If you had have told us last week that our two tips for the weekend’s PGA Canadian Open would finish at -10 and -11 respectively we would have been pretty happy. However, the Glen Abbey Golf Course played extremely easy on the weekend and the eventual winner, Dustin Johnson, finished with a ridiculous score of -23 to finish three shots ahead of South Korean pair Kim Meen-whee and An Byeong-hun.
The PGA Tour rolls on this weekend as we head to the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio for the 2018 WGC Bridgestone Invitational, which is set to be headlined by the in-form Tiger Woods along with a star studded field including the likes of Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.
We preview the 2018 WGC Bridgestone Invitational set to kick off Thursday night (AEST) and give our betting tips below.
2018 WGC Bridgestone Invitational Betting Tips
The Course
The South Course at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio has been the home of the World Golf Championships Bridgestone International since it’s inception in 1999. The course has hosted the tournament every year but 2002, where it was held at the Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Washington. However, the WGC Bridgestone Invitational is set to say goodbye to Firestone as the tournament will head to Memphis at the end of this year.
It makes it a potentially emotional tournament for the tournament headliner Tiger Woods, who has won WGC at Firestone a remarkable eight times and will be looking to finish on a high this season. The Course is a 7,400-yard-long par 70. It offers players extremely limited room for error with skinny fairways and long rough lined with tall and thick trees and shrub. Considering the PGA average course length in 2018 is just 7,200 through par 72’s the Firestone South Course is also a fairly long one, which should play into the hands of some of the favourites this weekend.
The Field
The $10,000,000 purse for the WGC Bridgestone Invitational has attracted an absolutely stacked field for this weekend. It helps that the tournament is two weeks after the British Open, so most of the top line golfers in the world will be ready to step back into it after having last weekend off. However, many of favourites in this tournament will be backing it up after competing in the Canadian Open last weekend, namely Dustin Johnson, who comes into the WGC in scintillating form.
Johnson leads the field in terms of betting but is flanked by every other player in the current world top ten rankings as well as a host of other big names. McIlroy, Rose, Woods, Spieth, Day, Fowler, Koepka, Molinari, Rahm and Thomas bring up the next names in the odds. See the full field for the tournament here.
Picks
Dustin Johnson bounced back from a disappointing effort at The Open Championship to win the Canadian Open last week. Obviously, he is a great selection, but I like the value of American Justin Thomas this weekend, who I’m predicting to have a similar bounce back performance after his own lacklustre showing at the British.
Like Johnson, Thomas missed the cut at The Open Championship but is self-proclaimed as a below average player on links courses. His form in Scotland has raised his price to what I think is an astonishing $26 this weekend which is way too high for the current World #2 ranked player.
Thomas already has two wins this season and boasts a further 4 top ten finishes as well as a ridiculous 15 cuts made from 17 tournaments. Bar Johnson, he has arguably been the most consistent player on tour and in my opinion is great value this weekend.
Justin Thomas top ten finish
$3
Apart from Thomas who really stands out for me, I’m looking for long and accurate drivers this weekend as I think they should be the lynchpin at the top of the leader board. McIlroy and Johnson are the obvious choices here but for value I’m heading towards American Tony Finau.
Finau has been criminally undervalued this year because of his lack of a PGA trophy to date. However, he has been around the mark in nearly every tournament he has played in and already boasts an impressive seven top ten finishes from 22 events played.
On average, he is the third longest driver on tour this season behind only Trey Mullinax and Rory McIlroy which should hold him in good stead this weekend. Was serviceable last weekend in Canada and should be right up there again.
Tony Finau top ten finish
$4.80
DraftKings Lineup
The best way to have a flutter on the golf, in my opinion, is to enter one or multiple DraftKings lineups! You get to follow a whole range of players throughout the four rounds and having a few players who you're keeping an eye on is always a good thing if they aren't showing your top guy on TV!
DraftKings are hosting a monster $650,000 tournament this weekend, with $100k set to go to the winner with entries at just $5 a pop! Here is our best lineup for the weekend's action.
