Gambling
These were the best—and worst—PGA Tour pros to bet on this season
Tim Nwachukwu
If you regularly bet on golf, you should have a good sense of the PGA Tour pros that won you money this season. Well, hopefully, you won some money at some point. If not, you're probably also well aware of the guys you lost the most money backing. Just don't think about that right now because it might ruin your weekend.
In any event, PGATour.com put together a list showing what returns a gambler would have gotten if they bet $100 on every start for all 30 players who qualified for this week's Tour Championship. The guy you would have won the most money on? Cameron Smith.
That's not too surprising considering he won three times including the Open Championship and Players Championship. And at neither did he have particularly short odds (PGATour.com used BetGM's opening odds for each tournament). Overall, a gambler would have wagered $1,700 on Smith's 17 starts and returned $10,300 for a profit of $8,600. Not too shabby.
Sandwiched between Smith and Masters champ and FedEx Cup leader Scottie Scheffler is a name that might surprise fans: Max Homa. The Twitter funnyman only won two times in 23 starts, but they were at much longer odds, producing a profit of $8,300. Even more of a reason to love this guy!
Despite playing 32 times, the most of anyone on the list, Sepp Straka is No. 4 at $6,800 because his lone win at the Honda Classic came as a 100-to-1 longshot. Similarly, K.H. Lee is No. 5 on the list because he defended his Byron Nelson title at 80-to-1 odds. We're guessing BetMGM will be slashing those odds when he goes for a three-peat in Dallas next year.
You should check out the entire list here, but we'll highlight a few of the guys you didn't want to bet on. To win, that is. Gamblers cleaned up on Cameron Young if they were making top-10/top-5 bets on him. He just didn't win despite a bunch of of close calls.
Nor did Adam Scott, Corey Conners, Aaron Wise, Sahith Theegala, Scott Stallings, Brian Harman, and most surprisingly, Collin Morikawa. The two-time major champ began the year at World No. 2, but if you bet $100 on him for each of his 18 starts, you wound up down $1,800 for the season.
And how about Will Zalatoris? The young star won the last start he completed before hurting his back to come out at a profitable return of. . . $100. Which is basically how gamblers who have been backing this guy consistently for a couple years and finally clawed out of a hole to (hopefully) break even feel.
We took the list a step farther, though, and added up all the profits and losses to get a grand total profit of $39,750 if you went along with this experiment for all 30 players. Of course, you wouldn't have known which 30 to bet on at the beginning of the season. And you would have had to put up a LOT of money, but that's a solid return. Heck, that's like earning a salary. Who says you can't gamble on golf for a living?