Players Championship Golf Betting Tips 2022
Scottie Scheffler’s two PGA victories in the past three weeks have catapulted the 26-year-old into pole position for the Players Championship at the famed TPC Sawgrass where the notorious Island Green is again looking forward to humiliating golf’s crème de la crème.
Having pocketed $2.16m, the biggest of his career, on Sunday when just keeping the European raiders at bay, Scheffler faces the daunting prospect of pressing that up with the $3.6m bonanza awaiting the winner of what is the strongest field of the year.
With prize money hiked up from $15m to an astronomical $20m, the Players is leaving the four Majors behind financially and you won’t hear a peep from 144 lucky golfers about that. All top-ten on the world rankings and 47 of the top 50 are teeing it up on Pete Dye’s 7256-yard par 72 masterpiece in a test like no other.
It is not everyone’s favourite but spectators love a car crash and that’s what the tiny 17th, barely 140 yards long but with nowhere to bale out, provides. Last year only 27 balls found a watery grave, a long way behind the 50 of not so long ago.
It is no bargain even with sunny skies and no wind, but when it blows, it is carnage.
Scheffler’s previous visit lasted only two days as he missed the cut.
But breaking through at Phoenix has taken a monkey off his back. Often looking a million dollars but frustratingly failing to get the job done, the Dallas-based all-rounder need hang that ‘loser’ tag around his neck no longer.
The way the 22/1 shot kept it together under pressure was impressive but it has not always been that way. So there’s every chance Euro aces Viktor Hovland and Tyrrell Hatton, both tipped here last week at 16/1 and 35/1 but coming up just a shot short, could turn the tables on Scheffler.
Hovland, two ahead on the run to the wire, showed frailty under fire and bogeyed three of the last six holes. Hatton was just opposite, finishing like a lion to set the early target on a relentless course.
All credit to the Englishman for hitting back with 67 after Saturday’s X-rated 78. Second only a month after a bone graft jaw operation was admirable and the 50/1 for Sawgrass looks a bargain despite lack of positive course form. After two fine finishes in the Gulf to kick-start his year, his 2022 profile reads 6-4-2 so why should Tyrrell be three times the price of his Ryder teammate?
If there’s a McIlroy v Hatton match bet, go for Hatton as Rory’s body language over the last rounds was as wretched as his golf. As a course winner, you can’t rule him out but he won’t be carrying my money.
It’s a 14/1 the field week and if you cannot resist world No.1 Jon Rahm’s odds, be aware that his putting is a concern and the chief reason behind his disappointing 17th and 21st on his two latest outings.
He didn’t break 70 in any round at Bay Hill and I would sooner be on his co-market leader Justin Thomas or another Sawgrass winner, Si Woo Kim, champion in 2017.
JT’s flat stick isn’t quite firing either but he’s 6-8-20-5-5 for five 2022 starts so he must be doing something right, mustn’t he?
He squeaked home from Lee Westwood last year with Bryson DeChambeau right behind in third. This is DeChambeau’s first PGA start since hurting wrist and hip in a Saudi Arabian fall and, if you fancy him, the advice is to wait to the weekend.
FedEx Cup winner Patrick Cantlay’s classic game brings him into the conversation but he lacks the course form of Adam Scott, fourth at Riviera a couple of weeks ago, in contention again for a long way at Honda and he’s back at the scene of his breakthrough PGA victory in 2004.
Si Woo Kim switches from brilliant to awful in a heartbeat but no fluke about his three-shot triumph five years ago. He made top-ten at Sawgrass last time and had two early top-12s this season.
He’s worth risking at 90/1 and another longshot expected to go well is the evergreen Westwood who would have made it to a playoff last year had he not bogeyed the 17th. If last year is anything to go by, March is when the Worksop Wonder comes to life. His back-to-back seconds last year came at Bay Hill and Sawgrass. He is clearly more efficient in his adopted state of Florida.
The incentive for Lee, 49 next month, is that the old fox would overtake 2005 champion Fred Funk as oldest Sawgrass winner. Funk’s shock triumph proved that you don’t have to hit it a country mile to compete here as he was the second-shortest hitter in the line-up.
However the power players may well come into their own when the heavens open up on the weekend, taking the sting out of the course. Nothing wrong, though, with the temperature as the forecasters call it at 27C. As a general rule Europeans are superior bad-weather golfers.
Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth and Xander Schauffele (not to confused with Scheffler) are all likely to be there at the end of a starstudded week but we can’t back them all!
The Players Championship Golf Betting Tips 2022
- 2pts each-way Justin Thomas at 14/1 (Bet365) 8 places
- 2pts each-way Tyrrell Hatton at 50/1 (Bet365) 8 places
- 1pt each-way Si Woo Kim at 70/1 (Bet365) 8 places
- 0.5pt each-way Lee Westwood at 150/1 (Bet365) 8 places
- 0.5pt each-way Adam Scott at 55/1 (Bet365) 8 places
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