Oddsmakers use a combination of statistical analysis, course history, weather, current form, and a whole host of other factors to determine each golfer's chances of winning the tournament. At any given tournament you may see some golfers with odds of +1000 to win and some with longshot odds of +50000 to win.
The answer comes down to simple math. With as many as 156 golfers in any given tournament, there are a ton of outcomes that can occur. It's quite a bit different than betting on a baseball game where one of the two teams are going to win. So, in a nut shell, the variance makes betting on tournament winners extremely difficult.
Sportsbooks offer different varieties of golf options for each tournament. In addition to who will win outright, bettors can put money down on who will place in the Top 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40. Some books even offer a price on if a golfer will make or miss the cut. Another popular golf bet is whether or not there will be a Hole in One at a certain tournament.
The most common mistake we often see when betting golf is that folks tend to over-bet their bankrolls. This is dangerous in any sport, but especially in a high-variance sport like golf, where the outcomes can be even more random. Our suggestion if you like betting on outright winners in golf is to place very small wagers. Save your larger bets for outcomes that have a higher likelihood of happening.
While every legal sportsbook in the US will have some sort of golf offerings, you cannot beat the options of DraftKings and FanDuel. Both of these conglomerates offer outright, Top 5, 10, and 20 placement odds, and other prop bets. They also offer Top 30s and Top 40s, which is kind of a rarity in the industry.
As always, shopping around at each sportsbook in your state is the quickest way to increase your ROI. Our Odds Tool above already does this for you from an outright standpoint. In general though, we'd encourage golf bettors to focus more on betting head-to-head matchups than on who is going to win the whole tournament.
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