The final tournament of the PGA Tour's three-week Asia swing gets underway this week when a star-studded field tees off from Sheshan Golf Club in China starting at 8:50 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions field features four of the top five players in the Official World Golf Rankings, including Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose, who enter as co-favorites at 8-1 to win it all. Johnson has five career WGC titles, which ranks second all time behind only Tiger Woods (18). World No. 1 Brooks Koepka currently sits a 9-1 WGC-HSBC Champions odds, while Rory McIlroy is going off at 10-1. With so much talent in a loaded field, you'll want to hear what the team at SportsLine has to say before locking in your own 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions picks or entering a daily fantasy golf tournament on sites like DraftKings and FanDuel.
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 dead-on recently as well. It was all over Koepka (9-1) winning last week's CJ Cup, projecting him to finish on top of the leaderboard from the start. Anyone who has followed the model is up huge.
Now that the 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions field is locked, SportsLine simulated the event 10,000 times, and the results were surprising.
One huge shocker the model is calling for at the WGC-HSBC Champions: Francesco Molinari, a 20-1 long shot, makes a serious run at the title. He's a target for anyone looking for a huge payday.
Molinari won the WGC-HSBC event in 2010 at Sheshan by one stroke, holding off then-World No. 1 Lee Westwood. He also finished sixth at this event in 2016. He's shown he can play well at Sheshan and is coming off a season in which he had five top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour, which included a victory at the British Open.
Molinari also finished last season ranked inside the top 15 on the PGA Tour in both greens in regulation percentage (70.79) and scoring average (69.797), which should allow him to shoot a low score again this week at the WGC-HSBC Champions 2018.
Another surprise: Ian Poulter, the 2012 champion of this event, stumbles big-time this week and finishes outside the top 20.
Poulter revamped his career last season after winning the Houston Open and finishing the season with four top-10 finishes. And he seems to have picked up right where he left off, finishing 10th last week at the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges.
However, despite finishing sixth or better in two of his last three starts at the WGC-HSBC Champions, the model doesn't like Poulter's chances of being among the top contenders this week at Sheshan. He's a golfer you want to completely steer clear of despite his recent success.
Also, the model says four additional golfers with odds of 18-1 or longer will make a strong run at title. Anyone who backs these underdogs could hit it big.
So who wins the 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions? And which long shots stun the golfing world? Check out the current 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions odds below and visit SportsLine now to see the full WGC-HSBC Champions projected leaderboard from the model that nailed the winners of four golf majors and called Brooks Koepka's win last week, and find out.
Dustin Johnson 8-1
Justin Rose 8-1
Brooks Koepka 9-1
Rory McIlroy 10-1
Jason Day 16-1
Tommy Fleetwood 18-1
Hideki Matsuyama 18-1
Tony Finau 18-1
Francesco Molinari 20-1
Jon Rahm 20-1
Paul Casey 25-1
Tyrrell Hatton 30-1
Alex Noren 35-1
Patrick Cantlay 35-1
Patrick Reed 40-1
Rafael Cabrera Bello 40-1
Cameron Smith 45-1
Adam Scott 50-1
Matthew Fitzpatrick 50-1
