7 picks our gambling expert loves

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2025 RBC Canadian Open, which gets underway Thursday in Toronto. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, 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 each round and tournament.

For a record 10th time, the U.S. Open returns to Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Penn. The U.S. Open has always been billed as the most difficult test these golfers face versus any other tournament. Following suit, Oakmont has often been labeled as the most difficult golf course in the world. As golf fans, it ought to be fun. As golf bettors, we’re simply aiming for victory.

Located roughly half an hour outside of Pittsburgh, Oakmont was designed by Henry Fownes in 1903. He took all the aspects we have come to expect from the game’s most challenging courses, and put them into one. Massive, undulated, lightning-fast greens, 168 very penal sand bunkers, narrow, canted fairways with nary a flat lie, five-inch thick, nasty rough, and yet, there are no trees nor water hazards throughout the 18-hole property.

We often hear golf courses referred to as a “second-shot course.” I believe Oakmont is a first-shot golf course, meaning how one performs off the tee is going to loom large as the first order of business. Spending one’s time all week in the rough, in the bunkers — no matter how far down the fairway — it’s not going to end well if you’re out of position this week. In 2016, Dustin Johnson won the U.S. Open at Oakmont with a score of 4 under par. He led the field in Total Driving (a combination of distance and accuracy). Finishing runner-up in both 2007 and in 2016, was the poster child for “fairways and greens” U.S. Open-type play, Jim Furyk. It goes to show that both types of players can succeed here but that accuracy off the tee is incredibly important.

I looked at Strokes Gained: Off the Tee this week, Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, Driving Distance, Fairways Gained, Greens in Regulation Gained, and Strokes Gained: Approach. After that, in crunching the stats, I used Scrambling, 3-Putt Avoidance, Bogey Avoidance, and Strokes Gained: Putting (Poa Annua).

As far as correlated courses are concerned, I believe there are a few ways one can look at this, this week. Augusta National is not really similar to Oakmont but its sloped fairways, uneven lies and lightning-quick undulated greens are absolutely connected characteristics. Torrey Pines South is not especially similar yet it is a U.S. Open venue and Total Driving is paramount. Others that I believe can be used as pointers for one reason or another are, Winged Foot, Oak Hill, Royal Liverpool, Southern Hills, Bay Hill, TPC Scottsdale, and Olympia Fields North.

Jon Rahm (14-1)

This week, we have the Big Five: Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, and Rahm. I’d rather bet on Scheffler later into the championship, at a similar price, if he is in or near the lead. I don’t believe McIlroy has recovered yet from his post-Masters hangover and might not for quite some time. With his season interrupted early by injury, Schauffele is not back to major-championship winning form yet and I don’t want to invest in DeChambeau defending his title. I’m left with Rahm — but I also like his chances quite a bit. He was the low amateur here in 2016, finishing 23rd. Of course, he won a U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2021. He’s been on a nice run since the Open Championship last summer, and finished runner-up in 2023 at Royal Liverpool. He’s won at Olympia Fields, has five top-10 finishes at TPC Scottsdale and Augusta National, including a green jacket in 2023. Rahm also ranks No. 1 in this field over the last 36 rounds for SG: Putting (Fast Poa Annua).

Patrick Cantlay (46-1)

Cantlay feels very much like a fit for the U.S. Open and apparently he is, having never missed a cut at this championship in nine tries. His last four trips have been progressively better with finishes of 15-14-14-3. He’s done extremely well in the Northeast part of the country and has had excellent success putting on Poa Annua. Over the last 36-rounds, Cantlay ranks 23rd in this field for SG: Off the Tee, fourth for SG: Approach, eighth for SG: Ball Striking, and 12th for Bogey Avoidance.

Tommy Fleetwood (50-1)

I got this number back in January but there are 40s still available and I’m okay with that, although I wouldn’t want much lower than 40-1. The U.S. Open has actually been the Englishman’s best major as he has three top-5 finishes, including runner-up at Shinnecock Hills in 2018. Fleetwood does everything well. He is not terribly long off the tee but he is accurate, hits greens in regulation, scrambles well, putts well — it is just a matter of him winning for the first time on U.S. soil. Fleetwood has been as high as third at Augusta National, finished 10th at Royal Liverpool in 2023, was fifth at Southern Hills at the 2022 PGA Championship, and has been top 10 three times at Bay Hill. He also has two very recent fourth-place finishes at long, par-70, U.S. Open type courses: Colonial Country Club (Charles Schwab Challenge) and the Philadephia Cricket Club for the Truist Championship.

Sepp Straka (66-1)

It was Straka who won the Truist Championship last month, his second victory of the season. He is a brilliant iron player, is deadly accurate off the tee, and ranks 17th on Tour in SG: Putting. Straka was seventh at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill in 2023 and was runner-up in the same season at Royal Liverpool. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks top 5 in this field for SG: Approach, SG: Ball Striking, Bogey Avoidance, and Greens in Regulation Gained.

Russell Henley (70-1)

After Rahm and Cantlay, who, as we have illustrated, definitely fit the U.S. Open profile, the rest of my selections are absolutely the prototypical “Jim Furyk, Lee Janzen, Payne Stewart”-type: quintessential U.S. Open-type players. Henley is really no different than Fleetwood and Straka. Accuracy, iron play, putting, greens in regulation — all a part of the age-old U.S. Open formula. Henley has been as high as fourth at the Masters, won at Bay Hill earlier this season, took eighth at Olympia Fields at the 2023 BMW Championship, and has had finishes of 16-13-14-and-7 at this championship. He led after rounds one, two, and three at Torrey Pines in 2021.

Denny McCarthy (150-1)

Rinse and repeat. Maybe not quite to the level of Straka, Fleetwood, and Henley but McCarthy, at the same time, is arguably the very best putter in the world. He has yet to miss a cut this season. He finished fifth at Torrey Pines for the Genesis Invitational, was 16th at TPC Scottsdale, 18th at Bay Hill, and just took eighth at the PGA Championship. Not necessarily a correlated course but a U.S. Open-type test in many ways, McCarthy has twice finished top-5 at the Memorial Tournament. He’s only missed the cut once in five tries at the U.S. Open and that came right here at Oakmont in 2016, so he is familiar with the course. He was 20th at Los Angeles Country Club in 2023 and seventh at the Country Club at Brookline in 2022.

Harris English (150-1)

Here is another one that I played back in January and the number has changed since then quite a bit. The word is out on a man that is having a fantastic season and has for a while now been a terrific U.S. Open player, as evidenced by his win at Torrey Pines earlier this season. Like Cantlay, English has yet to miss a cut at a U.S. Open in nine visits. He was fourth at Winged Foot in 2020, third at Torrey Pines in 2021, and was eighth at LACC in 2023. He also just finished runner-up at the PGA Championship last month. He was 37th here at Oakmont in 2016. English has all the tools we are looking for, primarily Total Driving and short game. He’s finished runner-up at Bay Hill, as high as third in Phoenix, and was 10th at Olympia Fields in 2023.