3 picks our expert loves

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2025 Open Championship, which gets underway Thursday at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both free-to-play and daily fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.

Last week, we provided some early tips on five players I liked to win the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush, bets I had made not long after the U.S. Open last month at Oakmont. Those players were Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Ryan Fox. Open Championship Week is now upon us and I have added three more outright winner selections to the haul. But first, let’s talk a little bit about the golf course and how I arrived at these conclusions.

The Dunluce Links Course at Royal Portrush was designed by Harry Colt in 1932. In 2017, Martin Ebert was called upon to provide some renovations prior to its hosting of the 2019 Open. What we have today is a par 71 that stretches to nearly 7,400 yards. It is a coastal property in Northern Ireland with spectacular dunes, narrow fairways and small, undulated, fescue grass greens. The first cut of rough off the fairways is only about two-inches high, but outside of that, players will find the gorse, the heather, the meadow grasses – a.k.a, the nasty stuff.

The golf course is not laden with pot bunkers like we so often see at the Open Championship and there won’t be as many opportunities for the bump-and-run shots into these greens since many of them are elevated well above the level of the approach areas. There are also especially large run-off areas around the greens.

I believe Royal Portrush is one of the best tests in the Open Championship rota. The course will make a player do a little bit of everything well. I favor Driving Accuracy over Driving Distance. Putting will be crucial as players negotiate the humps and bumps of the slow greens. Scrambling will be paramount as will be approach play – hitting greens in regulation and doing so with longer irons, more often than not, from a window of 150-200 yards out. Two other areas I looked at this week were Strokes Gained on par 4s and Bogey Avoidance.

Coming up with other golf courses that compare well with links courses can be an inexact science but I did find some examples. We mentioned the Harry Colt design and the Martin Ebert renovation. This same combination performed both tasks at Hamilton Golf & Country Club, home to the 2019 and 2024 Canadian Opens. Both Colt and Ebert also performed extensive redesigns at Royal Liverpool, home to the 2023 Open Championship. Ebert also did extensive work on Royal St. George’s and Royal Troon, home to recent Open Championships in 2021 and 2024, respectively. Colt also designed Wentworth, home to the BMW PGA Championship, in England. Courses that I believe have some matching characteristics stateside are Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer Invitational), TPC Sawgrass (Players Championship), PGA National (Cognizant Classic) and Pebble Beach.

As noted, we have gone over briefly our plays on Rahm, Hatton, Spieth, Day and Fox last week. Note that Rahm has finished seventh at Royal Troon, runner-up at Royal Liverpool, third at Royal St. George’s and was 11th in 2019 at Royal Portrush. He’s finished fifth at Pebble Beach and was third there at the 2019 U.S. Open. He’s been as high as 12th and ninth at TPC Sawgrass and has finished fourth at Wentworth along with being runner-up twice. Hatton was 20th at Liverpool in 2023, sixth at Portrush in 2019 and fifth at Troon in 2016. He’s won at both Bay Hill and Wentworth, has finished as high as fourth at PGA National and was runner-up to Scottie Scheffler at the Players Championship in 2023.

Spieth has been fourth twice at Bay Hill and once at TPC Sawgrass. He finished ninth earlier this year at PGA National. His record at the Open Championship and at Pebble Beach is nearly unmatched. He’s never missed a cut at either tournament. He won The Open in 2017, has four additional top-10 finishes, including a runner-up at Royal St. George’s, and finished 20th at Portrush in 2019, 23rd at Liverpool in 2023 and was 25th last year at Royal Troon. He has six top-10 finishes at Pebble Beach, including a win in 2017. Jason Day is similar to Spieth at Pebble, having never missed a cut. He’s never won there but has nine top-10 finishes and three top 15s. Day has won at TPC Sawgrass and at Bay Hill and finished 13th last year at Troon and was runner-up in 2023 at Liverpool.

Fox finished 16th at Royal Portrush in 2019 for his best-ever Open result. He was seventh at Hamilton at the 2024 Canadian Open and won at Wentworth in 2023.

In addition to the outright winner market, I have played each of these players for a Finish Position as well: top-10 Rahm (+110), top-20 Hatton (+110), top-20 Spieth (+200), top-40 Fox (+100) and top-40 Day (+105).

Three More Outright Bets

Robert MacIntyre (35-1)

It was in 2019 that MacIntyre had his best-ever Open Championship finish when he took sixth right here at Royal Portrush. Two years later, he finished eighth at Royal St. George’s. The Scotsman finished 11th earlier this season at Bay Hill and followed that up with a ninth-place finish at the Players Championship. Furthermore, it was just last season that he won the RBC Canadian Open at Hamilton Golf & Country Club. It is also worth noting that MacIntyre finished runner-up last month at the U.S. Open, firing a final-round 68 in the rain (and rain is what the forecast is calling for this week in Portrush). He has the accuracy, the approach play, the short game and the know-how to play in the elements. In addition to an outright win, I played MacIntyre for a top-20 finish at +150.

Russell Henley (65-1)

The Georgia Bulldog has finished fifth, 10th and runner-up in his last three starts and that 10th came last month at the U.S. Open. Henley went on a similar run earlier this season and it happened to come at some of our correlated courses. He was fifth at Pebble Beach, won the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and finished sixth at PGA National for the Cognizant Classic, a tournament he also won before in 2014. His best Open finish came last season at Royal Troon where he took fifth. Over the last 36 rounds, Henley ranks 11th in this field for SG: Approach, ninth for Bogey Avoidance, 17th for Driving Accuracy and 13th in Scrambling. I played Henley for a top-20 finish as well at +175.

Mackenzie Hughes (400-1)

Who’s ready to cash a 400-1 ticket? Wouldn’t that be fun? Obviously, this is a longshot, but I do feel the price is too high and that we are getting a bargain. The form hasn’t been perfect as of late but he did have a run between the end of March and the middle of May where he finished top 10 in three of four starts, including losing in a playoff to Ryan Fox at the Myrtle Beach Classic – and his results on the correlated courses are strong. Hughes was 16th last year at Royal Troon and was sixth in 2021 at Royal St. George’s. In his home country’s Canadian Open, he has finished seventh and 14th at Hamilton Golf & Country Club. He’s been as high as 16th at TPC Sawgrass, has two top-30 finishes at Bay Hill and was runner-up at PGA National at the Honda Classic in 2020. Over the last 36 rounds, Hughes is No. 1 in this field for Scrambling. I also played him for a top-40 finish at +240.

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