2024 Sony Open Picks, Bets, Weather, Course Preview
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THE CUSTYS
Voting is now OPEN for the 2024 Custy Awards. And there are some jaw dropping nominees…
VOTE IN THE 2024 CUSTY AWARDS
Cust has decided to use all the money in his war chest this year to finally not win the prestigious “MOST INSANE” honor, and he kicked off the campaign with an amazing video…
Field
Field: 144 Players
Cut: Top 65 and Ties
Lineup Lock: Thursday, January 11
Defending Champ: Si Woo Kim
Nine of the past 11 Sony Open winners competed the prior week at the Tournament of Champions. The two outlier: Si WOOOO Kim a year ago and Cameron Smith in 2020.
Now there are two ways to think about this. First, having four real rounds of competition after a long break has to be distinct advantage. Second, the best players in the field are the ones who played in the Tournament of Champions so it’s only logical that they would win. It’s probably a combination of the two, TBH. And, the year Smith won, the Presidents Cup was held in December, so his competitive break wasn’t the standard PGA Tour layoff.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained: Approach
Par 4s Gained
Eagles Gained
Good Drives Gained
Mayo’s Key Stats powered by FantasyNational.com
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READ: Sony Open Power Rankings & Stat Models
Course
Course: Waialae CC
Par: 70
Yardage: 7,044
Greens: Bermuda
Par 3's (4): Average length - 192 yards
- Seven holes have a bogey rate north of 16% and three of them are Par 3's
Par 4's (12): Average length - 435 yards
- Three of the four toughest holes on the course are front 9 Par 4's
- Five holes have a bogey rate north of 18% and four of them are within the first six on the front 9
Par 5's (2): Average length - 529 yards
- The two easiest holes on the course, both with a birdie rate north of 50%
- Hole #9 carries an eagle rate (6.6%) that is more than double the bogey rate (3.2%)
Mayo’s Course Conditions powered by FantasyNational.com
Conditions Used
Sample: Last 24 Rounds (Average per round)
Scoring: Easy + Average
Greens: Bermuda
Firmness Medium + Firm
Fairways: Average + Difficult
Green Speed: Average + Fast
Length: Under 7,200 Yards
Past Winners
2023: Si Woo Kim -18
2022: Hideki Matsuyama -23
2021: Kevin Na -21
2020: Cameron Smith -11
2019: Matt Kuchar -22
2018: Patton Kizzire -17
2023: Si Woo Kim (-18)
Did not play the week prior
A pair of 64's over the weekend earned him the win (fifth best round on Saturday and the low man on the course on Sunday)
Kim was 2nd best in Proximity from 200+ and the 4th best putter from 15-20 feet
Trend: 25 of the top 27 finishers gained strokes on the field in Par 4's from 400-450
2022: Hideki Matsuyama (-23)
Finished 13th the week prior
A pair of 63's over the weekend (the best round on the course both days)
Matsuyama ran hot with the putter (+7.3 strokes, 1.3 better than anyone in the field and 0.8 strokes better than any other tournament in his career)
Trend: 11 players gained at least 5 strokes on approach and 10 of them cashed top 20 paychecks.
Both Kim and Matsuyama were top 35 in OTT and ARG the season prior to their win at Sony ... players who did that in 2023:
Justin Rose (3 top 15's at Sony, runner-up in 2017)
Hideki Matsuyama (3 top 20's at Sony, 3 MC's, won in 2022)
2021: Kevin Na (-21)
Finished 38th the week prior
His 61 on Saturday was tied for the best round of the week. One hot round was the difference -- that round was the only round in which he scored lower than runner-up Chris Kirk.
Trend: Short putting -- Of the top 13 finishers, 12 gained from 0-5 feet, 12 gained from 5-10 feet, 8 gained from 10-15 feet and 6 gained 15-20 feet.
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Notes
Waialae CC is the fourth longest-serving host venue on TOUR. The Honolulu course has been played every year since 1965, except for 1970 when there was no event. That trails only Augusta National (1934), Colonial CC (1946) and Pebble Beach (1947).
Ernie Els (2003) and Justin Thomas (2017) are the only two players to complete the Hawaii Slam in the same year and Chris Kirk will have an opportunity to join that club this season.
Smith’s -11 winning score was the highest since Vijay Singh won in 2005 also at -11. A coastal course, Waialae experienced massive wind gusts and rain during the first few rounds in 2020. Those winds were a massive outlier, however. Extreme wind that tends to be commonplace at Kapalua rarely emerges at Waialae to that extent. Generally, conditions are benign, and the winning score will be lingering around -20.
Tracking the historic Strokes Gained data, Around the Green means less and less the more you rise on the leaderboard. That’s true at many courses, but it’s far more pronounced at Waialae CC. Since Waialae is one of the most generous courses for GIR (66%), the more the field utilized their short game, the fewer birdies they’ll make. Not great in a birdie fest unless all those chips are going in.
Adding to that, Waialae typically ends up being among the courses with the most difficult fairways to hit at just a shade over 53% compared to the TOUR average of 62%. Don’t worry, however, as the USGA isn’t involved in rough control this week. The field is more concerned with setting up the proper angles than landing in the fairway. Despite almost half the approaches coming from the rough, that GIR percentage is well above the average event, and the Sony sports a higher scrambling percentage and an almost identical average proximity from the pin on GIRs. So, the Good Drives Gained stat will outweigh Strokes Gained: Off The Tee this week:
Good Drives Gained: (Good Drives are drives where the player either hits the fairway off the tee OR the player misses the fairway but still hits the green or fringe in regulation.)
For correlation courses, the obvious is El Camaleon, host of the Mayaboka Classic. In 2018 and 2019, Patton Kizzire and Matt Kuchar won both events in succession. It’s helpful the fields tend to have similar strength as well. There’s a lot of crossover between them, outside of the very high end. If you’re wondering what happened in 2022 at El Camaleon, wonder no longer. You’ll notice, Sony Open 2022 Runner Up Russell Henely took home the title.
There’s also an angle of the short courses on TOUR to play this week. The Sony Open has shown a direct correlation with Colonial, Sedgefield, Mayakoba and Harbour Town, both in course spec and field strength.
Here are the SG: TOTAL leaders from those four courses in the field this week over their past 24 rounds. PGA National & Sawgrass have shared a lot of success as well. But the amount of water on those course makes the numbers wildly variant so it is not included. (Get the numbers with those courses here)
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DRAFTKINGS SHOWDOWN
This won’t be a huge advantage, but in single-round, DraftKings Showdown contests, any edge is worth exploiting. The groups will alternate going off spilt tees (half the groups start on hole No. 1 and half on hole No. 10) the first two rounds, and targeting the players starting on hole No. 1 should yield a slight advantage. A birdie streak on holes 8, 9 and 10 is more likely, per birdie/bogey averages, than 17, 18 and 1 or 18, 1 and 2 with holes No. 1 and No. 2 ranking as the third- and fourth-most difficult holes at this venue.
BETS
60/1 Justin Rose — I had been eyeing Rose before the season as an excellent fit at Waialae and when I saw a -10 next to his name at one point in Sunday’s round at Kapalua, I couldn’t unseen it. Rose has possessed the upside to win essentially anywhere in career, but now, as a 43-year-old, the short, strategic tracks are going to be his wheelhouse. Places where his savvy, combined with elite wedge play and a hot putter can propel him to the top of the leaderboard. Just look at where his best results materialized in 2023: Oakdale, Colonial, Sawgrass, and a win at Pebble Beach. All shorter courses.
100/1 (5 Places) Nick Taylor — The recent form hasn’t been strong for the Canadian, but Waialae has been quite kind to Taylor in recent years. He’s progressively garnered better results in his past three trips (T32/T11/T7) fired at least one round of 62 each of the past two years. He was a disaster at Kapalua a week ago, but most of that was chipping and putting related — Taylor lost 8.8 strokes to the field around and on the greens. The flat stick hasn’t been a concern for him at this venue however, he’s gained at least +4.4 SG: Putt in each of his past two starts in Honolulu. Nicky T was the 36-Hole leader (by 2) in 2021 the year he finished T11.
50/1 Cameron Davis — Despite being an abject failure at Kapalua in the opener, Davis now gets a course that suits him much better. It’s not quite clear to me why, the Aussie, one of the better drivers on TOUR only seems to come alive at short strategy courses. But the results show he does. Wyndham, Heritage, Sawgrass, all Top 10s for Davis in 2023 with Top 10s at Heritage, Colonial, Deere Run, and Sawgrass the year previous. Course fit is on point, and if he can regain some of the momentum he was building in the fall — four T12 finishes in five starts — there’s no reason he can’t be a fixture on the Sunday leaderboard.
75/1 Lucas Glover — I entered the week seeing Glover top all the model rankings, presumably because it was still catching the insane run he went on to end the summer. There’s actually no “presumably”, it is why that’s the case. I checked and everything. So, I was prepared to simply fade and be on my way, but then I opened Bet365 and saw a 75/1 hanging. Or 3x Eric Cole, as I preferred to look at it. The number was too large so I took it. I don’t think I’m alone on that either since the 75 is long gone today.
35/1 Chris Kirk —Kirk’s caught lightning in a bottle and been able to keep the lid on for a while in past, so why not again? Because our minds are wired strangely, Kirk likely would have opened at 25/1 if he had simply come in third last week instead of winning. Our win. We now get Kirk at 35/1 at a course where he’s finished Top 3 two of the past three years.
150/1 (5 Places) Hayden Buckley — I’m a slut for course history sometimes. I got nothing else really, beyond getting him confused with Chad Ramey on Monday’s show.
FOMO BETS
Gone are the days of Si Woo and Luke List (they’re just good players who make a regular betting card these days), and enter the two new names I’ve decided to start with in 2023….
195/1 (5 Places) Adrien Dumont De Chassart — I was was going to make ADDC my guy who I bet every week this year at triple digits regardless of course, and then he opened at 80/1. Well, no one took that action, so as of this writing on Bet 365 he’s 150/1, and I got a 30% odds boost on him. Imagine a glorious name like that winning a PGA event. It’d make my year.
250/1 (5 Places) Pierceson Coody — We’ve heard about the upside for over a year now, and while his performance is never consistent, he did post two wins on KFT last year. I saw he’s 400/1 at BetMGM, but I do not have access to that in my location, so I grabbed the best number which also offered placements I could.
WEATHER
These were the conditions in Hawaii for the Monday Q, which was pushed to Tuesday.
Follow: Monday Q Info on X
While, I’m a dummy and pulled the trigger on my bets before I looked at how the course for the Sony looks, you don’t have to if you haven’t placed a wager yet. Based on the weather Wednesday, then over the course of the tournament, it appears as if it may dry out. But it will potentially play slower than normal and the rough could end up being more penal if it doesn’t completely dry out. Those are all coulds at the moment however.
WIND TOWER: Waialae Beach Park / Oahu
Luckily, the Sony Open doesn’t start until 12:10 ET Thursday so there’s plenty of time to gather information on how or if the course will play differently than usual.
— PM