2024 Sentry odds, expert picks, sleepers: Collin Morikawa, Tom Kim among the best bets

The 2024 PGA Tour season kicks off in Hawaii at The Sentry this week. The island of Maui is still recovering from the deadly fires that swept across its idyllic landscape in August, and the PGA Tour and its remaining stars will be a welcome sight and, hopefully, at least for this week, a return to normalcy. The Sentry field is no longer made up of just the previous season’s winners and will include the winners and the players who qualified for the previous year’s BMW Championship. Of the 60 players who qualified to be in the field for The Sentry, only one will not make the trip this week. Rory McIlroy has rarely made the trip to Hawaii in January and now can skip any tournament that he doesn’t want on his schedule as the designated events have been changed to signature events that are not mandatory.

There were some other major changes to The Sentry as the winner this week will receive 700 FedExCup Points and $3.6 million. Those two changes may help form my decisions regarding playing or not playing Scottie Scheffler in my lineups this week. While some things change around the tournament, the Plantation Course at Kapalua hasn’t since its last renovation in 2019. The primary rough was grown out by a quarter of an inch, but players will barely pay it any mind with the wide fairways and huge green complexes. The Par 73 measures almost 7,600 yards, but plays much shorter than the distance on the scorecard as the fairways will let even modest drivers find landing areas that will propel their ball much further down the fairway.

The only thing that can protect the Plantation Course from the best players on the PGA Tour, making it look like a walk in the park, is the wind. If the wind is up, approach shots and putting can become extremely difficult. There is rain and scattered thunderstorms in the forecast for Friday and Saturday, but I don’t see anything that will keep the players from attacking this course.

The last time you heard from me, we were celebrating a win for Scottie Scheffler at the Hero World Challenge, and if you follow me regularly, you might have picked up a nice first-round leader cash with Tony Finau. My articles are not put together to show power rankings. The odds the sportsbooks post do the job just fine regarding that. I am here to show you where the value is and how you might want to bet during each tournament.

Betting Slip

Collin Morikawa +1200 had a win in the fall at the ZOZO Championship and showed an improved putting stroke at the Hero World Challenge. In fact, the 4.36 strokes he gained putting at the Hero World Challenge are the most he has gained on the PGA Tour since the 2023 Sentry where he gained 4.84 strokes. Morikawa has finished seventh, seventh, fifth and second here in the last four years and will be itching to win this tournament. You may even be able to shop this number up to +1600 in some spots.

Patrick Cantlay +1400 may seem like an odd pick when you look at how he has fared at this tournament, but I feel like Cantlay was unlucky not to win a tournament in 2023 and has the game to win here. His odds, at the very least, seem off for the caliber of player he is. You can even shop this number up to +1600 in some spots. Cantlay finished fourth behind the dueling Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith in 2022 and showed then he could contend here.

Tom Kim +2500 looked very comfortable on the Plantation Course last year as he finished fifth on his first try here. He struggled for consistency especially in his short game in April and May and with injury for some of the 2023 season, but bounced back down the stretch and even defended his title at the Shriners Children’s Open in October. He is back to gaining many strokes on approach while also being lights out with the putter.

Matt Fitzpatrick +3000 finished seventh here last year and will be looking to improve on that showing this time around. He had a fine fall season with a T3 at the Omega European Masters and a win at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. He looked to get his putter going at the Hero World Challenge and did just that, gaining more than eight strokes on the greens.

Cam Davis +6600 has finished no worse than T12 in his three PGA Tour starts since the BMW Championship. He finished 10th here in 2022 and has the game to go low when accuracy off the tee isn’t needed.

DFS Plays

Scottie Scheffler $11,000 has struggled to contend here and he can’t blame the putter. He has lost strokes off the tee and hasn’t been nearly as crisp with his irons at this course. I would expect him to figure it out from tee to green finally and because there are more players in the field his price isn’t as prohibitive as it has been with betting favorites in the past years.

Viktor Hovland $10,500 hasn’t figured this course out yet, but I’m not convinced you should fade him this week. The $500 discount from Scheffler is so tempting that I think a lot of the sharp players may jump on Hovland this week. He finished first or second in five of his last 12 stroke-play events. He is poised to make a run at the number one player in the world and the best players in the world should be able to tear up the Plantation Course.

Matt Fitzpatrick $9,500 See above.

Collin Morikawa $9,100 is priced so low that his ownership might be outrageous.

Tommy Fleetwood $9,000 is a decent pivot if you are scared at all by Morikawa having a 25 percent or above ownership number in GPPs. Fleetwood is coming here off the back of a T2 at the DP World Tour Championship and has been gaining a ton of strokes with his ball striking in the fall.

Tom Kim $8,900 See above.

Ludvig Åberg $8,700 is priced low when considering his odds of winning the tournament. He is $1,200 cheaper than Cantlay and has the same betting odds to win. Åberg won on both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour in 2023 and looks like the next star of the PGA Tour. The only reason I will be using Kim more than him this week is because he won’t gain as big of an advantage with his length off the tee. Åberg also hasn’t played here before so there will be a little bit of learning curve for him.

Tony Finau $8,400 is priced way too low based on what I saw from his game at the Hero World Challenge. Finau still struggled with his putter a bit as he lost over a stroke on the greens that week, but he seemed to be more confident with the stroke. He finished T4 and was tied for the lead after the first round. He finished T7 here last year after struggling in his previous trips. If Tony was 9K or more I would avoid him because of how important putting is here, but this price may have trapped me.

Sungjae Im $8,100 and Hideki Matsuyama $8,000 will be hard for me not to put in lineups. I will play Im more than Matsuyama, but I can make a case for both even if there are some red flags. Im has had the longest layoff between tournaments in his career that I can remember. He has been a machine since he earned his PGA Tour card, playing in as many tournaments as he could until this fall, where he only teed it up once and finished a respectable T12. Matsuyama struggled with injury most of 2023 but still consistently gained strokes from tee to green.

Sahith Theegala $7,600 missed the cut his last time out at the World Wide Technology Championship, but I’m not too worried about that. He had a nice finish to the FedExCup Playoffs and built on that with a win at the Fortinet. His inaccuracy off the tee won’t be punished here, so I’m hoping he can build on his 33rd-place finish here last season.

Eric Cole $7,400 had four top-four finishes in the fall while gaining many strokes on approach. He struggles with distance and accuracy off the tee but makes up for it by figuring out a way to score. He’s tempting at this price, especially when he pops up in my model, but I will probably use Denny McCarthy more this week.

Denny McCarthy $7,300 finished T5 at the RSM Classic and he didn’t gain strokes with his putter. The old McCarthy couldn’t have pulled that off. This new version can strike the ball and get up and down well enough not to put all the pressure on his putter.

Cam Davis $7,100 See above.

Brendon Todd $6,900 had a decent fall season, finishing no lower than 28th and has finished 13th here before. It will be interesting to see if Paul Tesori is on the bag for Todd this week after confirming the move to Todd from Cameron Young.

Erik Van Rooyen $6,300 had something click with his game in September at the Omega European Masters. Ever since his T8 there, he has been a ball-striking machine. He still struggled around the green, which would keep him from contending here, but he could make some noise if he keeps up that ball-striking pace.

Luke List $6,200 looked consistent during the fall. He won the Sanderson Farms and regained a ton of strokes off the tee consistently. He was more reliable with the putter which has been his biggest issue in his career.

One and Done

Most one-and-done contests will start at the Sony Open next week, but a few will be kicking off their contests this week. With that in mind, I wanted to at least touch on the different strategies you can follow this week. With The Sentry being a no-cut event with a $20 million prize pool and a smallish field of only 59 players you may want to come out of the gates strong by taking one of the big names in the field like Scheffler. The only issue is Scheffler hasn’t contended yet here and is such a great fit to win at major championships or other signature events that it could kill your entry in the first week if he doesn’t at least crack the top three when you use him.

Morikawa has a tremendous record here and will want to make up for coughing up a huge lead to Rahm here last year so he should be in the mix for you. If you are looking to use a player further down the rankings you may want to make sure they aren’t a great course fit somewhere else down the road this season. Van Rooyen, Cole and List are options for me if I don’t take Morikawa this week. Van Rooyen was hitting the ball better from tee to green in the fall than he has throughout his career. List has found a consistent putting stroke to finally stabilize his game and can overpower this course if he has his full game going. Cole had a tremendous end to 2023 and his only mistakes come from his inaccuracy off the tee which is no issue here.