Theegala’s the guy to beat the big boys
Golf is a funny game — and no, not that kind of funny. Call it the Golf gods or karma or the law of averages or some existential leveling of the score, but the game has an innate ability to give and take, take and give, forever leaving us confounded like some elaborate threecard monte game.
We’ve all seen it. Most of us have even witnessed it. You hit a slicing drive that appears headed for a watery grave, only to watch your ball hit the thinnest of limbs and carom back into the fairway. Still beaming from your good fortune, just minutes later your birdie putt appears targeted for the center of the cup when it inexplicably goes halfway down, pops back out and rests dubiously on the edge of the hole.
Those Golf gods are funny. But not really.
Anyway, it occurred to me once again this past weekend that the infinite spirits are getting involved in the betting side of the game, too.
Two weeks ago, in the first PGA Tour event of the year, pre-tournament favorite Jon Rahm prevailed at the Sentry TOC. Even though it was a hard-fought, come-from-behind win which needed some help from Collin Morikawa, the end result was that the player with the shortest odds wound up winning the golf tournament.
All of which was probably enough to get some bettors into the mindset of playing a favorite or two at the Sony Open. So, what happened? The three players at the top of the pre-tourney board — Tom Kim, Sungjae Im and Jordan Spieth — each missed the cut, enough to again change your mindset from playing faves to forever fading ’em. It’s that ol’ three-card monte game again.
Prepare for more of it at the American Express. Palm Springs has notoriously been the land of the long shots, with five of the last six winners at 50/1 or longer and three in the past decade coming from way off the radar.
And yet, this is arguably the best AmEx field we’ve ever seen — at least in the past quarter-century — with nine of the world’s top 20 and enough elite-level players to hinder any fever dreams about hitting another lottery ticket here.
We do know that there will be plenty of birdies on the cards at this one. With three full pro-am rounds for every player at the PGA West Stadium Course, the Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta, followed by a 54-hole cut and a final round on the Stadium, every winner since 2007 has logged a final tally of at least 20-under. With heavy rains in the early-week desert forecast, the usual birdie barrage might pale in comparison to what we witness on softer tracks this week.
Outright winner
Sahith Theegala (55/1); I wrote in the intro about this convergence of long-shot winners and an uncommonly strong field here. Well, I’m siding with recent history over the current scene. Unless you really want to dip down and play deserved tourney favorite Jon Rahm (+700) or Patrick Cantlay/Scottie Scheffler (each 11/1), I prefer to just fade the entire top of the board altogether — for outrights, at least — and find some bigger prices with value.
That all leads me to Theegala, though perhaps I led myself there while continuing to floor the gas pedal as I drive his bandwagon from week to week. There are some who will undoubtedly roll their eyes at this pick, disbelieving that a player who’s never won can somehow win. (I’m a big true-crime buff, and this always reminds me of the next-door neighbor who can’t believe the murderer actually did it, because they’d never seen ‘em murder anyone before.) Theegala is a West Coast guy and someone I want to target a few times on this opening swing of events before the Tour leaves the Pacific Time Zone. In seven starts already this year, he owns three finishes of sixth or better, proving that he’s just a couple of lucky bounces or lipped-in putts from finally cashing his first winner’s check.
It’s usually a fool’s errand to trust the eyeball test over analytics, and I promise that I won’t keep blindly recommending Theegala if the results don’t continue. But at a West Coast venue where the favorites usually don’t prevail, this number feels too good to ignore.