Betting: Is Jon Rahm the best bet at the U.S. Open?
Minty Bets is joined by Jay Busbee to give his top picks for the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines Golf Course.
Video Transcript
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The US Open is right around the corner, taking place at Torrey Pines in San Diego, California. Here with me is Jay Busbee to give us his best bets for the weekend. Jay, who are you liking this weekend?
JAY BUSBEE: Well, I'm liking the fact that we're back at another major. The majors are always the toughest tournaments in golf. And the US Open is the toughest of all the majors. It's designed to test players and to see how well they handle pressure.
Par is often a good score. At least that's the intention of the US Open. With that in mind, you want to start out by taking a look at the players that have played the best in majors recently. They handle the pressure the best. They're able to come through when the eyes of the world are upon them.
And the top three guys in that category, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele. Now Brooks has got four majors. DJ's got one. Xander has zero at the moment. That could change.
The cool thing about Torrey Pines is that while we often don't see a major venue until we come back around to it the next time, in this case, we see Torrey Pines every single year at the Farmers Insurance Open. So we can go and look at it and get a rough idea of how it's going to play.
Obviously, it's going to be tougher this time around in a major setting. But let's take a look at it. The guy at the top of the lineup there, at the top of the order at 10 to 1, Jon Rahm. Coming in at 10 to 1 even though he was removed from a tournament recently as you all recall for testing positive for COVID. That shouldn't have any kind of impact on him this week.
He's also really, really strong at Torrey Pines. He's got four top seven finishes in five events, including a win. Maybe a day of practice will affect him on the short term. But again, he's going to be a strong player all the way through the tournament.
But then we get to the guy that I'm actually looking at this week. I'm going a little bit out on a limb here. I'm going with Tony Finau. He's at 25 to 1. The reason why I like him is because he's played so well at Torrey Pines. He's got four top finishes in his last six events there.
He doesn't have a win, which is kind of a hallmark of his career. But he's also statistically really strong at Torrey. He's first in shots gained at Torrey Pines among players that have more than 10 rounds there. That's a really strong track record coming into a major.
MINTY BETS: OK, and do you have any sleeper picks for us?
JAY BUSBEE: I do. Sleepers tend to get kind of beaten up at the majors. You don't tend to see a whole lot of surprise breakout winners. But with that in mind, I've got a couple of guys you want to keep an eye on to make a run at least deep. And then who knows? Maybe even sneak in and grab one of the larger trophies on the PGA TOUR.
You've got Marc Leishman. He's got four top 10 finishes, including a win. He's also at Torrey Pines, and like Finau, he's very strong in shots gained at Torrey. He's at 66 to 1. So again, you could find some considerable value there.
And then Jason Kokrak. He's just coming off of a win at the Charles Schwab Championship. That was in Texas, where he outdueled Jordan Spieth on basically Spieth's home turf. That takes the kind of guts that you need to win at Torrey Pines.
And also, statistically he's very strong at Torrey in terms of shots gained, particularly off the tee. That's the kind of metric that you're looking for at the US Open because the rough is so punitive. You get off the fairway, and you're a lot of trouble right off the start.
MINTY BETS: All right, thank you so much, Jay. Good luck.
JAY BUSBEE: Thank you.
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