BET SMART Finau will dig deep to beat Rahm at Farmers
Before we dive into a preview of the Farmers Insurance Open, a quick reminder in regards to making your picks this week:
It starts on Wednesday. That’s right. Once again, in a crafty move to avoid a finalround overlap with the NFL’s conference championship games, the opening round will begin Wednesday, not Thursday.
Now on to the good stuff — and by good stuff, I mean Jon Rahm. Which leads to another reminder: He’s pretty decent at this golf thing.
I often write about the sweet spot when a player’s robust course history directly converges with strong form, but perhaps not since the days of Tiger Woods’ prime at one of his favorite haunts have we witnessed such a convergence as the one we have this week.
When odds were released Monday morning, Rahm was right around +400 at most books — a little shorter in some, a little longer in others.
That’s not quite the -110 that Tiger was priced at for the 2008 Arnold Palmer Invitational, which is — as far as my research has been able to discern — the shortest number he ever had at an individual event and literally a pick ’em between him and the field. (And yes, he won that week.)
It is, however, a nod to just how dominant Rahm has been recently, with four wins, six top-fives and seven top-10s in his last seven worldwide starts, including his triumph at The American Express on Sunday.
According to the archives at golfodds.com, we’ve already witnessed nonRahm favorites of 6/1 (Scottie Scheffler at the Cadence Bank Houston Open), 7/1 (Rory McIlroy at the CJ Cup) and 8/1 (Patrick Cantlay at the Shriners Children’s Open) during the current PGA Tour season.
In the case of those uncommonly short favorites, we must continuously ask ourselves this question: To chase or not to chase? It’s easy enough to dismiss any thoughts of betting a player with those types of odds until we consider why he has been saddled with that number.
The implied probability for a Rahm victory is somewhere in the 18-20 percent range, depending on which odds we use, and it can be argued that a 1-in-5 chance of another Rahm title actually seems low. In six career starts at the Farmers, he owns a win and five top-seven results — and that doesn’t even include his 2021 U.S. Open victory on the South Course at Torrey Pines.
You’ll undoubtedly want some investment, somewhere, on Rahm this week. As an outright play? Even with the win probability, the number is too short for me, though a stumble out of the gates on Wednesday could make him a more palatable play after he starts.
With all of that said, I’m going to leave Rahm out of my picks.
Let’s get to the next player on the board — a guy who’s bound to win this tourney at some point.
Tony Finau (14/1)
I don’t blame you for scrolling past that long-winded intro and getting right to the pick, but you might have missed a not-soinsignificant approach above. I’m not fading Rahm here; I’m simply skipping over him to offer another option.
I think I’ve picked Finau at Torrey Pines for the past half-dozen years, as the South Course theoretically suits his game perfectly. He has responded with seven top25s in eight starts and four results of sixth or better. Now that he seemingly has figured out the key to closing out title contentions, it’d be bad karma to finally drop him from the card.
That said, I hate his number. In a nonRahm field, I wouldn’t mind it as much, but you’ve gotta like Finau here as much as I have over the years to play those odds.
I’ll also offer the advice that any nonRahm outright this week should be played as an each-way — or, if not available, complemented with top-5/10 props, just in case of another Rahm triumph.