Sony Open betting preview: Our PGA professional's golf betting guide, best bets, and top props

Sony Open: Island hopping

The private jet players have left Hawaii and the middle-tier favorites (and rookies) remain. The Sony Open is one of my favorite events on the PGA TOUR. The host course, Waialae Country Club, has a very predictable layout. The par-70 scorecard measures 7,044 yards. Two par-5s, four par-3s, and 12 par-4s complete this 1920s Seth Raynor design.

The classic coastal routing forces the field of 144 to keep the ball in play. No longer are we going to launch 400-plus yard drives into the beautiful sky with 100-yard wide landing areas like Kapalua. Waialae boasts some of the smallest fairway targets on TOUR. To get inside the top 65 and make the weekend, players must know how to navigate these fairways. Sixteen of the last 17 winners of the Sony Open have competed in the event prior to victory.

Two of our three bets cashed last week! Scottie Scheffler birdied the last hole to finish in the top five and Eric Cole in 14th covered the top 20 placement prop. Looking for more winning bets? Subscribe to the Read The Line newsletter (it’s free!) and follow us on Twitter!

Does that mean we can eliminate the 33 Waialae rookies from our card? Yes. Of course that includes Åberg, Hatton, and Fitzpatrick. Three of the top betting favorites on the board! It’s tough to figure Waialae out on the fly. On top of the crash course in building a successful game plan, we had weather early in the week. Rain fell Monday and Tuesday — not enough to drastically change course conditions, but overall the course will play differently in competition than it has in the practice rounds.

If you’re going for a piece of that $8 million purse — or better yet, the $1.4 million dollar first-place prize — local knowledge will give you a significant edge. Many of those 33 first timers are rookies as well, just starting their PGA TOUR careers. Imagine their anxiety learning the course and community all at the same time. It's tough to get focused when the guys you have followed for years are warming up beside you.

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Waialae Country Club has 83 bunkers and five holes where water comes into play. It is a tight test — one that requires an excellent, well-rounded skill set to contend. One of the middle-tier favorites coming in would have been Chris Kirk! He just made 30 birdies in Maui and now enters the Sony Open exploding with confidence. With five top-10s at Waialae, Kirk is no doubt a threat to win two weeks in a row.

Breaking down who will contend and ultimately win takes a careful balance of course familiarity and recent form. I’ll expose more of the insights a little later, but for now please understand if you bet before or during the tournament, favor those who have been here before. Places become predictive on TOUR for a very specific reason. Waialae is only second to Augusta National for being the most predictive course the guys will compete on all year!

Early season events are difficult to handicap. Who has been practicing, what will the rookies do, etc. Seventy percent of the Sony winners over the past two decades-plus have played in The Sentry the week before. Four competitive rounds under your belt before the first full field event of the season give the 2023 winners and top FedEx Cup finishers another advantage.

As I said, I love the Sony Open. Similar to Hilton Head or the other positional layouts, it takes such a different skill set to win. We also get to see golf live in primetime. Combine those characteristics with the others mentioned and you can see why the second event of the season is one of the first I like to cover.

For a complete list of my betting predictions covering the Sony Open winners, placements, and H2H matchups, please go to Read The Line and subscribe.

Sony Open: Live Outright Odds

Sony Open: Straight and narrow

What are the winners doing at Waialae? Over the last decade, the putter has been the most impactful club at the Sony Open. The last 10 winners have gained an average of six strokes on the field with their flatstick. Much like Kapalua, these Bermudagrass greens take considerable local knowledge to convert a substantial number of birdie opportunities. At 7,100 square feet (on average), they aren’t small for the fifth-shortest course on TOUR.

The second largest gain comes on approach. Players must lead the field from 125-200 yards. Nearly 75 percent of the iron shots come from this range. Si Woo Kim put on a show last year, gaining over eight shots (on approach) on his way to winning. I already mentioned the fairways are tight. Hitting GIRs gets even more difficult when you miss the fairway. I’m not favoring off-the-tee substantially in my analysis, but finding the fairway makes a difference.

Most of the holes at Waialae Country Club bend. Four of the last five move right to left and favor a right-handed draw. Shaping the ball might be the most important OTT skill. The combination of finding those fairways and hitting the green adds up to scoring. Waialae has 12 par-4s. Seven of them are over 440 yards in length. The 450-plus holes will determine this championship. The last 10 winners have averaged an enormous gain of nine strokes on the field in par-4 scoring.

I have always thought securing GIRs were essential on shorter positional courses. Too many players will hit greens and convert putts. One cannot spend time anxiously trying to save pars. Sure, the short game matters to save a par or two, but if you’re not hitting 70 percent of your GIRs, we’ll see you in Palm Desert next week. Winners at Waialae gain over five greens on the field. It must be a priority to create birdie chances. Those only come on the green.

Our best bets all played last week. They are incredible with their scoring irons and can putt. Those two skills alone make them very good par-4 guys. Each played well at Kapalua, and I believe their skill set makes even more sense at the Sony.

Sony Open: Rookie of the year

Best bet to win: Eric Cole (+3000 on BetMGM)

The 2023 PGA TOUR Rookie of the year is Eric Cole. The mini-tour marvel took the PGA TOUR by storm last year. In his last six starts, he has four top-4 finishes. One of those events was a runner-up at the ZOZO in October. Very tight off the tee like Waialae, Cole only lost to one player. Fast forward a couple of months and he’s still going. One of the best putters out there, Eric finished 14th at The Sentry. The Sony is such a good fit, and one he will finally break through with this weekend.

Sony Open: Put on your list

To finish in the top 40: Luke List (+125 on Bet365)

Luke List has six top-25 finishes in his last seven starts (and a win at the Sanderson Farms). Putting has always been List’s achilles heel — but he has been better lately, and last week he gained positive strokes at Kapalua in three of the four rounds. With Luke’s ball-striking and an average putter, he can place confidently at the Sony Open.

Sony Open: Best Bet of the Week!

To finish in the top 20: JT Poston (+160 on Bet365)

Read The Line had Poston to finish The Sentry inside the top 20, and he cashed. Waialae is a better course fit, and I even like his chances of winning. Poston jumping inside the top 20 for the second week in a row is a solid bet building on the top-5 finish he had on Sunday.

Read The Line is the leading golf betting insights service led by five-time award-winning PGA Professional Keith Stewart. Read The Line has 26 outright wins and covers the LPGA and PGA TOUR, raising your golf betting acumen week after week. Subscribe to Read The Line’s weekly newsletter and follow us on social media: TikTok, Instagram, Twitter