In this weekly feature, we will take a closer look at the upcoming PGA Tour event to see what the best outright winner values are on the board and also analyze some of our other favorite golf props and DFS PGA picks for Rounds 2-4.
Early in the week, our top winner plays and analysis will be posted, and we’ll then check in with our favorite selections for Round 2, Round 3 and Round 4. Let’s see if we can pick some winners!
Golf Props Today – Outright Winner & Round 2/3/4 Picks
The Masters is finally upon us! The annual harbinger of spring takes us on one of the most beautiful journeys in the entire sports landscape, and getting a little action down on the Masters has become a tradition unlike any other unto itself.
DFS PGA Round 2/3/4 Picks – The Masters
Each week we take a look at our favorite individual round DFS PGA picks and golf props for Rounds 2, 3 and 4 on sites like Underdog and Sleeper.
Round 4 (Sunday – 4/13/25)
We are in for a treat in the final round at The Masters, with Rory McIlroy (-12) leading Bryson DeChambeau (-10) by two shots after the first three rounds.
The pair will be in the final group together for what should be an amazing day of golf.
Through the first three rounds at The Masters, here are the top five in strokes gained: tee to green (via Data Golf):
Rory McIlroy (+4.57)
Bryson DeChambeau (+2.64)
Tyrrell Hatton (+2.55)
Davis Thompson (+2.36)
Patrick Reed (+2.26)
Top five in strokes gained: approach:
Rory McIlroy (+2.62)
Davis Thompson (+2.12)
Davis Riley (+1.91)
Tom Hoge (+1.89)
Corey Conners (+1.67)
And, here were the worst putting performances yesterday, followed by the golfers’ tee-to-green data for the round:
Justin Rose (-4.54 / +1.92)
Min Woo Lee (-3.10 / -1.52)
Hideki Matsuyama (-2.59 / -4.04)
Byeong Hun An (-2.55 / +4.93)
Wyndham Clark (-2.11 / -0.52)
Top Round 4 Plays:
Here’s who we’re tracking for the upcoming round:
Collin Morikawa
Morikawa sits at -3 for the tournament after shooting even par yesterday. He was solid tee-to-green (+1.84) and on approach (+1.84) but lost 1.46 strokes putting.
Though he’s out of contention for the win, all we care about here is his Round 4 performance, and we expect Morikawa to bounce back and finish his Masters in style.
Pick: LOWER Than 70.5 Strokes
Shane Lowry
Lowry is in the mix near the top of the leaderboard at -5. He’s seven shots back of Rory for the lead after an even-par Round 3.
The data looks solid across the board for Lowry, whose experience and overall skillset, particularly his short game, stand out on a course like Augusta.
Pick: LOWER Than 70.5 Strokes
Good luck!
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Round 3 (Saturday – 4/12/25)
Things are heating up at The Masters, with Justin Rose still holding a narrow lead after Round 2.
A star-studded leaderboard at the top means we should be in for a treat for the rest of the weekend.
Through the first two rounds at The Masters, here are the top five in strokes gained: tee to green (via Data Golf):
Tyrrell Hatton (+4.35)
Hideki Matsuyama (+4.26)
Rory McIlroy (+3.61)
Tommy Fleetwood (+3.54)
Ludvig Aberg (+2.92)
Top five in strokes gained: approach:
Matt McCarty (+2.94)
Rory McIlroy (+2.79)
Hideki Matsuyama (+2.53)
Viktor Hovland (+2.29)
Xander Schauffele (+2.21)
Top Round 3 Plays:
Scottie Scheffler — Though Scheffler was only one-under yesterday, he’s in prime position to compete for the trophy at -5 for the tournament. The ballstriking metrics are looking just fine, so we expect a low round out of the defending Masters champion on moving day.
Pick: LOWER Than 69.5 Strokes (Underdog)
Michael Kim — It’s Kim’s first ever Masters, but he’s done more than a respectable job, shooting two-under through the first two rounds to sit in a tie for 17th place. Kim, who has been in terrific form on Tour lately, was let down by his putting yesterday (-2.20 strokes lost to the field) despite a strong tee-to-green performance (+3.87)
Pick: LOWER Than 72 Strokes (Underdog)
Good luck!
Round 2 (Friday – 4/11/25)
Who had a Justin Rose first round leader ticket? The Englishman has raced out to the lead at the 2025 Masters, shooting -7 to lead by three over Scottie Scheffler, Ludvig Aberg and Corey Conners.
Rose gained over five strokes putting en route to the huge Round 1, but we’ve got a long way to go in Augusta, Georgia.
Through the first round at The Masters, here are the top five in strokes gained: tee to green (via Data Golf):
Ludvig Aberg (+5.26)
Aaron Rai (+4.79)
Tyrrell Hatton (+4.67)
Matt McCarty (+4.51)
Sergio Garcia (+4.45)
Top five in strokes gained: approach:
Matt McCarty (+3.64)
Harris English (+3.32)
Sergio Garcia (+2.78)
Tyrrell Hatton (+2.77)
Justin Rose (+2.72)
Top Round 2 Plays:
Rory McIlroy — It looked like Rory was on his way to the top of the leaderboard, but he had two double bogeys on the back nine. We expect him to come out firing and shoot low in Round 2.
Sergio Garcia — Savvy Spaniard was sharp tee to green (+4.45) and on approach (+2.77) but lost 2.867strokes putting in opening round; Garcia is a former Masters winner and has been in great form on LIV.
Tommy Fleetwood — Fleetwood gained 2.02 strokes on approach and was great tee to green as well, but he gave away 2.98 strokes putting in Round 1. Can he get into contention with a sharper Friday?
Good luck!
Outright Winner Picks – The Masters
With the week of the event upon us, the field is set, all the results are in, and we have near-complete information about the mayhem and glory that is about to unfold!
That said, Augusta National is basically the truest test in golf. The course can wreck literally anyone on any day, but the track almost always presents an open door for a low round, especially with the par 5’s, and the wind staying fairly moderate throughout the week. It will definitely be a significant factor, but not blowing so hard that it makes the course a nightmare.
The downpours on Sunday and Monday are going to soften up the course and make it lean heavily towards the bombers course setup, a big difference from the firm and fast conditions that have seen some shorter hitters compete in the past.
Top-5 trends for The Masters (very strong for this event)
Look for…
– Top-10 finish in last 8 PGA Tour events in Georgia
– Top-10 ranking in SG: Putting in last 2 months
– Played in either of last 2 PGA Tour events in Georgia
– Top-10 finish in last 5 Masters Tournaments
-… pic.twitter.com/ltJgcqngAs— Stanley (@Golf_Stats) April 7, 2025
One of the angles this week will also be the return of LIV golfers to major competition. These guys, love them or hate them, present an interesting opportunity in the handicapping landscape, as they rack up performances where we aren’t exactly sure how to stack them up against their PGA foes.
This uncertainty creates an opportunity in the gambling world, and if we can remove some doubts about these guys they make for some potentially very good plays, especially considering the track record of LIV golfers returning to have success in several majors in the past few years.
The first and best target on the board is Joaquin Niemann. Last month, Phil Mickelson quipped that he was the #1 golfer in the world right now. Granted, this is classic Phil banter and to be taken with a grain of salt, but my numbers show that his 2025 form slots him in directly behind Scottie and Rory in this field.
Long projected to be a top-5 type player, his performances on LIV certainly have him lurking in the shadows as far as the public and Vegas are concerned. Can he actually do it on the biggest stage in the world? That’s a great question. But at +2800 or better, I’m certainly willing to pay to find out.
The next most obvious option is Bryson DeChambeau. Arguably the most popular golfer in the world, his strokes gained off the tee ALONE put him in the top 10. And he’s extremely consistent with this stat. The story recently has been that his putting has been a little off, statistically, especially for a guy coming off a several-years-long run of gaining more strokes on the green than almost anyone.
If you follow this space at all, you’ll know that there’s a ton of upside in guys who are “one category away” and especially when it’s the putter, with a guy like Bryson’s history, I’m all over this one.
The soft conditions only play even more into his favor, as he continues to try to live up to his “par 68” comments that still have egg on his face. He’s going to be one of if not the best prepared golfer for this opportunity, and is lingering way too far down the board to leave him alone at +2000 or better.
The last guy we will look at goes against the grain and the course fit a little bit, at least on paper, but he’s made a great career and has sneakily risen to #7 in the world and #3 in the FedEx cup points this season despite his length disadvantage.
Russell Henley has to be the most overlooked and underrated golfer on the planet right now. This play is just an overall form / value play. It doesn’t hurt however that he’s got a pretty fantastic history at Augusta, getting and contention even and finishing 4th in 2023. And he’s playing WAY better right now than he was at that time.
The course will favor length, but that’s not news to Henley, and he overcomes it all the time with accuracy and phenomenal iron play and putting.
This is by far his best season of his career, statistically, and at +5500 or better he’s definitely worth some action.
Best Bets:
Joaquin Niemann +2800
Bryson DeChambeau +2000
Russell Henley +5500
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How To Bet On PGA – Golf Props & DFS Tips
Betting on golf is in many ways a completely different animal than normal head-to-head sports betting. However, fundamentally it is the same baseline proposition: can we find expected value against the value offered by the marketplace?
The situation is skewed however because in golf win betting we are often dealing with tournament results and not head-to-head results, which give us tantalizing payouts and maddening near-misses on odds that are dozens to hundreds of times the multipliers of most other sports.
Something to keep in mind: just like in real tournament golf, patience and discipline and belief in your process are key, and one big event can change your entire season.
So, how do we find expected value in golf?
The Importance Of Data
Really simply, we want to find golfers who have a chance of playing better than it seems they are playing. Datagolf.com is by far the pre-eminent resource for this in the industry, but the fact is their numbers are completely public and the Vegas lines immediately tail them. Buying a Data Golf subscription alone and just playing their numbers alone will NOT make you profitable. The advanced analytics are available to everyone, including oddsmakers.
The key is learning to understand why the DG numbers are what they are, and how we can dig into the details to find trends that are actionable. DG uses a strict formula to combine past results and recent results to create a projection, and it is the best overall formula anyone has ever made, but what we want to look for are golfers who can make a case that they don’t fit the exact model, and have value that isn’t being captured by the Data Golf projections.
So in layman’s terms, here are some really great ways you can find potential value in a golf tournament field:
Recent Form
Golfers who have a track record of playing very well, but have had some bad results lately that we expect them to bounce back from (if recent poor results are just due to poor putting alone, this is ideal, as putting is by far the most variable category in golf)
Young golfers whose true value is still increasing every week and hasn’t been captured properly by the modeling timelines that are used by Vegas and Datagolf, as well as being slow to catch the public’s eye
Golfers who have been playing extraordinarily well lately, but historically aren’t that good, are not well captured by Vegas models. For example a golfer having a “breakout” year can be slow to pop in the industry models. This is an especially good situation if we can tie this performance increase to something tangible, such as a swing coach change, an offseason increase in driving distance, or another technique change or injury comeback situation.
In these cases, we want to put particular emphasis on driving and iron play, as these are less likely to be the result of random fluctuations in performance.
Course Fit
The last angle that can sometimes be used to get an edge is extreme course-fit outlier situations. The thing about mathematical models is that they can be weak in truly capturing extreme outliers.
On the PGA Tour, course fit week-to-week is much talked about and a very entertaining aspect of the game for fans and commentators, but it is generally very well accounted for by Vegas, and most tend to over-value these adjustments.
OVERALL FORM AND RATING IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT THAN COURSE-FIT — a good fit for the course should always just be the icing on the cake for a good play.
One thing to look out for is the really extreme length outliers – the very longest and very shortest few courses each season, that truly limit a portion of the field from competing with their best weapons.
This happens in just a few events per year, but it does happen, and there you can find value in a true “specialist” in the field, such as guys who make their career through putting and putting alone, or an absolutely wild bomber who doesn’t gain many strokes through the rest of the bag.
