Free PGA Betting Picks - Breaking $100 Golf Best Bets for the 2024 Sony Open

Two years ago we hit Cam Smith for a winner at Kapalua. Last week we got hit by a Chris Kirk bulldozer that never really left our guy, Sahith Theegala any opportunity to finish better than second place despite a -10 under Sunday 63. Kirk was automatic in every department and never seemed to want to relinquish the lead what so ever. Betting angles aside, it is really great to see Kirk thriving after being so vocal about his struggles with alcohol in the past. For those of us who are fortunate enough to enjoy a glass of champagne without our life unraveling, "Cheers to Chris Kirk on kicking life's ass!"

We hop islands to Honolulu where a full field consisting of some watered-down talent from Kapalua and the freshly frenzied golfers sitting outside the Top 60 in FedEx Cup Points, who are looking to swing the fall swing in their favor and birth a signature event appearance for some no-cut guaranteed cash at Pebble Beach on the first of February. We also get a host of new names that recently got their PGA tour cards, most from the Korn Ferry Tour and a handful from the DPWT. If you are looking for a deep dive of every single one of these golfers, I put together The Korn Ferry 45 (click here) for an easy way to access granular information on each of these newbies.

For those of you who are new to the article, Breaking $100 is a comprehensive PGA betting guide on how to squeeze every cent out of your $100. We will be breaking $100 into a betting card of outrights, first-round leaders, placings, and a "farewell fiver," all in an attempt to turn a structured betting strategy into a profitable and entertaining Sunday sweat. $100 is easily divided or multiplied, so please only bet amounts that you can afford to lose. You can find me on Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me.

Prior Week Recap

It was an acceptable start to the year, cashing in on the Theegala T5 to limit our outright losses. I am very happy we have embraced that we are the definition of "close, but no cigar" and started playing the each way / T5 market so that we can still enjoy "a schmoke and a pancake", to quote Gold Member. As always, the bread and butter portion of the card came through for us with Scheffler and Cole cashing T10 & T20, while Patrick Cantlay missed out on a T10 by a stroke ... a $22 swing... we also decided to match him up against Jordan Spieth, who gained 6 strokes putting... some rough variance there. But profit is profit and we will take our $3.12 and run!

Outrights ($20)

The odds market shifted rather quickly Monday afternoon as some steam came in on a few guys we grabbed early Monday morning. If you are interested in getting these picks as I make them on Monday's, jump into our premium discord where you will have access my early bets and if you decide to roll with the best value, which is the Platinum Package ($269.99 for a full 12 months if you use code "MANIAC"), you will also have access to Spencer's picks as he makes them too along with EVERYTHING else Spence and our "double cup of Joes" have to offer to RotoBaller subscribers! Let's meet the sneaky seven!

JT Poston $2.33 @ 40-1 (FanDuel) & $2.10 T5 +650 (BetMGM)

Poston enters the field in the sixth-best recent form and with the fourth-best SG Approach. This kind of iron play has seen him finish inside the top-10 four of his last 7 starts, most recently a T5 at the Chris Kirk Birdie Farm last week. He is playing fantastic golf and there really isn't much more to this than just grabbing a really nice 40-1 number that has since drifted 33-1 with most books setting his chances to win at Waialae at 30-1. Join the discord, if for anything at all, some closing line value each week 😉

Byeong Hun $2.33 @ 40-1 (FanDuel) & $2.10 T5 +650 (Bet365 <-- who are now paying TIES IN FULL!!!)

Kyle Porter asked the question, I shared a response, but hopefully this week Byeong Hun An will provide the answer! He is going grossly underrated now that he has graduated from flying school and soaring through the SG Putting clouds on his trusty broomstick putter. An gained just shy of 7 strokes putting when he finished T12 here last year. After losing 2 strokes in round one off the tee, he also then went on to gain 3 strokes over the course of the tournament. At a venue where course history is very predictive of future success, this is a nice feather in Benny An's cap.  who has now finished 4th at the Sentry, T2 at the Wyndham and T3 at the Scottish Open. He has been knocking on that winners door and we know how friendly the people are in Hawaii - they are going to be the ones who let him in! AlohAn has quite a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Sahith Theegala $2.07 @ 45-1 (FanDuel) & $2.28T5 +600 (Bet365)

Sahith Theegala's skillset suits a wide open Kapalua a little more than Waialae CC. But, on Joe Idone's Preferred Lines Podcast he asked me who I thought was a good comp for Sahith. I replied with Cam Smith, who has won at Kapalua and at Waialae before. Both are rather reckless off the tee, but once the big dog goes back in the bag, they can produce magical results with just about any shot they attempt. Both are incredible wedge players, with Sahith hitting the 5th-most good shots from 100-150 in this field. To debunk the course fit narrative, did we forget he won the Fortinet Championship??? Yes, he gained 14 strokes chipping and putting, which is tough for most golfers to repeat, but Sahith is a special talent and thats what he does.

If he can keep the driver to a neutral-strokes-gained week, he will be floating around the top of the leader once again, while the many locals that Sahith somehow is related to with his Indian ancestry chant "THEE GA LA!!! THEE GA LA!!!" I also tweeted this graphic out on Monday before realizing how wet it is going to be this week. Nobody can aquaplane a driving iron like AQUA LA!!! Let's go get it THEE GA LA!!!

Lucas Glover $1.24 @ 75-1 (FanDuel) & $1.37 T5 +1000 (Bet365)

In a field that consisted of Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and other ELITE iron players, it was no sweat (pun intended) for Lucas Glover to lead that field of scrubs in SG APP!! When Glover finished T5 at the 2022 Sony Open he gained +9.5 strokes on approach while gaining a quarter of a stroke putting, which, for Glover is almost more impressive than the 10 strokes gained ball striking that week. He missed the cut in 2023, but was yet again, neutral-ish on the greens, losing only half a stroke to the field.

Despite the putter typically not showing the Glove any love, he is seemingly very comfortable on the greens here and now that he is riding the broomstick to back-t0-back victories in the Playoffs, I am hopeful that his comfortability on these greens turns into Queen-Latifa-In-A-Hair-Salon comfy, currently sweeping that putter better than he has for a while. Even if he remains neutral on the greens, the way he is striking the ball right now, will be enough to at least give him a decent chance at cashing that +1000 T5 for a second time in three years here.

Luke List $0.85 @ 110-1 (FanDuel) & $0.98 T5 +1400 (Bet365)

What is this betting card? Recovering putters anonymous? Holy heck we have some guys on here, who, a few months ago, would have been considered irreparably pathetic putters. Yet, two went to the broomstick putter (Benny and Glove), and now Luke List has seen a resurgence. After his win at the Sanderson Farms he said “I hired a new putting coach in the offseason, Stephen Sweeney. He's down in Florida, phenomenal guy. We got together in December, and he was pretty much expecting me to have the worst stroke ever and yips. He got down there, he's like, ‘Listen, you're doing what you're trying to do really well; it's just not what you should be doing." Maybe I should quote my tweet about List's putting and to clarify *I am now one twitter coaching post closer to being a teaching professional?

Things seem to have clicked for List, who is gaining strokes putting since the Fortinet Championship. What has that done for his results? T22, T19, T20, T45, T18, WIN, T25 which is some incredible consistency for someone who has repeatedly ruined his chances to win a tournament because he missed three four footers on Thursday morning, validated by the 10 (ten!!!) strokes he has lost at Waialae CC in 4 (four!!) rounds resulting in two MCs. He will be heading into the week with confidence as big as his outright odds, which are still available in the triple digits.

Alexander Bjork $0.75 @ 125-1 (BetMGM) & $0.62 T5 +2200 (BetMGM)

The below is a screenshot from the The Korn Ferry 45 article I slaved away on the last week. Alexander Bjork is a DPWT pro who has an elite Top-5 rate, but did not manage to get into the winners circle last year. He is the most accurate of all 45 golfers joining the tour in 2024 and is an incredible iron player. He ended the year with a bit of a rough stretch of results, but after some rest and relaxation I fully expect Bjork to take advantage of a course that lacks two Par 5s (his worst scoring metric of the three types of holes), while just keeping himself out of trouble off the tee, allowing him to pinpoint his approach shots and hopefully make a few more birdies than he typically does. At 125-1 (now 150-1) its low-risk-high-reward situation which we are mainly looking to T5 at odds longer than four favorites to win the tournament.

Tyler Duncan $0.75 @ 220-1 (FanDuel) & $0.55 T5 +2500 (Bet365)

Tyler Duncan doesn't have the best course history, but he is currently playing such consistently good golf that he is basically a different human all together, disassociated from any poor golf he played prior to this run. Now, the break in golf gives me some concern, as he was really starting to roll! However, at 220-1 we get a golfer who has been driving the ball at a borderline elite level in two of the last three tournaments, averaging a stroke off the tee. Tyler who, at 5 foot 7 inches and 150 lbs, should be Dunc'n on the field off the tee (there's your dad joke for the article). At 220-1 I will gladly take the golfer who has only five others driving it better than him over the last 24 rounds at a course that rewards the ability to gain strokes off the tee relative to other courses on tour.

Did you know RotoBaller has a Premium DFS PGA subscription? Like what you read today? You can show your support for Byron by using the discount code MANIAC when purchasing a PGA Premium Pass. You get 10% off and full access to all of our Premium PGA articles, DFS tools, models, projections and Lineup Optimizer! You also get access to weekly betting picks from Spencer Aguiar, one of the top betting minds in the industry.

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 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

Placings ($60)

$20 Russell Henley T20 +110 @ Bet365 (Ties PAID IN FULL!!!)

In 2023 Russell Henley returned 32% on your top-20 investments if you bet him each of his 19 tournaments. He lost you money in all the other top-10, top-5, outright markets. We now head to a course where he finished T32, 2nd and 11th in his last three starts. The T32 came as a result of losing 2 strokes around the green, which he typically is just fine at gaining at. Henley is THE most accurate driver in the field and has gained the 4th most strokes in the last 24 rounds. The implied odds of 48% for +110 is exceeded by his 2023 season rate of 60% and his last three starts here are 67% T20.

$20 Tyrrell Hatton @ Bet365 (Ties PAID IN FULL!!!)

• $10 T20 +105
• $5 T10 @ +200
• $5 T5 @ 375

Hatton Was profitable in 2023 across all markets but did not manage to win. The model is suggesting we bet him top-20 @ +105, which we are going to do. But we are also going to have some ladder fun and try take advantage of his profitability in the shorter placement markets where he has had even better returns than his 23% for Top-20s. In the Mad Hatton we trust!

$20 Justin Rose -135 @ BetMGM (Ties PAID IN FULL!!!)

Rosie is coming off breaking a course record at Kapalua on Sunday and finishes inside the top 40 in 74% of his starts. -135 implies a 57% probability rate, which we have a season long edge of 17% on. He has never played here before, but has the 22nd best comp course rating for other venues like Waialae.

Matchups ($15)

In our RotoBaller PGA Show Spencer mentioned that the reason he loves events with cuts is because there is missed cut equity in the equation. That is the case here, with Jaeger making cuts at an elite rate (93%), while Nick Taylor is 31% worse at 62%. If they both land up making the cut, this will be a little sweatier than we will want.

The Farewell Fiver ($5)

Round 1 3-ball Parlay $5 +1797 (DraftKings)

Hatton is playing well, Ryan Palmer loves this course and is a R1 specialist, Russell Henley is basically -125 vs Billy Straight up as Brehm is very bad, and Keith Mitchell is both a course and R1 specialist.

Good luck this week, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!!

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