A quick reminder: Will the last ones to leave the building this week (the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic winner and his caddie) please turn out the lights as we shut down the 2023 PGA Tour season?
This is the Tour’s final full-field event of 2023 as there is a shift to a calendar year when it comes to FedEx Cup points starting in 2024. More on that in a minute.
Now that the clock is about to strike midnight on this season and 156 golfers take aim at one final Tour title, we’ve got a couple of hints for bettors to check out in search of a winner.
First, if you’ve never won on the Tour, this event should be in your wheelhouse as three of the past five winners (Adam Svensson last year, Talor Gooch in 2021, and Tyler Duncan in 2019) all picked up their first and only Tour wins at this event.
Second, if you’ve been out of the spotlight for quite a few years, this might be the perfect event for you to get back on track. Two golfers, Robert Streb in 2020 and Charles Howell III in 2018, got back into the winner’s circle after long winless streaks.
How long? Well, for Streb, it was six years, and for Howell III, it was an 11-year drought.
With that in mind, there’s one more point of interest this week: It’s the last event for players who are on the cusp of earning a PGA Tour card to earn FedEx Cup points and, hopefully, secure a spot on the Tour for 2024.
That’s an awful lot to digest for a field that doesn’t include many of the big names as there are just 10 of the world’s top 50 players teeing it up.
With that in mind, let’s wade through the field and pick a couple of players who just might get the chance to win and also earn a spot at The Sentry (renamed from the Sentry Tournament of Champions) in Maui the first week of January.
Let’s get started with our RSM Classic odds and picks.
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RSM Classic Field: Top Favorites & Best Odds Available
We’re Going Way Out On That Tree Limb… Again
The first player we’re going to look at is Vegas’ own, Ryan Moore.
At +10000 (Best Live Odds: ) this week, he’s got great value. On top of that, he hasn’t won on the Tour since 2016 (the John Deere Classic).
And that’s not good for Moore who has done an awful lot of winning whether it was in the college ranks or on the PGA Tour.
He was the individual NCAA champ in 2004 when he played for the UNLV Rebels.
And his college career rivaled that of Tiger Woods’ efforts at Stanford and that’s saying something.
He also has five PGA Tour wins, but injuries have hampered him in recent years.
Now, it appears he’s on the mend when it comes to his health, and the golf game seems to be coming back into form.
He was T-13 in the Shriners event in his backyard of Vegas. He followed that up with a T-38 at the World Wide Technology event.
Good results, but not great.
But, add in the fact that he moved his game up a couple more notches last week with a T-5 at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship and we like the odds of him celebrating the holiday season with a trip back to the winner’s circle.
There’s also more on the line as Moore is ranked No. 140 on the FedEx Cup list and needs to play well to get into the top 125.
A win certainly fills that need.
A Look at a Hometown Edge
Sometimes, there are home games that give players a little bit of an edge… even in golf.
This week is one of them.
Keep an eye on Brian Harman at +2000 (Best Live Odds: ). He’s going to have a home-field edge this week as this one’s right in his backyard at Sea Island Resort’s Seaside and Plantation courses.
He won’t have to pack for a road trip, he’ll get to sleep in his own bed and, best of all, he knows his way around this course when it comes to crunch time.
He was T-2 here last year and is coming off a year where he had one victory and three runner-up finishes.
His last official outing was at the Ryder Cup but before that, he made it to the Tour Championship. In the playoffs, he went T-31, T-5, and solo 23rd.
And remember, we said there are only 10 of the top 50 players on site who are in the top 50 in the world. Well, leading those 10 players is Harman who is ranked No. 9.
We feel like he will have another solid showing here as he wakes up, strolls out his backdoor, and maybe picks up his fourth PGA Tour win and second of the year.
Around the Prop Scene
We’re going to look at DraftKings for a couple of prop bets.
The first one is going to allow us to hedge a bet just a little.
In the history of the tournament, no player has been able to defend his title.
Adam Svensson is the defending champ and is playing well in the fall season. While we’re thinking he won’t defend that crown, picking him to finish in the top 10 at +360 (Best Live Odds: ) seems to be a good hedge.
We backed Camilo Villegas to finish in the top 20 last week at +360 (although we weren’t confident enough to pick him to win), and we’re going to move that finishing spot up to a top-10 (Best Live Odds: ) with Svensson despite the fact he’s coming in off back-to-back top-40 finishes.
We’re also going to look at there being a playoff at +350. In the 13 years of the tournament, six of them have gone to a playoff.
We’re betting that average gets to 50 percent with a playoff this week.
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