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 WM Phoenix Open, which begins Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Gotterup, Scheffler and Rose – that’s a very good start to the 2026 PGA Tour season – and it’s all happening out west, where on Sunday, a winner will emerge from a loaded field at WC Phoenix Openonly to be followed by the NFL crowning its Super Bowl champion at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California. While most of the country is freezing, the West Coast Swing is blowing.
“The Greatest Show on Grass” returns to TPC Scottsdalein its usual time slot, acting as a pre-party before the Big Game, and many of the top golfers are here in the desert to take a Super Week off and run.
Just to give one an idea of the collective energy in the sports world out west this week, look no further than some of the proposed bets offered at Las Vegas sports books. In the Westgate SuperBook, the bet is “Who will have the most?” and it pits former WM Phoenix Open champion Nick Taylor’s final round score against Kenneth Walker III’s rushing yards.
And of course, let’s not forget the 700,000+ fans who will be cheering, heckling, yelling, hissing and yes, drinking at TPC Scottsdale this week, especially the celebrities par-3 16th hole.
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2026 WM Phoenix Open odds: Scottie Scheffler the big favorite at TPC Scottsdale
Kevin Cunningham
The golf course is a Tom Weiskopf and Jay Moorish design, redesigned in 2014 by Weiskopf. It is a par 71 and stretches to nearly 7,300 yards. The fairways are wide and the greens are large. The putting surfaces are a Bermudagrass base, overlaid with Poa and Bentgrass. This time of year in the desert, the greens are usually strong and fast. For many years, this tournament was a bit of a bird party and much of it was about placement. Since the redesign, it’s been much more about hitting the ball and really emphasizes that more than most events on Tour.
I watched Strokes Gained: Approach, Off the Tee and Strokes Gained: Ball Striking this week. I looked at Greens in Regulation, Scrambling, work on par 4s and 5s, and Hole Proximity from 150-200 yards. We’re not necessarily relying on one skill set this week, but again, a general trend toward flushing the golf ball with the driver and irons. Past winners here are examples of just that: Scheffler, Fowler, Matsuyama, Koepka…
The results here are also very “sticky”, meaning that the same names and types of players tend to perform well here year after year. In fact, the aforementioned Scheffler, Koepka and Matsuyama have each won twice here. Lately I’ve noticed a strong connection with Bay Hillwhere they play the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Scheffler has also been a two-time winner there. I also looked for correlations in the Philadelphia Cricket Club (Truist Championship 2025), Pinehurst no. 2 (2024 US Open), TPC Craig Ranch (Byron Nelson), and Black Desert Resorthome of the newly added Tour of Southern Utah event that is also a Weiskopf design.
With it being such a party atmosphere out west this week, I felt it only fitting that for my live winner picks, I’d rather choose a six-pack.
Hideki Matsuyama (26-1)
We noted that Matsuyama is a two-time champion here at TPC Scottsdale. He has also finished runner-up, fourth and eighth. We know he’s an incredible striker of the ball and he’s also one of the best players in the game, ranking sixth in the field over the last 24 rounds. It is also top 10 in the field for Hole Proximity from 150-200 yards. The season is off to a good start for Matsuyama as well, with two top-15 finishes in two starts. Spoiler alert: He could be poised to grab a second green jacket in a few months, too.
Sam Burns (36-1)
I wanted to find some of the shorter priced contenders this week that weren’t named Scheffler. With the quality of the pitch I think we’ve got a quality winner so I didn’t want to just load up on long shots. Burns certainly fits in well with his history here of two recent top-6 finishes. He has been top-5 twice at the Byron Nelson and has top-10 finishes at Bay Hill and the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst. In his only start this season, he was 27th two weeks ago at American Express – but he hasn’t missed a cut in 10 months and finished last season with fourth, seventh, 13th and 11th. His short game is lights out. If the close game shows up this week, so will Burns at or near the top of the leaderboard.
Kurt Kitayama (77-1)
A UNLV commit and Las Vegas resident, Kitayama is no stranger to desert golf. He has never missed a cut in three tries here at Scottsdale with his best finish being eighth. Ball striking is definitely his strength and he has proven he can win against the best, taking top honors at Bay Hill at the 2023 Arnold Palmer Invitational. He is solid across the board in stats this week and ranks fourth in the field over the last 24 rounds for SG: Ball Striking.
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Keith Mitchell (85-1)
Mitchell is one of the best in the game off the tee. Last season, he ranked 12th on Tour in Total Driving, 13th for SG: Off the Tee, 19th in Greens in Regulation and 11th in Ball Striking. He has yet to miss a putt this season and is coming off an 11th place finish last week at Torrey Pines where he led the field in SG: Tee to Green. He’s made six cuts in seven tries here in Phoenix and finished once in the top 10, twice in the top 20 and once in the top 25. He’s never missed a cut at Bay Hill and has been in the top 6 twice, and last year at the Truist Championship at the Cricket Club, he finished seventh.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout (100-1)
We were in South Africa last week at the Farmers Insurance Open and he produced a solid week. I believe he has a good chance to do it again here. He’s been as high as fourth here in Scottsdale and has never missed a beat at Bay Hill, finishing once in the top 10 and three times in the top 20. Over the past 24 rounds, Bezuidenhout ranks in the top 10 in the field in par-4s and par-5s, and is 22nd per SG: Approach.
