Butterfield Bermuda Championship betting guide: 5 picks our expert loves this week

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, which gets underway Thursday in Bermuda. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both Free-To-Play and Daily Fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.

From Chiba, Japan, to Los Cabos, Mexico, to Southampton, Bermuda, the PGA Tour hasn’t set foot in the mainland since leaving Las Vegas nearly a month ago.

If you have been globetrotting along with the Tour lately, it will make for over 10,000 miles traveled when the players touch down in St. Simons Island, Georgia next week for the final stop of the FedEx Cup Fall at the RSM Classic.

But before we turn back for home, we’re off the southeast coast by roughly 1,000 miles this week for the sixth edition of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship at Port Royal Golf Course. Forty-two-year-old Camilo Villegas is your defending champion. Since winning here last year, Villegas has missed 18 cuts on Tour in 2024. At the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas, renowned golf oddsmaker Jeff Sherman is listing Villegas at 400-1 to repeat as the Bermuda champ.

Villegas got to the winner’s circle last season with a winning score of 24 under par. There is quite a bit of wind in the forecast for this year’s event and at the SuperBook, Sherman has this year’s winning score Under/Over proposition bet at 13.5 under par.

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For me, this will put ball striking and scrambling at a premium. The wind will eat up shots that are not struck properly and for those shots that don’t find the greens because of the wind, scrambling to get up and down will be paramount. The golf course is especially short by Tour standards, a par 71 at just a tick over 6,800 yards. The fairways are relatively narrow but there is not a great deal of rough to speak of. The greens are above average in size and do have a fair amount of undulation. The course features some elevation change, seven holes with water in play, and the turf is, appropriately, wall-to-wall Bermudagrass.

I looked at Scrambling this week, as I noted earlier. As far as ball striking, I considered Greens In Regulation Gained, Good Drives Gained, and Stokes Gained: Approach. There are 11 Par 4s at Port Royal, six of which measure between 350-400 yards and five that fall between 400-450 yards. I also looked at Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass).

With Port Royal being a shorter, narrower, coastal track, I used Waialae (Sony Open), Sea Island (RSM Classic), Colonial (Charles Schwab Challenge), and Pebble Beach as my correlated courses this week.

We nearly got there with an 85-1 shot in Carson Young last week in Los Cabos. Let’s see if a shift to the shores of the Atlantic will change our luck for the better.

Mackenzie Hughes (18-1)

We’re going to begin with the chalk as Hughes is one of a handful of favorites this week in Bermuda. It does concern me that he hasn’t ever played this event previously, but there is no doubt he’s one of the classier players in this field and he’s done better than just about anyone at the correlated courses. He’s finished top 20 at the Sony Open, top 10 at Pebble Beach and Colonial, and at the RSM Classic, Hughes has a win along with two runner-up finishes. He’s played twice during this FedEx Cup Fall, taking fourth in Napa at the Procore Championship and was eighth in his very next start at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Over the last 36 rounds, Hughes is fourth in this field for SG: Putting (Bermudagrass), second in Scrambling, and ranks fifth on the Par 4s of 400-450 yards.

Andrew Novak (31-1)

Novak has had a solid 2024 and just this summer, tallied three top-25 finishes along with a top 10. He added another top-25 finish this fall at the Sanderson Farms Championship and was 16th at the Zozo Championship just a few weeks ago. He’s played this tournament three times and has finished as high as 17th. Ball striking is the deal here with Novak. He’s 10th in this field for GIR Gained, 17th for SG: Approach, and ranks ninth for Good Drives Gained over the last 36 rounds.

Nick Taylor (45-1)

Like fellow Canadian, Mackenzie Hughes, Taylor is one of the better players in this field — and also like Hughes, he has a win (Pebble Beach) at one of our correlated courses. In addition to winning at Pebble in 2020, Taylor has also finished 10th, 14th, and 20th along the Monterey peninsula. He also has two seventh place finishes and an 11th at the Sony Open at Waialae. His best finish here in Bermuda is 23rd in two tries. Over the last 36-rounds, Taylor ranks 21st in this field for Good Drives Gained and is 26th in Scrambling. Earlier this year, when he won the WM Phoenix Open, at TPC Scottsdale, a classic ball-striking course with Bermudagrass greens, Taylor ranked ninth that week for SG: Approach, second in GIR, 22nd for Driving Accuracy, first in Scrambling, and first in SG: Putting.

Greyson Sigg (50-1)

Sigg has been both playing very well as of late and has an excellent history at this championship along with the correlated courses. He comes in having finished 4-11-23 in three of his last four starts this fall. He’s been 11th and 22nd here in Bermuda in two visits. He’s never missed a cut at the Sony Open in three tries and has finished eighth and 15th at the RSM Classic. As an amateur, Sigg won and finished runner-up in 2015 and 2016 respectively, at the Carmel Cup at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The man checks a lot of boxes for us this week. Over the last 36 rounds, Sigg ranks fourth in this field for GIR Gained, 30th in SG: Approach, second in Good Drives Gained, and is 18th on the 400-450 yard Par 4’s.

Nate Lashley (85-1)

Lashley has played in every event so far during this fall swing and he’s made five cuts in a row. He played here in Bermuda two seasons ago and finished 35th. He’s finished seventh at the Sony Open and fifth at Pebble Beach, and has made four of six cuts at the RSM Classic. Lashley seems to make a living at these watered-down field events at coastal locations. He’s finished 11th at the Mexico Open at Vidanta, 10th at the World Wide Technology in Los Cabos, fourth and 15th at Corales Puntacana, and he’s gone 3-7-8 in Puerto Rico. Over the last 36 rounds, Lashley ranks 37th in this field for SG: Approach, 34th for Good Drives Gained, and is 10th in Scrambling.

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