Zurich Classic Odds & Betting Preview: Everything To Know For TPC Louisiana
Check out Zurich Classic odds at the best sports betting sites to increase your potential PGA Tour golf betting payouts. Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa, and Kurt Kitayama headline the project as the top groups for this upcoming tournament.
Time for a quick break from standard stroke play as the PGA Tour heads to TPC Louisiana. The 2025 Zurich Classic is on tap, and we’ll attempt to navigate this two-man team event with all the info, trends, and stats you need to know about this nuanced tournament. It's become polarizing, as golf fans either hate the change of pace and choose to skip watching and/or betting on it, or they enjoy seeing some of the game’s best pair up in a refreshing new format. I fall into the latter camp.
I like this event; it has continued attracting some competitive fields over its short history. The winning duo receives $1.5 million, 400 FedEx Cup points, and invites to the upcoming PGA Championship, Sentry Tournament of Champions, and The Players Championship. It was a life-changing week for 2023 champions Davis Riley and Nick Hardy. It produced an eventful "David vs. Goliath" in 2024 when Team McIlroy and Lowry prevailed over Team Ramey and Trainer in a playoff. It will hold every competitor’s full attention yet again in 2025.
It’s also an excellent opportunity to find an edge in the golf betting market and DFS, with many not knowing exactly how to approach research or handicapping Zurich Classic odds. That is (hopefully) where we step in!
ZURICH CLASSIC ODDS: THE FAVORITES
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THE FIELD AT A GLANCE
This week's field has 160 players, technically the largest of the season. The field will be grouped into 80 teams of two, with the top 33 pairs and ties advancing through the 36-hole cut.
After having the Masters and the RBC Heritage signature event in successive weeks, this quirky team-play setup serves as a natural bye week for elite players like Scottie Scheffler. Even still, the field features six OWGR top-20 players, highlighted by McIlroy, who will make his first start since winning the 2025 Masters alongside Shane Lowry.
In addition, other marquee pairings at the top of the projected Zurich Classic odds board include Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Wyndham Clark and Taylor Moore, JT Poston and Keith Mitchell, Robert MacIntyre and Thomas Detry, and Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor.
This year, Louisiana-native Sam Burns and the infamous Cantlay and Schauffele duo are absent, as they each recover from back-to-back high-profile events on the revamped schedule.
Beyond the defending champions of McIlroy and Lowry, Hardy and Riley are the only other past champion pair returning this week. Ryan Palmer, Billy Horschel, Nick Watney, and Scott Piercy are past team stroke play winners of this event, and they are back in the field with new partners this year.
TEAM STROKE PLAY FORMAT & FIELD OVERVIEW
- Thursday: Four-Ball (Best Ball)
- Friday: Foursomes (Alternate Shot)
- CUT: Top 33 Pairs & Ties Advance
- Saturday: Four-Ball (Best Ball)
- Sunday: Foursomes (Alternate Shot)
Here is the official explanation from the Zurich Classic website of how the format is broken down:
For four-ball play, the players on each team will each play his own ball throughout the entirety of the round, with the best score on each hole recorded. Example: On the first hole, both golfers on each team tee off. Player A pars the hole and Player B birdies it. The team will be credited with a birdie.
For foursomes play, players will rotate tee shots. One player will hit the tee shots on all the odd-numbered holes, and the other will hit the tee shot on even-numbered holes. Example: Player A and Player B are partners. On the first hole, Player A tees off; Player B plays the second shot; Player A plays the third shot; and so on until the ball is holed. The total strokes taken will result in the team’s score for that hole.
Last year, McIlroy and Lowry won with a final score of -25. They never looked back after sharing the first round lead with an opening score of -11 in four ball. They finished -19 for the week in four ball and -6 in foursomes. Typically, we have seen championship teams with the best birdie-making upside separate themselves in best ball and tread water in alternate shot.
INTRODUCTION TO TPC LOUISIANA
TPC Louisiana is a Pete Dye-designed, 7,400-yard par 72 located in Avondale. If TPC courses share an identity of fan-friendly, templated scoring holes, and Pete Dye Courses share a tendency for positional angles off-the-tee and around-the-green emphasis, this course leans more toward the former. There are persistent bunkers and some fun, random hazards like trees in the center of the fairway that have Dye’s hands all over them. But there are plenty of scoring opportunities on this course.
Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of players succeed here, individually and in team play, despite not being strong off the tee. This glorified second-shot course emphasizes strong approach play to avoid greenside water and bunkers.
The Zurich Classic was a standard individual stroke play event from 1938 to 2016. Stuard won the 2016 Zurich Classic, and if he wins an event, it needs to be gutted and reinvented completely to protect the tour’s integrity. He has not won a tour event since.
EVENT HISTORY AND COURSE COMPS
Since 2017, the Zurich Classic has been contested as a team event. Twenty individuals have multiple T15 finishes over the last five years: Billy Horschel, Ryan Palmer, Charley Hoffman, Nick Watney, Adam Hadwin, Nick Taylor, Martin Laird, Troy Merritt, Taylor Moore, Matthew NeSmith, Aaron Rai, David Lipsky, Davis Riley, Keith Mitchell, Kevin Kisner, Chad Ramey, Thomas Detry, Shane Lowry, Garrick Higgo, and Mark Hubbard.
Billy Horschel won this event in 2018 with Scott Piercy and individually at the 2013 Zurich Classic. Horschel played alongside Sam Burns from 2021-2023, contending each time with finishes of T11, T4, and second. He hasn’t finished worse than T14 since 2018 and enters in good form again. He’s always a consideration at the Zurich Classic on the merit of course history alone, but it remains to be seen what his chemistry with his new partner, Tom Hoge, looks like this year.
Course Comps
This is a subjective week to use the good old-fashioned eye test over any hyper-analyzed modeling. Suppose we want to reference some recent courses that reward a similar style of play. In that case, I like TPC Twin Cities, Detroit Golf Club, TPC Sawgrass, Austin CC, TPC Craig Ranch, and TPC Scottsdale as a collection of TPC-style and/or Pete Dye Courses that favor plus-distance and reward the best iron players for that given week.
The 3M Open leaderboard continues to stand out from a correlation standpoint. Max Greyserman, Sam Burns, Martin Laird, Sam Ryder, Billy Horschel, Beau Hossler, Garrick Higgo, Cameron Champ, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Keith Mitchell, Brandt Snedeker, Pat Perez, Tony Finau, and Scott Piercy all finished in the top 20 at both events over the last four years.
KEY STATS TO CONSIDER
- Recent Form (SG: TOT, SG: T2G)
- Birdies or Better Gained
- SG: T2G (>7,400 Yard Courses)
- P4: 450-500
- SG: P – Bermuda
- Comp Course History
I’ll be ditching the advanced metrics and taking a subjective route this week. I’m mainly focused on comfortable pairings comprising the players with the best total form (SG: TOT L36). I’m also looking for players who are aggressive enough to generate the most birdie opportunities (birdies or better gained), as this will help teams create separation on the four-ball days.
Here are the top 10 teams in terms of average SG: TOT rankings:
- McIlroy & Lowry
- Poston & Mitchell
- MacIntyre & Detry
- Smalley & Bramlett
- Woodland & Hodges
- Morikawa & Kitayama
- J. Svensson & Norgaard
- Walker & Gerard
- Hoey & Ryder
- McGreevy & Stevens
Here are the top 10 teams in terms of birdies or better gained:
- J. Svensson & Norgaard
- Moore & Clark
- Higgo & Fox
- Walker & Gerard
- Morikawa & Kitayama
- McIlroy & Lowry
- Smalley & Bramlett
- Vilips & Thorbjornsen
- Rai & Theegala
- Vegas & Yu
With this being a team format, there is merit to the thought that you are only as strong as your weakest link, as you cannot excel in alternate shot on Friday and Sunday single-handedly. With that in mind, the top 10 players who represent the second-best combination of SG: TOT + birdies or better gained on their teams are: Shane Lowry, JT Poston, Thomas Detry, Niklas Norgaard, Joseph Bramlett, Max McGreevy, Gary Woodland, Andrew Novak, Ryan Fox, and Thorbjorn Olesen.
Team Reshuffling
This is not your average week on the PGA Tour schedule. Standard strokes gained stats go by the wayside in favor of more subjective metrics like team chemistry. While the list of individuals who found success here doesn't favor one type of player, there seems to be a stronger trend of duos who have played well before. The following groups have played together multiple times at this event with at least one top-10 finish together:
- Lowry & McIlroy
- Hoffman & Watney
- Hadwin & Taylor
- Hardy & Riley
- Greyserman & Echavarria
- Higgo & Fox
- MacIntyre & Detry
Putting team camaraderie to the test, these groups have each had individual success, but will be playing the event as a team for the first time:
- Mitchell & Poston
- Clark & Moore
- Horschel & Hoge
- Theegala & Rai
Correlated Stats
While I won’t be running a model this week, historical strokes gained data from its individual stroke play days is still available at TPC Louisiana. Based on the correlation charts below, bogeys avoided and SG: OTT are less important on this track than the tour average. On the other hand, SG: ball striking, SG: APP, and SG: par 5 see the most significant boost in importance at TPC Louisiana.
TEAM SPOTLIGHT: Echavarria & Greyserman
Of all the events on the PGA Tour, this may be where experience is most critical to predict future success. Experience is not only necessary to learn how to navigate TPC Louisiana properly, but it's also needed to acclimate to this unique team stroke play format. Playing for your teammate is an unfamiliar feeling for PGA Tour players, and can be a bit disorienting when you aren't used to it. Comfort level is also paramount, as you need a partnership in this format where one player is not carrying the other, and both trust the other will pick them up after a poor shot.
With all of this said, I'm very intrigued by the unlikely partnership of Nico Echavarria and Max Greyserman, who managed to buck all of these trends and finish T4 in the Zurich Classic debut last year. This was each of their first times playing the course, and they picked up immediate chemistry after Echavarria stepped in late to backfill Greyserman's good friend Jake Knapp last year.
I would expect the partnership to only go up from here, as both will enter the 2025 Zurich Classic with a better understanding of how to play together and how you need to play to contend in an event like this.
From a form standpoint, this duo scores well, ranking No. 13 in combined birdie-or-better percentage. Echavarria is also in far improved form, picking up five top-10 finishes since he last appeared at the 2024 Zurich Classic. Featuring complimentary skillsets of distance and accuracy and a shared commonality of elite putting upside, this is a key pairing to watch at the 2025 Zurich Classic.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR AT ZURICH CLASSIC
This week, I won’t attempt to bucket these team pairings into projected pricing tiers. Instead of short-listed player pools, I’ve pulled together the below ranker chart to evaluate each team based on average trending form and birdie-making ability entering this event. When odds are released, I’ll compare against these rankings to identify where the value lies. At a glance, I would anticipate Echavarria and Greyserman, J. Svensson and Norgaard, MacIntyre and Detry, and Clark and Moore as potential betting board values.
When Zurich Classic odds open, I’m eyeing a longer card centered around mid-tier pairings like Detry and MacIntyre, Theegala and Rai, Poston and Mitchell, and Echavarria and Greyserman. While McIlroy and Lowry project as prohibitive favorites, this format lends itself to some surprise longshots catching fire, similar to what we saw with Riley and Hardy, plus Ramey and Trainer in recent years.
It’s a good week to step back from the statistical modeling and enjoy a fun change of pace format. I hope for the best that we can get a Sunday sweat to look forward to.
I’ll be back Wednesday with my official betting card. Best of luck navigating the 2025 Zurich Classic odds!
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