This year’s WM Phoenix Open will take place Thursday, February 9 through Sunday, February 12 at TPC Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona. Phoenix Open odds for outright winner have already been posted by select sportsbooks and top 5 finish, top 10 and top 20 will soon follow. Scottie Scheffler picked up his first career PGA TOUR victory at this event last year, kickstarting his 2022 Player of the Year campaign, and he is expected to return to defend his title again this year.
Below we will provide a betting guide for the 2023 contest and much more.
Phoenix Open odds
View Phoenix Open odds from the top golf betting sites below. Jon Rahm was the early favorite as he was +550 to win the WM Phoenix Open on Jan. 26.
TPC Scottsdale
TPC Scottsdale is a stadium-style tournament course which features a volume of risk-reward holes and rewards players who are willing to play aggressively to attack tight pins around neighboring hazards. The WM Phoenix Open, also known as The People’s Open, is the biggest party of the golf season – which will be exacerbated in 2023 when Scottsdale hosts both this event and the Super Bowl in the same weekend. Expect a raucous crowd, and look for players who have played well in other fan-driven events like THE PLAYERS, Ryder Cup, and Presidents Cup to thrive in this environment.
In terms of Course History, Hideki Matsuyama, Xander Schauffele, Louis Oosthuizen, Brooks Koepka, and Jon Rahm highlight the list of players who have repeatedly played well here, suggesting a strong overlap from players who thrive in Major-like conditions.
In nine of the last 10 years, the winner of this event has opened between 10-1 to 50-1. Given the pressure and intensity from the crowd, the cream tends to rise to the top here, so bettors would be best to target a shorter pool of players towards the top tier of this field when considering WM Phoenix Open outright betting.
WM Phoenix Open history
The below table tracks consensus pre-tournament outright odds for the last 10 winners of WM Phoenix Open.
| Year | Winner | Pre-Tournament Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Scottie Scheffler | +2800 |
| 2021 | Brooks Koepka | +5000 |
| 2020 | Webb Simpson | +1400 |
| 2019 | Rickie Fowler | +2200 |
| 2018 | Gary Woodland | +5000 |
| 2017 | Hideki Matsuyama | +1100 |
| 2016 | Hideki Matsuyama | +2800 |
| 2015 | Brooks Koepka | +4000 |
| 2014 | Kevin Stadler | +12500 |
| 2013 | Phil Mickelson | +2500 |
How to bet on the Waste Management Phoenix Open
More and more states are legalizing sports betting and there are plenty of novice bettors out there. If the Waste Management Phoenix Open is the first golf event you have ever bet on, you’ve come to the right place to familiarize yourself with wagering on putts and pitching wedges. This might also be good for veteran golf bettors to brush up on what’s what when it comes to placing a bet on golf.
Some golf betting markets are best for entertainment value, offering gaudy odds week-to-week with a very low win percentage, while others are more suitable to slow bankroll building with even lines more akin to what you’ll find across other popular sports. Below is a quick rundown of all the most popular ways you can bet on golf.
Outright
Outright betting is the most popular way to bet on golf, offering more appealing odds than most any other market or sport. An outright is a bet on who you think will win the golf tournament. With golf tournaments played over four rounds from Thursday through Sunday most weeks, a pre-tournament outright bet is considered to be a future bet.
In golf, the favorite often posts between 8-1 to 12-1 odds, and is rarely the one who goes on to win, with so much parity in the sport currently. There are certain weeks where players with 200-1 odds are popular bets and viable to win, so it’s always worth diversifying exposure across multiple players week-to-week when considering outright betting.
Outright betting is a long game. A full field in a PGA TOUR event can be up to 156 players, so the odds are not in your favor to successfully hit an outright every week. It’s important to remain patient and stick to a weekly, repeatable structure if looking to be profitable betting outrights long term. My personal structure is to bet an 8:1 ratio of units bet to units paid for outright betting. This ensures a breakeven for one outright win every eight weeks, or roughly 6 outright wins over the course of a full season. Each bettor should decide their own preference and risk tolerance, but it is recommended to not structure your outright betting below 6:1 to turn a long term profit.
Select sportsbooks will offer Each Way markets, which duplicate your outright bet and pay out in full if a player finishes in the top 4-7 (depending on the sportsbook and market). Bettors without access to Each Way markets may also consider manually pairing their outright bets with a top-5 bet as a safeguard.
First Round Leader
With so much volatility day-to-day in golf, the First Round Leader market is one meant more for entertainment purposes, and is not a reliable market to turn around profits consistently. Given the volatility of what can happen in one round of golf, this market often offers longer odds than outrights, and pays out at the conclusion of the first round.
Round Leader markets are available in R2 and R3 as well.
Placement Bets (Top-5, 10, 20, 40)
Placement Bets are my preferred market to bet golf when looking to build a weekly bankroll. In most weeks, you’ll find the favorites at near even odds to finish top-10, and can find the mid-range of the field in the +200 to +400 range to finish top-20. For longshots who are unlikely to contend, but are well-suited for a given course, top-40 bets can also be an appealing market.
Of note, most sportsbooks offer dead heat rules for placement bets. This means if a top-10 bet is placed, and that player finishes T10, tied with three other players, then the originally owed payout will be divided by four. With dead heats common in golf, it is ideal to bet placements on sportsbooks that do not offer dead heat rules, where possible.
Matchups (Individual Round & Full Tournament)
Another popular golf betting market is matchups. Matchups, especially for single rounds, tend to be a high volume bet, and are best placed when a bettor feels both positive about one side and negative about the other side of the matchup.
Personally, I try to avoid betting golf for profit in single-round increments, as I feel the volume of four days is a much wider sample for the better player to prevail. For that reason, I tend to only consider full-tournament matchups, however this is limiting to the total number of matchup options a bettor will have per week.
Beyond standard head to head matchups, there are also three-ball matchups, which offer better odds for players to choose who will finish best from a ground of three.
Live Betting
Golf odds are always dynamic as a tournament plays out, which creates appealing live betting opportunities, whether looking to hedge against a pre-tournament outright, or buy in on a placement bet. When live betting, it can often be useful to reference live strokes gained data to identify players who are strong from tee-to-green and simply not making putts, as putting is a volatile statistically that can more easily be turned around day-to-day. DataGolf is a preferred free resource to monitor live strokes gained data.