A new season brings new opportunities for amateur and professional bettors alike to lock in PGA Tour picks. The 2018 Hero World Challenge, which begins Thursday at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas, features many of golf's biggest stars. In fact, four of the top five players in the world will can be found in this week's field. Justin Rose, the No. 1 ranked player in all of golf, is the Vegas favorite at 7-1 Hero World Challenge odds, followed closely by Dustin Johnson (8-1) and defending champion Rickie Fowler (9-1). Tiger Woods, fresh off dropping a $9 million match to Phil Mickelson, is also listed at 9-1. Before you make any Hero World Challenge picks and predictions or enter a daily fantasy golf tournament on sites like DraftKings or FanDuel, you'll want to hear what the team at SportsLine has to say.
SportsLine's prediction model, which was built by DFS pro Mike McClure, has nailed four of the past eight majors entering the weekend and called Tiger Woods' deep run in the PGA Championship despite being a 25-1 long shot. The proprietary computer model has been spot-on in the past couple of weeks as well. It was all over Bryson Dechambeau (12-1) winning the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, projecting him to finish on top of the leaderboard from the start. It also correctly predicted Brooks Koepka's (9-1) victory at the CJ Cup. Anyone who has followed the model is up huge.
Now that the star-studded 2018 Hero World Challenge field is locked, SportsLine simulated the event 10,000 times, and the results were surprising.
One huge shocker the model is calling for this week: Woods, a five-time champion of this event, stumbles and barely cracks the top 10.
Woods began his improbable comeback at this event last year. In fact, he didn't even rank inside the top 1,000 golfers in the world at the time. Now, after his stunning victory at the season-ending Tour Championship, Woods enters this week's tournament with an Official World Golf Ranking of 13.
However, Woods' last Hero World Challenge victory came in 2011 when the tournament was held in California. He also finished last season ranked 129th on the PGA Tour in driving accuracy percentage (58.98), which could cause trouble this week at Albany Golf Club. There are far better values in this loaded field than the 9-1 premium he's commanding.
Another surprise: Xander Schauffele, an 18-1 long shot, makes a serious run at the title. He's a target for anyone looking for a huge payday.
Schauffele is coming off an impressive victory at the WGC-HSBC Champions and will look to duplicate his strong performance this week in the Bahamas. He's been red-hot to start the new PGA Tour season, shooting a combined 32-under in three starts. He also ranks inside the top 30 on the PGA Tour in eagles per hole (72.0), birdie average (4.83) and scoring average (70.132), which will allow him to make up ground quickly at the Hero World Challenge 2018. He's a value pick you need to be all over.
Also, the model says three additional golfers with odds of 12-1 or longer will make a strong run at title. Anyone who backs these underdogs could hit it big.
So who wins the 2018 Hero World Challenge? And which long shots stun the golfing world? Check out the current Hero World Challenge odds below and visit SportsLine now to see the full Hero World Challenge projected leaderboard from the model that nailed the winners of four golf majors, and find out.
Justin Rose 7-1
Dustin Johnson 8-1
Justin Thomas 9-1
Rickie Fowler 9-1
Tiger Woods 9-1
Bryson DeCahmbeau 10-1
Jon Rahm 12-1
Jason Day 16-1
Tony Finau 16-1
Patrick Reed 18-1
Xander Schauffele 18-1
Patrick Cantlay 20-1
Hideki Matsuyama 22-1
Alex Noren 25-1
Bubba Watson 25-1
Henrik Stenson 25-1
Gary Woodland 28-1
Keegan Bradley 33-1
