Betting: Can Patrick Reed defend his WGC-Workday Championship?
Minty Bets is joined by Jay Busbee to give his top picks for the upcoming WGC-Workday Championship.
Video Transcript
MINTY BETS: Before you get on the fight, get $25 when signing up at the Yahoo Sportsbook today. The WGC-Workday Championship takes place this weekend in Florida. Joining me today is Jay Busbee here to give us his best bets for the tournament. Jay, who are your favorites to win this weekend?
JAY BUSBEE: Well, you can always look at the big names, your Dustin Johnsons, your Jon Rahms, your Rory McIlroys, your Patrick Cantlays. These are all reasonable bets. Now all of them had on or off rough weeks last week at the Genesis Invitational out at Riviera, so they may not be necessarily the best bet if you're looking for somebody that's hot.
I look right now to Justin Thomas. He's absolutely blistered this event the last four years. Four top-10 finishes. He had a rough week last week, but that was because of some family issues. Had a bit of a tragedy in his family.
He's the kind of guy who is an absolute, nonstop competitor. And he's exactly suited for this kind of situation because it's a unique situation on the tour in that this a course, the Concession, that the tour has never come to before. Because of COVID, the event was moved from one year out of Mexico. So this sets up for players who can adapt well to changing conditions, who can play well around the greens and on these very fast greens, and JT is very much one of those guys.
MINTY BETS: All right, are there any other players you're looking at? And any long shots you can give us?
JAY BUSBEE: Yeah, the trick in most of these WGC events is that you don't really find a whole lot of long shots coming from out of nowhere to win. Most of the tournament winners tend to come from the 25 to 1 to better odds. These are the events that attract the top players, and the top players play well.
One guy that I think is getting some potentially decent odds is Patrick Reed. He's the defending champion. He's going off at 25 to 1. Now Reed is kind of what we would call in NASCAR a checkers or wreckers guy. He either wins or he finishes completely out of the top 10, and that's where he's been at this event. And he's won twice, but then five times he's finished out of the top 10.
He's the defending champion, so he's coming in hot. He's got a win earlier this year at the Farmers Insurance Open. But he's a guy that you might want to keep an eye on.
Another guy, Tyrell Hatton. He's 22 to 1 to win, and he's 4 to 1 to finish in the top five. He's got four wins in his last 22 events around the globe, and he's coming into this event with the lowest average score at this event. He's got three top-10s in four events played at this particular WGC Championship event. So he's another guy that you want to keep an eye on in terms of a winner.
Beyond that, like I say, it's a little bit tough to predict a long shot finishing very, very well in the top five. But, obviously, if you want to look at an almost guaranteed top five, you look at Tony Finau. He's got fourth place, second, second, second in his last four events. That's not bad.
And then another guy you want to keep an eye on, Will Zalatoris. He's a rookie. He's 50 to 1 to win, but he's 15 to 2 to finish in the top five. He played very well at Riviera, finished top 15, putted very strongly, and he's 13th overall on the tour as a rookie in total strokes gained. So he's a guy that you want to keep an eye on if you're looking for someone to come from way deep in the back to finish near the top of the leaderboard.
MINTY BETS: Awesome. Well, good luck to you, Jay. Thank you so much.
JAY BUSBEE: Thank you.