Action Report: Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young popular picks ahead of Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches

The 2024 PGA TOUR golf betting season has been all about the longshot.

Ahead of the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches, bettors at the BetMGM online sportsbook expect that to change.

As of Wednesday, the two players with the shortest odds in the field – Rory McIlroy (+800) and Cameron Young (+2200) – are the two most popular players.

McIlroy is pulling in the most handle (12.9%) on the most tickets (6.4%), and Young is drawing the third-most handle (5.3%) on the second-most tickets (4.7%).

PGA National’s Champion course once again plays host to the TOUR to start the Florida Swing, a happy hunting ground for McIlroy as the 2012 champion. He also had a playoff loss in 2014 to negate the fact he hasn’t played here since 2018.

The 34-year-old is coming off a disappointing few events on the West Coast, finishing T66 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and T24 at The Genesis Invitational, but he did win in Dubai on the DP World Tour last month.

Meanwhile, Young doesn’t have much course history, finishing T16 in 2022. He does enter in solid form, finishing T16 at The Genesis Invitational and T8 at the WM Phoenix Open.

With plenty of water hazards coming into play on 15 of the 18 holes, PGA National is one of the harder courses on the PGA TOUR.

Chris Kirk won last year at 14-under, but in the previous 12 tournaments the winning score was never better than 12-under. Par for the course has been increased to 71 this season with the previously long par-4 10th now a gettable par 5. This could help better scoring.

Adam Svensson (+4000), Christiaan Bezuidenhout (+5500) and McIlroy are BetMGM’s biggest liabilities.

Current Handle & Tickets

Handle

• Rory McIlroy – 12.9%
• Adam Svensson – 5.4%
• Cameron Young – 5.3%
• Daniel Berger – 4.9%
• Matt Fitzpatrick – 4.6%

Tickets

• Rory McIlroy – 6.4%
• Cameron Young – 4.7%
• Eric Cole – 4.1%
• Adam Svensson – 3.8%
• Matt Fitzpatrick – 3.6%

Svensson is coming off a T10 at his last event (The Genesis Invitational) and finished T9 at the 2022 Cognizant Classic.

Fitzpatrick doesn’t have a great track record here but is one of the most talented players in the field and finished T15 at the WM Phoenix Open a few weeks back.

Kirk (+4000) is pulling in 2.3% of the tickets and 1.8% of the handle.

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