Who’s going to win?
Ah, I was afraid you’d ask that. According to Vegas, McIlroy is the favorite. The odds per player are below, via golfodds.com.
Rory McIlroy 2/1
Hideki Matsuyama 5/2
Tiger Woods 3/1
Jason Day 7/2
As for which player will actually win? Well, that’s a tougher one to answer. McIlroy and Woods are returning to competition after some time away from the course, while Matsuyama and Day played at this week’s CJ Cup. There’s no question McIlroy showed the best form through the balance of 2019. Woods may have the advantage of experience; he’s the only one of the four who has played a televised skins game before (though it’s worth pointing out that hardly helped him during last year’s Match against Phil Mickelson).
The format is just as important as any of the players, because these guys are all world-class — and there’s a massive element of randomness to who actually wins an 18-hole skins game. Woods played seven in his prime (the Skins Game series ran from 1983 to 2008) but never actually won. If there’s any “smart money,” it would likely point towards Day, just because he has the longest odds and should have roughly the same chance as anyone else.
Prop Bets?
Prop bets! Granted, skins games are tough to do much prop betting with, but we dug up a couple. If you’re looking to short one of the competitors, PointsBet is listing a prop for who might go skin-free: +325 for Day +350 for Woods, +400 for Matsuyama and +450 for McIlroy. DraftKings is offering a closest-to-the-pin competition for each par-5, with McIlroy listed as the slight favorite at +225. You can also bet hole-by-hole (Jason Day +700 to win No. 1?) or take 50-1 odds that there will be a hole-in-one, though you’d do just as well to set that money on fire with those odds.
Sportsbetting.ag offers up another angle: Over/under $300,000 for the highest value for any “Challenge Hole.” I’d lean under; there’s a risk here of upstaging the rest of the competition if the side bets get too aggressive.
Feel free to make up your own, especially if you’re planning to take in the action live in the wee hours of Monday morning. Most of all, enjoy! It’s fun to get the best players in the world doing something a little different. We’ll be here to tell you how it all goes down.
