4 picks our gambling expert loves this week

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. An accomplished golfer and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network dedicated to sports and sports betting. You can follow along on Twitter at @LasVegasGolferand you can read his picks below for The Sentry, which kicks off Thursday in Maui. Along with Kannon’s recommended games, 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 every round and tournament.

Well, that was quick. Enjoy all the golf off-season – all barely three weeks of it?

I haven’t even finished spending my winnings on Scottie Scheffler at the Hero World Challenge, and yet here we are again, kicking off the 2025 PGA Tour season with The Sentry at the Plantation Course in Kapalua, Maui.

However, it’s always such a welcome sight as we go through a cold winter season, feasting our eyes on the emerald green fairways, clear blue skies and Pacific Ocean views on display this week in northwest Maui. If the Masters is our way of ushering in the spring season, Kapalua is certainly a great indicator of another golf season beginning.

The Plantation Course is a massive, Coore/Crenshaw-designed property perched high atop the hillsides overlooking Kapalua Resort and the Pacific Ocean. It is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass, a unique par 73 and is one of the longer courses these players play all year at nearly 7,600 yards. The wind is the primary defense, and we’ve seen it wreak havoc on these players in the past, but when it’s not blowing, The Sentry quickly becomes a birdie fest. The forecast this week calls for strong winds on Thursday, but not much more than a regular coastal breeze for the rest of the week.

The 2025 Sentry is a signature event with no 36-hole cut, and the field is limited to just 60 players.

I am fortunate enough to have played the Plantation Course about half a dozen times. The fairways are incredibly wide, the greens are huge, and there are plenty of rough lies in the fairways as the course offers a lot of slope and elevation change. I feel that Driving Distance is a useful skill set this week, but it is not critical to success and Driving Accuracy is basically irrelevant given the width of the fairways. Approach shots are important as they always are, but hole proximity is also a high priority as you need to get the ball close to the hole on these large putting surfaces. A large proportion of approach shots will come from 125 yards out and less, and a number of approaches will be hit from 200 yards out or more.

I also looked at Par 5 scoring, as the course has five such holes, one more than a typical setup. I looked at Scrambling, 3-Putt Avoidance, Birdies or Better Gained, and Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass).

It’s a star-studded lineup of correlated courses this week, and if you look at the past winners on all of these courses, there’s a huge amount of crossover success. I used Augusta National (Masters), Riviera Country Club (Genesis Invitational), Monterey Peninsula Country Club (AT&T Pebble Beach), Torrey Pines North Course (Farmers Insurance Open) and the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, which recently hosted the 2022 Open Championship – won by Cameron Smith, who also won here at Kapalua the same year.

I played the following four players for an outright win this week and also played each of them for a top-10 finish.

Hideki Matsuyama (22-1)

We successfully landed at Matsuyama back in August at FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, another course that is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass. He’s also a past winner at the Sony Open, which is always played the week after The Sentry on the island of Oahu, and while the two golf courses really don’t look alike, we’re seeing a lot of crossover success between Sony and Kapalua. Matsuyama is also a former Masters champion and won the Genesis Invitational at Riveria Country Club back in February.

What I also particularly like about Matsuyama here is his ability from 100 yards out. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks second in this field for Scrambling and ranks top-4 in Hole Proximity from 75-125 yards out. Matsuyama finished 58th out of 59 players here last year, but he also has two top-4 finishes and one runner-up finish here in his career.

Byeong Hun An (35-1)

An was a winner recently on the DP World Tour, winning the Genesis Championship at the end of October. He wrestled here at Kapalua last year, finishing fourth. Returning to the mainland, An finished 16th at the Riviera and also finished 16th last season at The Masters. He is well off the tee and is second in this field for driving distance over the last 24 rounds. He is also 17th in the field for Scrambling.

JT Poston (45-1)

Like An, Poston also recently won in October in Las Vegas at the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin. Last year, here at The Sentry, Poston finished one shot behind An, tied for fifth. It’s worth noting that he followed that up with a sixth at the Sony Open the following week – where An incidentally finished second. Both of these players had big runs on the Isles last year. We expect this to continue in 2025.

Over the past 24 rounds, Poston ranks in the top 25 in this field for Birdies or Better Gained, Scrambling and Hole Proximity from 75-125 yards out.

Eric Cole (80-1)

Cole is another player I really like for a birdie party. In 2024, Cole was fourth on Tour for Total Birdies. He used that to finish 14th here last year and followed it up with a 13th at the Sony Open on Oahu. Cole has two top-16 finishes and a sixth in his last four starts on Tour. His numbers across the board this week are fantastic. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks fifth in this field for SG: Approach, Scrambling and Hole Proximity from 100-125 yards. He is third in Hole Proximity from 200 yards-plus, and is no. 1 in SG: Par 5’s.

Let’s also note this interesting connection … Chris Kirk is the defending champion of The Sentry. It was Cole who lost to Kirk in a playoff at the Honda Classic in 2023. Perhaps this is where Cole earns his first ever PGA Tour victory. It would certainly make for a good New Year.

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