Pebble Beach Pro-Am 2022

Not to be for us on Saturday at Torrey Pines with Ryan Palmer just unable to get out of first gear and make a charge at the leaders. I’m disappointed but more so in our other three golfers, they tried to single-handedly ruin my faith in golf betting.

But, alas, we look forward and not back and we find ourselves at the iconic Pebble Beach this week. A three-course pro-am layout this week makes for absolutely brutal television for the golf connoisseur, and also for the betting market but I’ve tried to pick out a couple of names to try and avenge our mediocre week last time out.

Each golfer will play one round on all of the three courses (Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and, Monterey Peninsula) on the rota before the final round will be played at Pebble Beach itself again. Usually, I rattle off 4-5 names immediately to play with but this week I’ve really struggled to narrow it down. A shortlist of ten on Monday morning slowly became eight and then six. My ideal number for the week was four and I eventually settle on said number, funnily enough, another 12 points gambled, my apologies to Brian Harman and Kevin Streelman for just missing out on the final team to tackle Pebble this week. Let's get to it and as these pro-am setups irk me I’ve decided to keep it as short and sweet as ever.

Jason Day 3pts ew 20/1

With eight top 10s in twelve efforts here at the Pebble Beach pro-am, Jason Day perfectly fits the criteria of horses for courses. Looking back, his previous seven visits here have yielded six top 10s with the other being a tie for eleventh. I believe this is made all the more impressive when you consider he finished seventh here last year while battling through injury and confidence issues. With those seemingly pushed aside last week where a lackluster final round 72 left him agonizingly only a shot off the eventual playoff, I’m giving him my trust this week to further prove he’s starting to rediscover the form which saw him reach number one in the world.

Kevin Kisner 1pt ew 55/1

Although not normally noted for his form around this time of the season, I feel that Kevin is flying in this week under the radar of many. The winner of that epic six-man playoff at the Wyndham last year has been very impressive in 2022 thus far with a pair of top 10s in Hawaii on two other setups he usually doesn’t impress on.

The plucky former Georgia Bulldog has also begun to show a growing familiarity with the pro-am set up here at Pebble. He’s made the cut in three of his last four efforts with a top 10 thrown in. Only a disastrous back nine here at Pebble on the final day two years ago cost him a further top 10. Even with a couple of missed cuts so far on the wrap-around season, Kevin ranks second in driving accuracy and sixth in greens in regulation. If he can produce anywhere near those statistics married with his Hawaiian form Kisner could definitely be one to watch this week.

Matt Kuchar 1pt ew 66/1

With over 53 million dollars made in his career, you’d have expected a few more than nine wins on the PGA Tour, but Matt certainly has proved to be a money-making machine. He’s far from perfect here at Pebble with only a solitary top 10 in his previous 13 visits, when you couple that with a couple of lean years on the PGA Tour, my selection of him for this week may come across as a little puzzling, but I’ll try and make sense of it.

He’s perfect in five starts this season, with a top 10 in Hawaii where he didn’t look out of place high on the leaderboard, giving me plenty of confidence that perhaps it’s time for Kuch to notch up win number ten.

Kuchar’s stats so far this year make for decent reading, with the highlights being ranked second in scrambling and twelfth in scoring average. With four days of play in Florida with such little wind predicted a player who can keep the bogeys off the cards could be the key to unlock victory this week.

Brandon Harkins 1pt ew 125/1

This was honestly a toss-up between himself and Brian Harman given the way he came to our rescue two weeks ago at PGA West and I very nearly considered doing them both but twelve points was more than enough to stake this week.

I decided to go a little outside the box with Harkins, given he doesn’t currently have PGA Tour status.

The 35-year-old Korn Ferry Tour player arrives on the back of two positive starts on the opening two weeks of the KFT season. A tie for 33rd was followed by a hugely impressive playoff victory last week. Normally I wouldn’t read too much into Korn Ferry players making the step up the week after winning but Brandon has previous good memories here at Pebble. Making the cut in both visits, finishing 15th and 28th shows how much he enjoys the challenge here.

I know Harman would have made more sense in the grand scheme of things but his lack of tournament form and my hunger for a fairytale style win like Ted Potters win here in 2018 was too much to turn down. Best of luck this week guys :D