The 2021 Players Championship: PGA Tour Betting Odds
The tournament with historically the best field in golf every season is not a major championship but an event often called the “fifth major,” The Players Championship.
The star of The Players Championship is the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium course, a par 72 at about 7,200 yards. That par 3 of course features the iconic island green – while fans love it, most players hate it. While the course has been renovated plenty since it opened in 1980, the 17th has been largely untouched.
No tournament offers a bigger purse. The winner also gets a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour and three-year invitations to the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and British Open. It’s a typical 72-hole stroke-play event.
There was no 2020 Players Championship – the first round went off as scheduled and Hideki Matsuyama shot what would have been a course-record-tying 63, but the PGA Tour shut everything down (thus, the round didn’t count officially) after Round 1 and for months due to COVID-19.
If there is a playoff, it will be three-hole aggregate played in order over holes 16-18. If still tied, the playoff goes to sudden-death starting at the 17th.
The defending champion is Rory McIlroy, who finished at 16-under 272 in 2019 to edge Jim Furyk by a shot. Eight different players held at least a share of the lead in the final round. While six players have won the tournament at least twice – Jack Nicklaus a record three times – no one has won it in consecutive years.
One player who might have contended this year, former world No. 1 Brooks Koepka, withdrew on Sunday due to a knee injury. Koepka is one of eight players to share the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass 18-hole scoring record. He was replaced by Anirban Lahiri in the field.
The 2021 Players Championship Golf Odds
Johnson (+1100) didn’t play last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and generally hasn’t played well in this event other than a T5 last year.
Bryson DeChambeau won the Arnold Palmer on Sunday and is +1200 as is McIlroy, who was 10th Sunday. DeChambeau hasn’t been better than 20th here.
Rory had a historic 2019 as he became only the third player to win The Players Championship, a major championship and a World Golf Championships tournament – Tiger Woods and Henrik Stenson were the other two. McIlroy was the eighth international champion in the past 12 years at The Players and 15th overall. He led the field in par-3 scoring average two years ago at 2.69.
Jon Rahm is +1400 with Patrick Cantlay +1800. Rahm has a best result of T12 in the tournament and Cantlay T22.
Stephen Ames, who has dual nationality in Trinidad and Tobago and Canada, won here in 2006 by six shots and was a runner-up in 2002. He’s the lone Canadian winner.
Two years ago, Nick Taylor finished T16 thanks to a big jump via Sunday 67, while Corey Conners was T41 and Adam Hadwin missed the cut. Conners is +8000 this week off his third-place finish Sunday at the Arnold Palmer with Hadwin +20000, and Taylor and Mackenzie Hughes each +25000.
The Players Championship Golf Predictions
Take McIlroy and former champion Jason Day for Top 10s, but the winner at +4000 is England’s Tommy Fleetwood. He has been fifth and seventh at The Players the past two trips. He comes off a T10 at the Arnold Palmer.