2024 Genesis Invitational: Will another longshot win at Riviera?

The year of the longshot in the PGA Tour continued last week with Nick Taylor’s victory at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Taylor got white hot down the stretch to defeat Charley Hoffman in a playoff and in doing so gave us six straight winners of at least 100/1 to start the 2024 season.

Because of its deep field and tough course, you’d expect that the Genesis Invitational would be a tough environment for a longshot winner, but we said that before the Waste Management, too.

Scottie Scheffler, fresh off a T-3 finish in Scottsdale, is the clear and consensus betting favorite at +650. Scheffler is the only player in the single-digits at the time of writing but there’s a bunch of heavyweights in the next tier. Rory McIlroy is +1000, Viktor Hovland is +1400, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa are all +1600 and Patrick Cantlay, Ludvig Aberg and Max Homa are +1800. Oh, and Tiger Woods is 180/1.

It’ll take a considerable effort to upset the odds in this field, but there are some golfers at big numbers that are worth a punt at Riviera this week:

It does feel like Jason Day is flying under the radar a bit despite the fact that he finished T6 in his last start, which came at Pebble Beach two weeks ago. That happens in golf betting. A player will skip an event and bettors will sort of just forget about him and his number will drift. Day hasn’t done anything on the course to warrant his number to fade into this range, he’s got two top-10 finishes in four starts in 2024 and he finishing T9 at Riviera in 2023, so I’m happy to back him at this price.

Let’s try this again. If you’ve been following along, you’d notice that Hideki Matsuyama has featured in this section quite a bit and I don’t think there’s any reason to back off the Japanese star as we head to a course that clearly fits his game. Matsuyama missed the cut here in 2023, but he’s finished 11th or better in four of his eight starts at Riviera. Matsuyama never threatened to do much damage at the Waste Management but a T22 finish isn’t anything to scare us off a player of his caliber at this kind of price.

Like Matsuyama, Denny McCarthy’s results are in a sweet spot for longshot bettors. McCarthy is playing well enough to make him interesting, but none of his results have popped off the page and that has allowed him to fly under the radar. One of the game’s best putters, McCarthy is coming off a T22 finish at TPC Scottsdale to give him three consecutive finishes between 22nd and 26th. The Maryland native has played this event four times and has missed two cuts, but he posted a T-14 last year.

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