The 2026 Sony Open: Outright Bets, Core Plays, Bets, Lineup Process, Value Plays, and Player Pool)

Welcome back into another fantasy golf season! We start this year out with the Sony Open which is looking like a somewhat deeper field, with a lot of soft pricing both for betting and for dfs.

As also with these early season events we should expect to know who to be on to play well, but we will have some random good plays maybe struggle for a round causing them to miss the cut.

Below is my step-by-step process to give you the top picks, plays and bets for this weeks tournament.

*Please note I always publish the rough draft version of this write-up, and then come back and edit it / correct it later that day. If there are grammatical errors that is why.

SLATE CONFIDENCE RATING: Yellow

Slate confidence rating is a way of looking at the slate in terms of predictability. Red will be a week in which I am reducing my units bet. Typically this will mean entering the same amount of lineups but in a contest where the entry $ amount is less. A Yellow week is a standard week. Green is a week that appears to be very easy to predict, these are weeks in which we typically have a full field event that is loaded. (Majors) thus it should be very easy to make a good profitable lineup. **Note for betting my strategy does not change per week.

Typically speaking I would not attack a slate like this that aggressively simply due to it being the first event of the year, and we know their would be a lot of random variance. That being said the soft pricing for some big name players that we can trust to make the cut is extremely appealing to me.

KEY STATS:

*Based off of which key stats led to golfers winning but also making the cut in previous years at the course tournament. I look for which one or two Strokes Gained stats matter the most. Look to see whether this is a wedge fest or a long iron event. (175-125 stats don't really matter in terms of predicting who will play well in a given week) Find out which scoring stat matters the most (BOB, B2B, or BA). Find if this is a course in which accuracy or distance matters the most.

• Birdie To Bogey Ratio (B2B) Key Stat 1

• Ball Striking (BS) Key Stat 2

• Strokes Gained Putting (SG P) Key Stat 3

• Par 4 Scoring (Par 4) Key Stat 4

Course History:

Going forward Course History for an event with go by H1, H2, H3, and H4. For most weeks that will simply be 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 course history. (Last 4 years is course history is when the data is the most significant)

Last 4 years course history.

Weather:

Per PGA Tour website - tournament page - Course Stats - Weather

Friday could be interesting for showdown purposes, other than that weather shouldn't be playing a big issue.

BETTING PICKS:

First Round Leader

I will be targeting AM Tee Times that rank out top 5% for FRL betting using the NineToFive betting sheet until further notice (basically if weather tells us not to). Note you can always bet on golfers to finish Top 5 or Top, just make there they are paying out a tie.

• TBD

Round 1 - 3-Ball Bets

Available by clicking on either the Ownership Leverage, or Props page on NineToFive, then click on the 3 person Icon. I will typically only bet on golfers that have a 40% likelihood to win or type their group. Those will be highlighted in the PGA Tour Betting Sheet - Click on 3 Ball Bets

• TBD

  
  

Matchup Tournament Bets:

Best matchup bet for the week.

More will be highlighted in the PGA Tour Betting Sheet - Betting Page Dropdown - Matchup Bets You can also find the best matchup bets per round here as well.

• Henley over Ben Griffin

• Bud Cauley over Patrick Rodgers

• Tom Hoge over Hank Lebioda

  
  

More Bets found: Ninetofive Betting Sheet 

Outright Bets:

2023 Recap = 12 Outright Winners = 144 Units of Profit (Wyndham Clark winning at +100/1 Odds at Pebble carried)

Picture 1 = Golfers that are the statistical best Outright Bets. This is determined by looking at which data points were the most predictable in regards to players that won the past two seasons. These golfers meet at least 80% or more of the statistical thresholds used to determine winners.

Bets:

• Henley 12/1

• Keegan Bradley 22/1

• Kurt Kitayama 45/1

• Nico Echavarria 50/1

• Ben Griffin 19/1

• JJ Spaun 20/1

Half Unit Bets

• Brian Harman 45/1

• Denny McCarthy 50/1

• Lee Hodges 100/1

Data Tag: Core Plays

Golfers that are the most likely to make the cut, and meet or out produce their price tag. To be a Core Play golfers need to be coming in "Checking All the Boxes"

I completely agree that these should be the top 3 safest plays this week that provide the best upside as well. Overall I think that Russell Henley is being under-valued. If we were getting this profile for a player in the middle of the season in this field I think he would be at least $1,000 more expensive, and his outright odds would be closer to 7/1.

Ben Griffin has been by far one of the best players in the world over the past year, and I really see no reason why that wouldn't continue, especially at an event that he has played well at in the past. For DFS purposes I think it makes a lot of sense to be overweight on him and Henley.

We typically see Hideki the week prior to this event at the STOC but with that not taking place it will be tough to gauge where his game is at. That being said that was a good thing last year when he was able to win the STOC in his first event of the year.

Data Tag: High Exposure

Players that have one knock: whether that be course history, recent form, stat fit, safety, upside or price. (*This is based off of the the NineToFive Data Tag, which accurately marks a slight flaw in a great play thus why they would only be high exposure plays)

Again I fully agree with the rankings from the NineToFive data here. All of these are very appealing with some slight flaws.

Robert Macintyre has struggled to have great results at this tournament but at least he has made the cut twice.

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