2023 US Open: PGA Tour Betting Odds
Usually the toughest golf course PGA Tour professionals will play each season is the US Open regardless of where it’s held simply because of how it’s set up.
Like the PGA Championship and British Open, the US Open is played at a different course each year. The winner gets some crazy perks on top of money, including a 10-year exemption from qualifying for the US Open and a pass into the other three majors for five years as well as PGA Tour membership for the following five seasons.
The host track for the first time is Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course, a par 70 at approximately 7,420 yards – it’s the last time LACC hosts a major of any time. It’s the first US Open with Bermuda grass since 2005 at Pinehurst No. 2. LACC also has rather wide fairways, which is unusual for this tournament.
The last time the US Open was in Los Angeles was in 1948 when Ben Hogan won at Riviera Country Club. That course has tried multiple times since to get the US Open back. Riviera is the more storied course, but LACC is better suited to host a massive event like this with location, etc. The PGA Tour’s network TV partners love it when there’s West Coast major championship golf because a that means prime-time TV in the East.
To no surprise, Americans have won their National Championship the vast majority of times, led by four each from legends Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones. Tiger Woods has three US Open victories, last in that memorable 19-hole Monday playoff in 2008. Tiger remains sidelined due to injury. Somehow, that was the last playoff in the tournament. The format these days is a two-hole aggregate playoff.
The defending champion is England’s Matt Fitzpatrick. At The Country Club at Brookline outside Boston, he finished at 6-under 274 to edge Will Zalatoris (now out injured) by a shot. Fitzpatrick also had won the US Amateur at Brookline in 2013, making him the 13th man to win both the US Amateur and the US Open in his career and only the second to sweep on the same course (Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach). It was Fitzpatrick’s first win in the USA and first major title. He has since won this year at the RBC Heritage the week after the Masters and is +3300 this week.
This will be one of the most interesting tournaments in a long time even without Tiger because of last week’s shocking merger announcement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour (European) and LIV Tour starting after 2023. How that will work, no one seems to know. That merger completely blindsided almost everyone in golf.
Brooks Koepka is one of the top LIV golfers and his win last month at the PGA Championship reportedly played a role in the merger. Koepka also finished runner-up at the Masters, and fellow LIV golfers Phil Mickelson and Patrick Reed finished Top 4. The PGA Tour and LIV were spending millions of dollars suing each other and it likely was going to drag on for years, so in that respect the merger makes sense.
US Open Golf Odds
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is the +900 favourite to win his first US Open and second major championship after the 2022 Masters. He has been Top 10 the past two US Opens and was a runner-up at the PGA Championship last month.
Jon Rahm is +1100 with Rory McIlroy and two-time champion Brooks Koepka both +1400. Rahm won the last US Open in California at Torrey Pines in San Diego two years ago. Rahm has four victories already in 2023, including the Masters. Six players have previously won the Masters and the US Open in the same season, last Jordan Spieth in 2015. McIlroy somehow hasn’t won a major in almost a decade. His lone US Open title was in 2011 outside Washington, D.C. As noted above, Koepka won the PGA Championship last month and also has won on the LIV Tour during 2023. He won the 2017 & ’18 US Opens. Patrick Cantlay is +1800 and Viktor Hovland +2000 as they look for their first major titles. Hovland was runner-up in this year’s PGA Championship and just won two weeks ago at the Memorial.
Players from 11 different countries have won the US Open but not from Canada. Last year, Adam Hadwin finished T7, five behind Fitzpatrick. Mackenzie Hughes was T24, while Corey Conners, Ben Silverman, Nick Taylor and Roger Sloan missed the cut.
Conners is +6600 this week with Nick Taylor, who won the Canadian Open on Sunday in dramatic style to end his country’s long drought in its National Championship, at +25000, Adam Hadwin +25000, Adam Svensson +30000, Mackenzie Hughes +40000, Taylor Pendrith +40000 and Roger Sloan +150000.
US Open Golf Predictions
I like McIlroy at +1400 as he should be duly motivated following the LIV merger as he was the most anti-LIV PGA Tour golf of them all. Rory is overdue a major title regardless.