From one West Coast tournament to another we go, as the PGA Tour continues its early-season Pacific trek at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
A great number of the Tour’s mainstays are set to tee off from the 132-player field in Scottsdale, but who will be the only one left standing this weekend with a victory in hand? Let’s take a closer look below at the players worth keeping tabs and placing wagers on for your weekly golf betting action.
After a relatively lackluster 2016 campaign, Jordan Spieth appears to be back on the right track towards PGA Tour dominance.
The two-time major champion from 2015 has gotten off to a blazing start this season, entering this week’s tournament with three-consecutive top-six finishes. To be specific, he’s secured no worse than a third-place finish in the two events he’d partaken in this past month.
Spieth’s maiden and only appearance at the Waste Management Phoenix Open was back in 2015, wherein he finished a solid T7. Given how the Texas native is on a roll right now, though, his first win of the season can certainly be met this week at Scottsdale.
Sitting comfortably atop the FedExCup rankings is Justin Thomas, who has put together an utterly superb season thus far to truly challenge Spieth and the rest of the field this week.
What the fast-rising 23-year-old lacks in stellar performances at Scottsdale, he’s more than made up for it with his five top-10 finishes and three huge wins through six tournaments this season. Thomas even had a couple of weeks rest before making the trip to Arizona, so he’ll definitely be fresh and eager to add a fourth victory under his belt this season at that.
How could we not include Hideki Matsuyama from our list of favorites here? After all, the Japanese sensation is the Phoenix Open’s defending champion and he’s nabbed top-five finishes in all three of his career starts at the tournament.
Not only that, but the second-ranked Matsuyama will be pressed to keep pace with Thomas in the FedExCup standings after a couple of sub-25 finishes in his last two outings. He had racked up two wins and two runner-up finishes in the five tournaments prior to his past two blunders, and there’s no place like TPC Scottsdale that can get him out of his minor funk.
Having peaked at the right moment is Jon Rahm, who won last week’s Farmers Insurance Open for his first-career PGA Tour victory. The Spaniard has three top-15 finishes for the season to date, and he’s definitely in line to provide the goods once more at TPC Scottsdale.
Not a lot of people know that Rahm is quite the star in the Grand Canyon State. He’s actually a decorated Arizona State University graduate, having accumulated 11 wins on this week’s course before turning pro. Rahm even secured a sweet T5 finish as an amateur entrant in the 2015 edition of the Phoenix Open, further justifying that the rest of the field should never take the 22-year-old upstart lightly this week.
With three top-20 and two top-10 finishes to close out the previous season, it seemed as if Jason Kokrak was finally about to break out.
However, Kokrak’s 2016-17 campaign is not going as planned to say the least. He has finished no better than T15 through six events thus far, including having been cut twice from those six tournaments already.
Writer’s Prediction
Rahm (+1,600) goes HAM in his hometown for his second-straight PGA Tour victory.
