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 Texas Children’s Houston Open, which begins Thursday.
We ended the Florida Swing with our first outright winner of the season in Matt Fitzpatrick. Let’s see if we can continue the winning ways for the next two weeks deep in the heart of Texas – and then of course, in Augusta, Ga., as the first major championship of the year gets closer and closer.
For in the Lone Star State is for Texas for Kids Houston Open AND Memorial Park Golf Course for the first of two final tune-ups before the Masters. Min Woo Lee is your defending champion here in Houston and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who has finished runner-up here three times, was scheduled to play in this event for the seventh time in a row. However, as of Tuesday morning, Scheffler pulled backciting family reasons. He didn’t commit to the tournament until the last minute last Friday and then ended up pulling out after it’s understood the Schefflers are expecting their second child. It remains to be seen whether Scheffler will play next week at the Valero Texas Open or we won’t see him again until Masters week, which begins on Monday, April 6.
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2026 Texas Children’s Houston Open odds: Scottie Scheffler is favored in Masters tuning
Kevin Cunningham
It greatly changes the landscape of the odds table, where Scheffler was once a prohibitive favorite at around +300 to now be a non-starter. It’s unfortunate that we don’t get to see Scheffler play this week and secondly, the prices drop for everyone else who is still scheduled to play. The good news is that in theory, Scheffler’s absence gives our picks a much better chance of winning. We will see.
Memorial Park is a very long course at nearly 7,500 yards and is only 70 yards. The fairways are very wide by Tour standards and the rough is very low and not too penal. The greens are large and feature lots of undulation. It’s a bomber track and that’s what we’ve seen win here since we moved to this golf course six seasons ago. Tom Doak redesigned the course with Brooks Koepka serving as Player Consultant. Koepka missed the cut here in 2021 but finished fifth in 2020. He is in the field this week after back-to-back finishes in Florida of 9-13-18.
Marking around Memorial Park can be especially difficult. Last year was heavily influenced by rain and mild conditions when Lee reached 20 below par. In the previous four editions, the average winning score was less than 13 under. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook winning score proposition this week is Under/Over 264.5, which means 15.5 under par.
I looked at Driving Distance this week, Strokes Gained: Putting, 450-500 yard Par 4s, Proximity to Holes from 200+ yards, Scrimmage, Avoiding Bogey, and Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass). One can find references to these greens being planted with Poa Trivialis, but with the unusually warm temperatures taking place in the Southwest, this once dormant Bermuda is waking up ahead of schedule and should be more prominent in the turf equation this week in Houston.
We noted that this is a long, driver heavy golf course and with that, I went in that direction to the associated courses. i used Torrey Pines (Open Farmers Insurance), Hollow Club (Truist Championship), Country Club of Jackson (Sanderson Farms), and Vidanta Vallarta (Mexico Open).
With the Scheffler WD, I will use the actual prices with my picks and not what I got when I made my shows.
Jake Knapp (20-1)
It was a missed cut at the Players Championship last time we saw Knapp, but before that, he had started the season going 11-5-8-8-6, and now he comes to a golf course that I believe really suits his game – well off the tee and requiring great touch on and around the green. He was an underdog 27th here last year, but has two top-5 finishes at Torrey Pines and a win in 2024 at Vidanta Vallarta. Knapp ranks eighth on Tour in driving distance, 65th in SG: Approach, second in SG: Putting and fourth in Scrambling. I imagine he’ll be a popular pick this week, but I can’t ignore what we’re all seeing and how he should fit on this course in Houston.
Nicolai Hojgaard (25-1)
Similar to Knapp, Hojgaard is one of the tallest forwards in the game and is having a good start to the season with the shooter. He was runner-up at Torrey Pines in 2024 and was eighth last year in Mexico. In addition to driving and putting, Hojgaard ranks 10th on Tour in Scrambling, 28th in Hole Proximity from 200+ yards and is 18th in Bogey Avoidance.
Rickie Fowler (30-1)
We tested Fowler a few weeks ago at TPC Sawgrass where he finished 42nd. He has yet to miss a cut all season and is now ranked 61st in the OWGR. This will be the last event for which he can crack the top 50 to qualify for the Masters. Fowler has multiple top-10 finishes at Torrey Pines, was 16th last year at the Sanderson Farms Championship and has been huge at Quail Hollow Club with 10 top 10s and a win in 2012. Fowler ranks 18th this season on Tour in Ball Striking, is ninth in SG: Putting, at 17, at 17. fourth in par 4.
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Ryan Gerard (33-1)
Gerard started in 2026 which saw him finish runner-up in two consecutive weeks. The spotlight grew fast and terrifyingly bright as his success was hard to miss. Things have cooled off for a minute with Gerard now and it looks like it might be the right time to make a comeback. After those two second-place finishes, he finished 11th at Torrey Pines, where he was 15th last year. He’s tied for 17th in Mexico, was eighth at last year’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow and finished ninth here in Houston last season in his first ever visit. Gerard ranks 15th on Tour in Ball Striking and sixth in SG: Approach.
