With all of the star power on display this week at the PGA Tour’s grand finale, the Tour Championship, maybe bettors aren’t comfortable trying to pick a winner.
After all, this one’s for all the marbles and a $15 million payday to the champion. There’s going to be tight collars and sweaty palms over a lot of shots this week which might make betting one player quite the challenge even though there are just 30 players in the field.
With that in mind, we’re going to give bettors a few prop bets to check out. With no cut, there are no ‘Will he make the cut’ bets on the board.
But that won’t stop us from looking around a little for spots to make a buck or two…or in one case, hundreds.
More on that in a minute.
Let’s take a look at a few betting options on BetMGM as the PGA Tour’s 2021-2022 wraparound season comes to an end.
Winning The Tournament—Without The Playoff Strokes
This week’s tournament features a tiered formula. The top-ranked player in the FedEx Cup rankings, Patrick Cantlay, starts the tournament at 10-under-par. Tony Finau is second at eight-under-par and so on down the line until you get to the 25th through 30th players who start out at even-par.
But, what if you could bet the event straight-up. It’s a wager you can make by picking the winner without the strokes involved. If you pick Cantlay to win outright, you get +1400 rather than him winning the tournament with the strokes edge at +333. Quite the difference.
But what that means is Cantlay has to be more strokes ahead of the rest of the field than he started. He has to beat Finau, who starts two strokes back, by three strokes to win and on down the list. He will need to beat the 25th-30th golfers by at least 11 strokes. Not easy but that’s why he’s +1400.
We’re going to take a flier this week on a guy who has been hovering around the leaderboard but who fans and bettors still may not know: Sam Burns at +2800.
He’s proven he can handle the pressure down the stretch as he was T-21 at the Northern Trust and eighth last week at the BMW Championship.
Remember, Burns doesn’t actually have to win…he just has to have the lowest four-day total.
It might require a Bryson DeChambeau math class to figure this out but stranger things have happened.
Top 5 Finishes
This is where it gets a little tougher. The player you back may have a great week but if four guys have a better week, you’re out of luck if you pick him to win.
It’s a fine line between rooting for a player to win and for him to finish in the top five.
With that in mind, check out Brooks Koepka at +500.
But, and this is vital, this is one of those bets where you’ve got to wonder which Brooks Koepka will show up this week. Will it be the laser-focused Koepka who goes after every pin like there’s no tomorrow or the Koepka going through the motions until the next major comes up?
If it’s the former, this wager could be a steal.
Top 10 Finish
Okay, so maybe you want to hedge your bet a little bit more and make it a top-10 wager instead of a top-five. We don’t blame you. This week’s going to be one of those weeks where anything can–and usually does–happen.
With that in mind, why not take a chance on Sergio Garcia at +500. He’s pretty far down the list when it comes to having a chance to win, but we’re not concentrating on that bet.
We just want him to go out and play one of the best week’s of his life–as he just did to get into this prestigious field–and charge up the leaderboard and give himself a whole lot of confidence going into the 2021-2022 wraparound season which is a goal for a lot of players.
The Big-Time Bet
Sometimes a number just jumps out at you and makes you pause and ask a question: Is there a chance this bet could actually come in?
If you answer yes, it’s time to take a deeper look and maybe put down a few bucks on the bet.
We got that feeling when we saw Justin Thomas to be leading the tournament after the first round on the board at +3300.
He was T-4 at the Northern Trust but was mid-pack at the BMW Championship last week. Not great…not bad.
But what he does have going for him is he finished second at last year’s Tour Championship and put up three rounds of 66–including in the first round.
He does start six shots back at four-under-par but a great round by him and mediocre rounds by players above him just might pay off.
And Then It Was Over
This is the finale for us for a week and, like the PGA Tour, we will take a week off before we restart with the kickoff of 2021-2022 season with the Fortinet Championship set for Sept. 15-19 at the Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, CA.
Well, we will be back. Many of the top pros will be focused on the upcoming Ryder Cup or vacationing depending on their status so we may not see a lot of them for a while.
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