2024 Sony Open predictions: Four long shot golf bets for Wai'alae

We’re one week into the 2024 PGA Tour season and we’ve already got a long shot winner.

Chris Kirk, who went off at +12500, won the Sentry Tournament of Champions last week, holding off Sahith Theegala and Jordan Spieth to get into the winner’s circle. 

Kirk’s victory could be a sign of things to come for the 2024 PGA Tour season as more of the sport’s best players jump ship to LIV.  

The Tour will stay in the Hawai’i this week’s Sony Open, which is the first full-field event of the new season.

The field for the Sony isn’t all that deep. Matthew Fitzpatrick (+1600), Ludvig Aberg (+1600) and Tyrell Hatton (+1800) are essentially co-favorites, just ahead of Brian Harman (+2000), Russell Henley (+2200), Corey Conners (+2500) and Kirk (+2500).

The Sony features a beatable field playing on a relatively easy course, so there’s a decent chance we see another long shot come through in the Aloha State this week.

It wasn’t a great start to 2024 for Hideki Matsuyama at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, but that’s not a terrible thing for value-hunters this week.

On talent alone, Matsuyama is one of the best players in this field and if he showed better at Wai’alae he would be close to the top of the board.

Matsuyama endured a bumpy couple of years, but he should feel pretty good about going back to the location of his last PGA Tour win in 2022.

Something about Wai’alae really seems to agree with Matt Kuchar’s game.

The 45-year-old won here in 2019 and has eight top-10 finishes here in 18 career starts.

Kuchar’s salad days may be behind him, but he captured some decent form at the end of the 2023 season and could carry that momentum onto a course that clearly fits his eye.

It’s not going to be much longer before we can’t play Akshay Bhatia at this kind of price in a wide open type of field.

The 21-year-old was in contention at the Sentry last week but fell out of the race with a poor showing on Sunday.

That’s going to happen to a player just finding his footing as a pro, but it shouldn’t keep you off this price, considering Bhatia has fared well in similar setups.

He won the Barracuda, finished runner-up at the Puerto Rico Open, and was T4 at the Mexico Open in 2023.

Those three events all featured less-than-stellar fields on score-able courses.

In all likelihood this will be one of a few times that betting on Kevin Kisner seems like a good idea this season, but boy is this number tempting.

Kisner was in the broadcast booth for the Sentry last week, but now he heads to a course that he just loves to play on.

Kisner finished T3 at the Sony last year and has four top-5 finishes in his last seven starts at Wai’alae.

That alone makes him worth a flutter at this number.