PGA Tour Sony Golf Preview – January 10th-13th
Following the recent Tournament of Champions in Maui, the PGA Tour stays in Hawaii this week and moves on to the Sony Open in Hawaii tournament. This one turned up a shock last year. Twelve months ago it was Patton Kizzire who stunned the field with a victory. There is a pretty strong looking fill out this week and heading them all in the outright winner market is Justin Thomas at 13/2 odds* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 7th, 2018 at 4:19 pm)
Sony Open Odds*
Justin Thomas 13/2
Bryson DeChambeau 10/1
Gary Woodland 14/1
Jordan Spieth 14/1
Marc Leishman 20/1
Cameron Champ 25/1
Patrick Reed 28/1
Cameron Smith 28/1
Hideki Matsuyama 30/1
Paul Casey 33/1
Charles Howell 33/1
Kyle Stanley 33/1
Emiliano Grillo 33/1
40/1 bar* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 7th, 2018 at 4:19 pm)
Table of Contents
Tournament of Champions Follow On
There is a good chunk of the players who competed recently in the Tournament of Champions who are out again this week. However, there is a notable comparison between the two events and that is, the course this week in Honolulu is a lot tighter than what players will have faced in Kapalua. So the action on the island of Oahu is going to need players dialled into accuracy.
You have to imagine that the players who took part in the Tournament of Champions are going to have a little bit of an advantage here. That’s some early competitive golf under their belts whereas the rest of the field is largely coming in cold after the break between seasons. Reining Sony Open champion Patton Kizzire is back for a title defence this week and he had a good showing at the Tournament of Champions where he took the eighth-place finish.
Contenders
Justin Thomas leads the market at 13/2* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 7th, 2018 at 4:19 pm) and he won this tournament in 2017. So he has that behind him. Plus he walked off with third place at the Tournament of Champions recently and so he is bang on form at the moment. He will go off here as a favourite and have plenty of backing.
Marc Leishman, as expected, went well at the Tournament of Champions with a fourth-place finish and should be back in the mix here. Charles Howell out at the bigger 33/1 mark* (betting odds taken from bet365 on January 7th, 2018 at 4:19 pm) could have some appeal because of a decent showing at the Sony Open. He has locked in a string of top ten finishes at the event and he was out last week playing at Tournament of Champions.
Howell also took a title back in November out in Georgia, ending a drought of over a decade without one. Gary Woodland is another with very good course form at Waialae with him having taken three top ten finishes in his last four attempts at the tournament. He took second at the Tournament of Champions over the weekend as well. Bryson Dechambeau, who got that win at the Shriners back at the start of November is a player who is just tempting to back every week. He goes into this on the back of a seventh-place finish at Tournament of Champions.
Predictions
So you can see, even though it is early days into the new season, there was a strong showing over the weekend by some of the top players in a massively competitive field at the Tournament of Champions. That’s as you would expect though of course. So how does that translate into picks and predictions for the 2019 Sony Open?
We are sticking with an American because no European player has ever won this and with current form and course history, it has to be Justin Thomas from the front-runners for us. He’s proven before that he can win here. As a solid each way prediction for the Sony Open, we’ll buck the USA trend and have another good look at Marc Leishman to get close.
