Golf Betting2026 WM Phoenix Open Cheatsheet: Bets, Weather, DraftKings Notes, Course Notes

2026 WM Phoenix Open Cheatsheet: Bets, Weather, DraftKings Notes, Course Notes

murtaza

3 months ago

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2026 WM Phoenix Open CHEATSHEET

Wednesday at 8 pm ET, I’ll take any questions you have and run through the latest news. See ya there

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2026 WM Phoenix Open Field

QUICK BETS

Cameron Young +2800
Brooks Koepka +5000
Matt Fitzpatrick +5000
Pierceson Coody +6600 (5 Places)
Sepp Straka +8000 (5 Places)
Matt McCarty +8000 (5 Places)
Nicolai Hojgaard +8500 (5 Places)

FIRST ROUND LEADER

Keith Mitchell +7000
Johnny Keefer +7500
Alex Smalley +10000 (5 Places)
Stephan Jaeger +12000 (5 Places)

LIV RIYADH

Thomas Detry +3000
Caleb Surratt +4000

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2026 WM Phoenix Open HOT LINKS

2026 WM Phoenix Open Picks

Cameron Young — Cam shook off the rust last week and managed a solid (but not great) ball-striking performance. Off where he left off in 2025, yet much closer to those numbers from where he was at this point last year. We know the driver is going to be elite, something essential at a driver-heavy course, but Torrey marked the fifth time in six starts he gained at least 2.85 strokes on approach against the field. Young’s gained an average of +6.31 SG: PUTT the last two years in Phoenix. Sniff that number again, along with the regular ball striking, and we have ourselves a winner. One you can get all the way up to +3000 at Coolbet under the PME Exclusives tab if you’re in Canada, outside Ontario.

Brooks Koepka — I needed to see something from Brooks at Torrey Pines, and I did. Despite a T56 result, Brooks was 11th tee-to-green on the South Course; he just happened to lose an ungodly -7.23 strokes putting. Worst in the field. Now, this isn’t a new thing. Koepka has been plagued by terrible putting for over a year now. It’s unfortunate he didn’t leave that issue with LIV. In his post-round interview, he mentioned spending hours working on his putting stroke Saturday evening. And outworked, kind of. After losing 5.45 strokes in round three, Brooks only lost 0.31 on Sunday. Improvement! This is probably going to persist all year, but TPC Scottsdale is a perfect spot to spike back the other way and start rolling it in the cup. In five career Phoenix starts, Koepka has two wins, a T3, and has never lost strokes putting in any of those appearances; gaining an average of 3.37 SG: PUTT.

Matt Fitzpatrick — He struggled in his first time out in America at the American Express. That was enough of a warm from Fitz, who ended 2025 on a tear; 8 Top 10s over his final 12 starts capped with a win at the DP World Tour Championship. His history in Phoenix isn’t immaculate, but it’s not bad either. Two Top 15s over the past four years.

Pierceson Coody — With his T2 at Torrey Pines, Coody has now reeled off three straight Top 20s to kick off 2026. Finishing fourth in tee-to-green, Coody led all players in driving. A good sign considering he’s heading to a course where players hit driver 90% of the time.

Sepp Straka — Straka’s odds are simply too long for the No. 12-ranked player in the world. I made this mistake with Rose last week. Not making it again with Straka. Additionally, two of his wins have come on Poa Trivialis.

Matt McCarty — McCarty is doing the poor man’s Si Woo impression to kick off the year. He’s Top 25 in this field in driving, but does most of the heavy lifting with accuracy over distance. He’s aggressive with his irons, has seen his short game vastly improve, and has been a Top 10 putter on TOUR over the past 12 months. McCarty got his only PGA victory last season at the Black Desert Resort, another Tom Weiskopf design.

Nicolai Hojgaard — He mashes it off the tee, makes putts from length, and can string together birdies like he’s Justin Thomas. Nicolai can also post a 78 on ya and catch an early flight. Because of this, we’re getting very generous odds on a high upside player. His T36 last season was the result of two truly awful driving rounds. It kicked off a run of losing strokes off the tee in four of his first five PGA starts in 2025. Since he’s gained with his driver in 11 of 12 starts.

LIV RIYADH

Thomas Detry — On the anniversary of his maiden PGA win in a desert, why not celebrate with a victory in his maiden LIV start on the weekend, in a desert, just on the complete opposite side of the globe?

Caleb Surratt — Runner-up the past two times this course was played, don LIV during the daytime and an 11th under the lights a year ago. If his eyes have adjusted to the nighttime golf, even a bit, this number is too long.

2026 WM Phoenix Open Weather

The weather this week is tricky. For Thursday. After Thursday, it looks like perfect conditions with very little wind. For Thursday, though, there’s a bunch of cloud coverage in the Phoenix area, and it seems to have weather models thrown off. A bunch are showing different things. From the Windtower I’ve always trusted, it’s looking like pretty steady wind, with more extreme gusts in the morning, affecting the AM wave of players. It’ll be about 10-15 degrees colder for the first guys on the course each day, too. Will winds really reach 44 mphon Thursday morning? Probably not. But even if it’s 35 mph, that’s quite gusty.

If you wanted to make a few PM/AM stacks as a part of your DFS builds, it likely wouldn’t be too penal. Now, it’s no guarantee guys won’t blow up in the PM as the gusts are still projected to be 20+ mph. It’s not as if the morning is super hard and the afternoon is easy.

Of my four first-round leader wagers, three of them are in the PM wave on Thursday.

Windtower: Scottsdale Airport

2026 WM Phoenix Open Tee Times

Thursday AM; Friday PM

Thursday PM; Friday AM

2026 WM Phoenix Open DraftKings

I think projecting Scottie’s ownership this week will be tough. ~25% feels right with how difficult it is to build a quality roster with him in it, but many may just say “Scottie is going to win, so I need to pick him,” and that ownership projection is off by 10 percentage points once the final numbers come out post-lock. If you missed it, Alex Blickle did an amazing job breaking down whether or not you should use Scheffler this week on the DK show (while also crunching the numbers on betting in the Scottie or Non-Scottie Markets)

You can find all this information in the DFS Optimizer inside the Rabbit Hole at Betsperts Golf.

STATS, TOOLS & DATA PROVIDED BY BETSPERTS GOLF’S RABBIT HOLE

One thing to remember with Scottie builds is to try to get creative with the next few guys in. While Sam Stevens is only projected at 12%, he’ll probably be in a lot of Scheffler builds because he’s the exact next price click after putting Scheffler in a lineup. No different if you don’t use Scheffler and use three $9K players instead, it still drops you to exactly the same remaining salary — Around $7,100.

Expect to see these names be the most popular clicks from that area:

2026 WM Phoenix Open Broadcast Notes

The PGA actually released the shotlink summary before play actually started this week. What a triumph. Here’s the best info I found about TPC Scottsdale and past champions…

You’ve seen Black Desert Resort pop up a few times here now. None of the good players in this field have ever played it as a PGA Tour event, but many of the middle-to-bottom tier have. There’s no water to absorb errant shots, but there’s the LAVA, which is essentially OB. It’s also a Tom Weiskopf-designed track, so that could be instructive. Here are the players in the field (per round) from the Black Desert Classic over the last two years.