5 picks that our gambling expert likes

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network dedicated to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolferand you can read his picks below for the 2026 American Express, which begins Thursday in La Quinta, California. Along with Kannon’s recommended shows, you’ll also see promos from Chirp Golf, a mobile app featuring free and daily fantasy golf contests where you can win money and prizes with every round and tournament.

After its debut in Hawaii, the 2026 PGA Tour campaign touches state in La Quinta, California for American Express. Call this calm before the storm for what it is Torrey PinesPhoenix, Pebble beachand Genesis Invitation to Riviera Country Club to follow and round out the West Coast Swing. American Express is a Pro-Am contested over three courses. Every golfer will play Nicklaus Tour Course, La Quinta Country Cluband Pete Dye Stadium course once before the top 65 players and ties make the cut, which is decided after 54 holes. The final round on Sunday will be played on the Stadium Course, which is the only course of the three that has ShotLink data.

Pro-Ams, three course rotations, 54-hole cuts, typically sparse fields and a lack of data have American Express ranked pretty low in my PGA Tour power ratings. It’s also the one tournament, in all my years, that I’ve never won outright. The results here are very random. Scottie Scheffler has been a regular here in recent years and while this is one of the weakest fields he competes against all year, he has never won here and even lost in 2021. Sepp Straka is your defending champion and he makes a lot of sense here. Jon Rahm is a former winner and was the betting favorite, but other than that, we’ve had four winners come out at triple-digit odds, much higher than 100-1, in the last seven years.

One piece of information that seems to make a little bit of sense is the fact that 15 of the last 17 American Express winners have previously played in at least one of the tournaments in Hawaii. All three courses in the rotation this week are relatively short at around 7,100 yards. Each is a Par 72 and all have Bermudagrass greens – which are dormant in this part of the country this time of year – and are overlaid with Rye Grass and Poa Trivialis.

Let’s remember, this is a Pro-Am, so the golf courses are set up relatively lightly for amateurs. There are very few roughs to speak of and the greens run much slower than the pros usually face. While neither distance nor accuracy off the tee have proven to be particularly important this week, I did look at “Good Drives”. From there, it’s all about hitting the green in regulation and strokes gained: Approach. La Quinta Country Club and Stadium Course have some of the smallest greens on Tour. Taking advantage of the Par 5s is a must. This is a birdie feast and making par or worse on the long holes puts one back against the field. The par 4s here measure between 350-450 yards. This is another area to note – and one that ties into another category I considered this week, Birdies or Better Gained.

It is difficult to link any American Express golf courses. The Pete Dye Stadium course can be compared to other Dye designs, but the connection isn’t as strong as it is among some of his other tour venues. One can look at Phoenix and Las Vegas and use the desert angle, but there hasn’t been much proven there either. As far as layouts go, Houston Memorial Park and Corales Golf Club, home of the Corales Puntacana Championship, seem to me to have the most similarities to the stadium where half of this golf tournament will be played.

Since this week was more of a shoot and with a history of higher priced winners, I stayed away from anything too short and gravitated towards longer shots. Four of my five picks played in Hawaii last week.

Pierceson Coody (80-1)

Coody finished 13th last week at the Sony Open and I like the way he got there, shooting a 64 in the final round. He was third last season on Tour in Total Driving, fourth in Greens in Regulation and fourth in Birdie Average. During the last 24 rounds, he is ranked no. 1 in the field in Par 5s and is fourth in the 400-450 yard Par 4s. He performed very well last week in Hawaii as well, finishing 24th and gaining nearly 2.5 strokes on the field.

Denny McCarthy (90-1)

We don’t have to worry about facing McCarthy, who is one of the best in the world. He has finished as high as sixth here at the Amex, was fourth at Corales and 11th at Houston. He placed 16th in the field last week at Sony for SG: Off the Tee. Over the past 24 rounds, he is 25th in the field in approach and 20th on Par 4s from 350-450 yards.

Patrick Rodgers (92-1)

Will the man from Indiana finally get his first PGA Tour win after the Hoosiers win the College Football National Championship? The game was sharp in all areas last week in Hawaii and resulted in a third place finish. He has had success here on the west coast in the past and maybe that has to do with attending Stanford University. Over the last 24 rounds, Rodgers has been excellent in closing in on a ranking of 20th in the field for SG: Pitching and 26th for the Greens in Regulation Won. Pitching has typically been his bugaboo, but last week at Waialae, Rodgers struck out four and was 14th in the field.

JT Poston (100-1)

This is where we enter the world of triple figures and we do so with another high-level player. Poston didn’t play last week, but in his last start in mid-November, he finished seventh in the RSM Classic. He has been excellent here at La Quinta with seventh, sixth and 12th finishes last year. He has won at a desert bird festival before, with a win in Las Vegas in 2024.

Lee Hodges (150-1)

Hodges took sixth last week in Hawaii and has been third here at American Express. He also finished 11th last season in Houston. That’s two straight top-10 finishes for Hodges who closed out 2025 with a fourth-place finish at the RSM Classic. Let’s hope his pitcher stays hot as he was second in the field last week, earning almost eight hits with the flat bat.

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