Four PGA Tour events have been featured in 2024. None of them have been won by players with shorter than 100-1 odds. Think about that. Every January winner on the best golf tour in the world was a triple-digit long shot to win his event. Here’s how they all looked going in.
- The Sentry: Chris Kirk (200-1)
- Sony Open: Grayson Murray (400-1)
- American Express: Nick Dunlap (300-1)
- Farmers Insurance Open: Matthieu Pavon (140-1)
In other words, if on Jan. 1 you bet $100 on these exact four guys at those odds, you would have [checks notes] $40 million to your name right now.
The question, though, is not why you didn’t bet a parlay in which Matthieu Pavon had the shortest odds. The questions are: Why in the world is this happening? What is the reason behind it? What forces have coalesced such that long shot winners are consistently (at least for a month) taking down PGA Tour events?
There are probably three things at play here.
1. Consolidation of great players into signature events: There has only been one signature event this season, and even though some stars have played in the non-signature events like last week at Torrey Pines, longer shots winning is perhaps what one would expect from these tournaments. In some ways, this is the purpose of the non-signature events — to identify the best stories and rising players and get them into the biggest events like this week’s tournament at Pebble Beach.
2. LIV Golf has collected good players: Kirk won The Sentry over Sahith Theegala, Jordan Spieth and Ben An. But perhaps he doesn’t win it if LIV had not swiped the last two champions of the event: Cameron Smith and Jon Rahm. Not to mention Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and even guys like Abraham Ancer, Talor Gooch and Joaquin Niemann, who might not be stars but would still be a lot shorter than 100-1 to win a PGA Tour event. While it’s sometimes easy to dismiss LIV as a non-competitive and silly league that plays over there, it is also impossible to ignore the fact that the league has taken away several of the top 30-40 golfers in the world.
3. Last-minute heroics: Consider what could have happened at these four events. At The Sentry, Kirk could have not made birdie at the 71st hole on a crazy approach shot, opening the door a bit for Theegala or possibly even Spieth. At the Sony Open, Murray could have not made birdie at the last on a sweet up and down to get into a playoff, and Ben An or Keegan Bradley would have won. At the American Express, an amateur could have, you know, wilted over the last nine, allowing Christiaan Bezuidenhout to win or even Sam Burns or Justin Thomas to roll ahead of everyone in the final group. At the Farmers Insurance Open, Pavon could have not gotten up and down from an impossible spot 155 yards away and Nicolai Hojgaard could have won in a playoff.
4. Hot DP World Tour players: For the first time ever, the 10 best players from the DP World Tour received PGA Tour cards. This means that 10 players who were extraordinary on one of the best global tours have moved over to compete on the PGA Tour. We saw several of them at the top of the Farmers leaderboard on Sunday, including eventual champion Matthieu Pavon. Because many are still a bit unknown, their odds could be artificially inflated. However, it appears that their games are clearly better than the numbers would indicate. Nearly everyone mentioned there who finished behind the winners had shorter odds than the eventual winners.
If the Hawaii swing was about redemption — two men who are professed alcoholics have battled back to success at an extremely high level — then the California swing thus far has been about revelation. An amateur taking the AmEx before turning pro four days later, and then a career European Tour player holding off a 22-year-old Ryder Cupper in the final group at Torrey. From I guess I can do this to I did this.
It has not been a month packed with theatrical performances from the sport’s superstars. Some of that was expected with LIV swiping Rahm, who owned January and February a year ago, back in December. Some of it — with big names like Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler all in at least two of these fields thus far — was not.
Some of this is just … inexplicable. It’s just how golf works sometimes. We can theorize about how and why long shots have been winning, and then the tournament favorite might win the next 15 events.
Regardless, this run of underdogs is unlikely to continue this weekend at Pebble Beach in what will be one of the great non-major fields in the history of that golf course. If somebody longer than 100-1 — current options include Tom Hoge, Taylor Montgomery, Adam Hadwin, Lucas Glover, Mackenzie Hughes and Maverick McNealy — goes on to win at historic Pebble in a field with Scheffler, Viktor Hovland and Rory McIlroy, that would be — no matter the odds — the most surprising outcome of all.