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Ian McNeill's free PGA betting picks. Ian provides analysis and an introductory guide to golf live betting on the PGA Tour by making selections both before and during the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge.
Between Monday's Course Preview piece (found right here on RotoBaller), and last night's podcast (currently posted on our X page), we've given all of you every possible trend, key stat, and player take needed to make the most educated betting decisions possible this week at the Colonial Country Club. This Wednesday article will now serve as a final bow to wrap up a jam-packed week of PGA content at Flag Hunting. No fluff, no rants or superfluous soliloquies, just the entirety of our 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge outright betting card.
The four names on this betting card are aimed at returning about 6.5 times our investment. Because of the inflated odds associated with the outright market, it becomes even more imperative to remain disciplined when setting your unit allocations from this article's picks. Golf outright betting is a notoriously fickle beast, and multiple month-long droughts are very much within the range of outcomes. However, at these prices, one single hit can pay off many weeks of poor decision-making.
In the two-year history at Flag Hunting, we've been fortunate enough to cash a total of 23 outright winners (a 20.3% hit rate) for a profit of over $14,000 (betting roughly $350 per week) and an aggregate ROI of 36.0%. The volatility of the sport means I can't promise you a winner in any given tournament. Still, suppose you're willing to bet methodically and stick with the process. In that case, the outright golf betting market has the potential to be one of the most profitable (and enjoyable) betting sweats in the business. But I suppose I'd better keep my word about the necessary rants, so with no further ado, here's every bet I've made for the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge!
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Charles Schwab Challenge Betting Card
Max Homa (24-1)
Max Homa drops it close on No. 10 to set up birdie and move back to T-2. #TheMasters
🎥 @TheMasterspic.twitter.com/IzvOeVar1N
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) April 14, 2024
After a surprisingly sluggish start through his home swing on the West Coast, Max Homa looks to be finally gaining a bit of momentum in the Spring of 2024. His third place finish at last month's Masters was not only the best Major result Max has posted in his career, but also the best ball-striking week Homa has recorded in 12+ months. In the weeks to follow that career highlight, Max has only built on that performance: gaining a combined 5.6 strokes on Approach between the Wells Fargo and PGA Championships.
This week, on a golf course that places so much emphasis on the second shot, Max's combination of trending iron play and one of the most reliable putters in this field (particularly on bentgrass), places him as one of the preeminent contenders at Colonial. In five starts in Fort Worth since 2015, Homa has gained strokes off of the tee on four occasions and recorded his fifth-best putting week of the 2023 season in a ninth-place finish last year (+4.4).
With six wins already to his name at the professional level, I have the utmost faith in Max to close the deal if he's able to find his way in the mix this week. At prices of 22-1, it's difficult for me to find the rationale for having him this far below Collin Morikawa on the odds board.
Brian Harman (40-1)
Brian Harman drains the birdie putt on 13 to move two back and into solo third (-13). 👀
📺: NBC & @peacock | #THEPLAYERS pic.twitter.com/9mWa5if4xR
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) March 16, 2024
After a brief hiatus as he limped through the month of April, the Brian Harman wagon is back on the rails this week at Colonial. Harman has shown frustratingly inconsistent flashes of elite iron play -- gaining a combined 14.6 strokes on approach between Sawgrass and Bay Hill before losing strokes in four consecutive starts from Innisbrook to Hilton Head.
Last week, however, the 2023 Champion Golfer of the Year showed some familiar signs as he did in the lead-up to his runner-up finish at the PLAYERS: gaining 5.7 strokes with his irons in a 26th-place finish around 7,600-yard Valhalla. The fact that Harman could even contend with the strongest field of the year around a golf course where length is such a factor is a testament to his upside when the ball-striking is firing on all cylinders.
This week at Colonial, Harman will not be nearly as hampered by his lack of length off of the tee, as the UGA product has recorded four finishes of 14th or better since 2015 (and seen a collection of his fellow Bulldogs find the winner's circle in Fort Worth). I've long predicted 2024 to produce another big-time result for the three-time winner and recent Major Champion. This week feels like as good of an opportunity as he's had in some time.
Tony Finau (44-1)
🎯 Great shot by Tony Finau @FinauLegion
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) May 17, 2024
With a runner-up here in 2019 and a fourth-place finish two years ago, Colonial has been a sneakily happy hunting ground for Tony Finau in his career. In fact, last year marked the only occasion to date in which Tony has missed out on the weekend in Fort Worth: recording no finish worst than 34th in his first seven starts.
Finau has been particularly prolific with his tee shots here at Colonial: averaging a whopping 3.24 strokes gained off of the tee across his eight career starts. This built-in comfort around Colonial's claustrophobic layout should be the perfect tonic for Tony's strangely slumping driver over the last two weeks at Valhalla and Quail Hollow, and the iron play remains some of the hottest in the sport. Finau has gained at least 3.0 shots with his approach play in six of 11 starts this season, and the 9.6 strokes he gained last week at Valhalla ranks as the second-best iron week of Tony's 245-start career.
Couple this ball-striking upside with a putting surface that has routinely seen Finau raise his strokes gained baselines (positive strokes putting in 5/8 career Colonial starts; top 40 in this field over his last 50 rounds on bentgrass), and Finau becomes a very compelling profile at his current spot on the odds board. I'd endorse any number above 30-1.
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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
Sepp Straka (50-1)
Sepp Straka was the last man in the field.
He shot a 66 today. 👏pic.twitter.com/KBGPHRESgt
— TOUR Championship (@TOURChamp) August 24, 2023
As we scroll past 50-1 on the odds board, I'm much more interested in finding elite tools suitable for Colonial's layout than I am in any floor projection. There is maybe nobody in the game that encapsulates this upside proposition better than Sepp Straka: who has recorded eight finishes of fifth or better over the last two seasons on Tour, including two wins and runner-up finishes at 2022's opening playoff event in Memphis and last summer's Open Championship at Hoylake.
From a course fit standpoint, Straka provides a combination of proven positional driving acumen (top 20 in both Fairway % and Good Drive % thus far in 2024), some of the best short/middle iron play in this field (2nd in SG/Shot from 150-200 yards), and a putter that is rapidly warming as we arrive at one of his favorite parts of the schedule (gained at least 2.5 strokes putting in three of his last four PGA starts).
Straka has proven time and time again that he's capable of heating up and mixing it with the best players on the planet. At 50-1, with two wins to his name in each of his last two seasons and finishes of 16th or better recently at Augusta, Sawgrass, Harbour Town, and Quail Hollow, he's playing far too well to go overlooked to this degree.
Aaron Rai (65-1)
Midway thru his second round Aaron Rai was one shot outside the cut line and +15000 for a Top 10.
After this eagle hole out early Saturday, Rai is -7 thru 14, -8 and T6 overall and +240 live for Top 10 via @FDSportsbook pic.twitter.com/zzzdUSYsRu
— Golfbet (@Golfbet) March 16, 2024
From Christiaan Bezuidenhout to Austin Eckroat, Chris Kirk, and Tom Hoge, the range of names from 50-70/1 on odds boards warranted a ton of consideration on my outright card this week. So much so that if you wanted to completely skip out on the top dogs in this field, I'd have no problem with anyone employing a scatter-shot approach in this mid-range.
Of all of these value commodities, however, it was Aaron Rai that first caught the attention of my model, as the 29-year-old Englishman has recorded two top-seven finishes in the state of Texas alone over the last two months. Routinely ranked as one of the more accurate drivers of the ball in world golf, Rai has fared especially well on positional layouts where precision is placed at a premium. Four of the best five driving performances of his career have come at TPC River Highlands, TPC Sawgrass, TPC Summerlin, and St. George's -- all courses that rank below Tour average in terms of length but feature some of the highest missed fairway penalties on the schedule.
While driving accuracy has been a consistent cornerstone of Rai's profile for years, it has been Aaron's recent development in iron play that really piques my interest in his outright prospects. Over both his last 24 and 5o rounds, Rai ranks inside the top 10 in both SG: APP and Birdie Chances Created, and last season at the Charles Schwab, he recorded the second-best approach week of his entire career (+7.4 Strokes Gained).
Currently in the midst of one of the best Approach stretches of his career (+3.1 per tournament since the Mexico Open) and on a run of three of four positive weeks on the greens, Rai's profile looks very similar to that of last year's Champion: Emiliano Grillo. At prices of 66-1, he sits at the top of the heap for me in terms of value propositions in a field devoid of many truly marquee options.
Akshay Bhatia (65-1)
How about a SIX shot lead for Akshay Bhatia after a birdie-birdie start?!!#ValeroTexasOpenpic.twitter.com/aqYscckZqJ
— Golf On Tap (@OnTapGolf) April 7, 2024
The last time Akshay teed it up in the state of Texas, the mercurial 22-year-old put on one of the more impressive tee-to-green performances of the season in a playoff victory over Denny McCarthy. This week, Colonial will provide a similar test of positional driving and middle-iron play -- two aspects of the game in which Bhatia has proven himself among the game's best over the course of his breakout 2024 campaign.
In a five-month span that has seen Bhatia jump from 110th in the world rankings all the way to a career-high mark of 33rd, Akshay ranks as the sixth-best Approach player in this field (fourth when isolating for specific proximity ranges). But perhaps more importantly, he's consistently showcased an ability to spike to the top of recent Strokes Gained leaderboards. Over his last five starts on the PGA Tour, Akshay has gained 4.7, 5.8, 8.2, and 7.9 strokes on Approach in Houston, San Antonio, Hilton Head, and Louisville, respectively.
Another drastic improvement to Bhatia's game has been on the greens, as the 22-year-old comes into the week on the back of gaining strokes in five of his last six starts with the flat stick (averaging over three shots per start in the events he's been positive). These are far from pedestrian figures, and especially not from a player who at this time last year was in the midst of a five-month run of nine straight starts losing to the field average on the greens. The results have been admittedly underwhelming since his breakout win at the top level, but the underlying stats indicate that this uber-talented 22-year-old could well be on the precipice of another huge week in the Lone Star State.
Daniel Berger (140-1)
Daniel Berger: THE CHAMP👑
Berger (+8000) takes the Charles Schwab Challenge in a playoff over Morikawa!
This birdie putt on hole 72...ICE❄️pic.twitter.com/kLJ6dt0pK6
— Fanatics Sportsbook (@FanaticsBook) June 14, 2020
As recently as two seasons ago, the prospect of getting Daniel Berger at 140-1 at Colonial would have left golf fans incredulous, as the Florida State product had long-since established himself as one of the game's preeminent threats on these positional layouts. Berger was first introduced to golf fans with a runner-up finish at the 2015 Honda Classic, and subsequent back-to-back titles at the St. Jude Classic in Memphis.
Since then, his profile has only grown on these comparable venues: capturing titles both at Pebble Beach in 2021 and right here in Fort Worth in 2020. A lingering back-injury kept him from competition for the entire 2023 season, but now 10 starts into his 2024 comeback, Berger is finally showing signs of the vintage profile that carried him to as high as 12th in the Official World Golf Rankings.
He finished 13th at the Byron Nelson at nearby Craig Ranch earlier this month, and in his last start in Myrtle Beach, Berger recorded the best iron week we've seen from him since the 2022 Memorial (+5.32 strokes gained) -- notably at a golf course with a comparable approach distribution to Colonial this week (58% of approaches from 125-200). In full disclosure, Berger is one of my favorite names from the start of my golf betting career, but at prices bordering on 150-1, this recent form has forced my hand at Colonial. I'll be very interested to see if these recent ball-striking trends can prove sustainable enough to earn Berger another invitation to the Opening Round Playoff event in Memphis.
Best of luck, guys, and happy hunting!
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