matchup I’m going to here has Grillo, hoping to get in the mix against a weak field, and Adam Schenk, who is looking for some more upside after making a string of cuts without any major results. Both of these players are tour regulars, and in a field like this the expectations should be much higher than simply finding the weekend.
Grillo is coming off a 29th-place finish at the Safeway and a fourth straight made cut. It was the same old story for Grillo in Napa with 8.8 strokes gained tee to green but 3.3 strokes lost putting, which cripples the upside. He will need to try and hover around zero with the putter because his ball striking is that good where he doesn’t need that many putts to fall to be effective. The game seems to be in good shape, though, and tee to green he may be the best in the entire field.
On the other side is Schenk, who is establishing himself as a cut maker without much upside. He is working off six straight made cuts, which is impressive, but the results haven’t fully clicked. Over that stretch his best finish was just 30th, and on the weekends he hasn’t been able to get much going despite cashing a check. The stats show a consistently positive tee-to-green game but nothing that really pops which is in line with the results.
With this sitting at just -120 for Grillo, I am willing to back him knowing he should sail through this cut just on his talent alone. Schenk, as I mentioned, should also find the weekend, but that lack of upside could once again come into play if Grillo is able to move up the leaderboard. To me Grillo is just in a different tier of player, and with him just sitting as a slight favorite, it is more than enough for me to take a position on this head-to-head matchup.
Quick Notes
If you are unfamiliar with PGA betting or are just looking to dive into it for the first time, make sure to try and understand each type of bet and how to properly allocate bankroll for each. When choosing a few outrights at long odds, we are hoping to hit one of those a year as it would pay for the entire season and then some. Think of that as the large-field GPPs where you hope to tread water and then rely on a big hit once every year or so to do major damage.
On the other side, we have head-to-head bets, which, naturally, are more like cash games or head-to-heads in DFS where you aren’t going to win a huge multiplier of your money, but also should be hitting them at a reasonable clip. Getting a clearer picture of what each bet is like is important as this is a long season with a lot of opportunities to take some stabs at these PGA odds.
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