In this betting preview:
We have six signature winners this season on the PGA TOUR. In those six starts, the average winner’s pre-tournament odds were +2700. None were higher than +4000 (Russell Henley, Sepp Straka) and none lower than +1400 (Rory McIlroy). Their average OWGR before winning: ninth. Those same six individuals are now all ranked inside the top 10 of the OWGR:
- Hideki Matsuyama (7), Rory McIlroy (2), Ludvig Åberg (6), Russell Henley (8), Justin Thomas (5), Sepp Straka (9)
That’s an impressive list, and I think it displays a unique trend. The upper middle class is winning these elevated events and then taking that momentum and continuing to climb the world rankings. Getting inside the top 10 in the OWGR is no immediate task. For players like Sepp Straka and Russell Henley, it has taken years of work. Maintaining that position is no easy accomplishment either. Justin Thomas was ranked thirtieth two years ago at the RBC Heritage, an event he just won. Ludvig was ranked 914 in the world two years ago when he left Texas Tech and turned professional!
Signature events are career launching pads, and one of the best springboards we have seen through the years is The Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. Jack’s event has crowned some incredible players since 2000: Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa (Workday), Viktor Hovland, Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Rose, and Tiger Woods! I think we are on the verge of seeing another elite player win and elevate themselves. This is going to be a great week for golf. The Memorial is the finest run event on TOUR, and the ladies will play in the US Women’s Open. Clean off the couch, it’s going to be a weekend to remember!
This preview is just that, a preview. For a complete list of my betting predictions covering the Memorial Tournament, placements, and H2H matchups, please go to Read The Line and subscribe.
The Memorial Tournament 2025 best bets
Best bet to win: Si Woo Kim (+4500 on DraftKings)
Si Woo Kim has joked several times recently that he cannot beat Scottie Scheffler. Who better to win The Memorial than Kim? The truth is, Si Woo is gaining six strokes per start against the field over his past five events. A big part of that success has been a reliable putter.
Kim now comes back to a venue where he has five straight top-18 results. Kim can hit fairways, knock down pins, and has gained strokes with his short game in five straight starts. Take the underdog in Si Woo and let’s see if he can surprise Mr. Scheffler.
Best bet to place in the Top 10: Corey Conners (+260 on DraftKings)
I love when Conners comes in under the radar. He’s an impeccable ball striker who likes to fade it off the tee. Ranked second in the field in SG:OTT and seventh in SG:APP, Conners has not lost strokes to the field with his driver or iron game since early March!
Also ranked ninth in GIRs, Conners has four top 10s over his last eight starts. Take the 10 places and watch Canada’s finest ball striker contend on a championship course.
Best head-to-head bet: Tony Finau over Jordan Spieth (-120 on DraftKings)
Finau has been seriously trending, putting a mediocre start to the year firmly in his rearview mirror. His approach game is back, and he’s bombing it off the tee. With two top-8 finishes in his past three Memorial starts, Finau should be fun to watch this week.
Spieth just cannot seem to play consistently. A couple weeks ago, his iron game was off — now it’s his putter. Both better be working at MVGC, or he’ll be watching Finau with us over the weekend.
The Memorial Tournament 2025 betting odds
Odds courtesy of DraftKings. Showing odds shorter than +9000.
| Golfer | Odds |
| Scottie Scheffler | +280 |
| Collin Morikawa | +1600 |
| Xander Schauffele | +1600 |
| Justin Thomas | +1800 |
| Patrick Cantlay | +2200 |
| Ludvig Aberg | +2500 |
| Tommy Fleetwood | +2500 |
| Corey Conners | +3000 |
| Viktor Hovland | +3000 |
| Shane Lowry | +3500 |
| Daniel Berger | +3500 |
| Jordan Spieth | +3500 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | +3500 |
| Si Woo Kim | +4000 |
| Sepp Straka | +4000 |
| Denny McCarthy | +4500 |
| Matt Fitzpatrick | +4500 |
| Tony Finau | +4500 |
| Russell Henley | +5000 |
| Aaron Rai | +5000 |
| Keegan Bradley | +5000 |
| J.J. Spaun | +5000 |
| Harris English | +5500 |
| Sam Burns | +5500 |
| Robert MacIntyre | +5500 |
| Ben Griffin | +5500 |
| Andrew Novak | +6000 |
| Maverick McNealy | +6000 |
| J.T. Poston | +6000 |
| Sungjae Im | +6000 |
| Alex Noren | +6500 |
| Rickie Fowler | +7000 |
| Akshay Bhatia | +7000 |
| Max Homa | +7500 |
| Taylor Pendrith | +7500 |
| Byeong Hun An | +8000 |
| Adam Scott | +8000 |
| Min Woo Lee | +8000 |
| Wyndham Clark | +8000 |
| Sahith Theegala | +8000 |
The Memorial Tournament 2025: Betting preview
Muirfield Village Golf Club is consistently ranked as one of the top 5 toughest tests on the PGA TOUR in recent years. In some seasons, it has played tougher than major championships. In 2019, Patrick Cantlay torched this course with a 19-under par final score. In the first of Patrick’s two victories on this property, he exposed some weaknesses, registering 25 sub-scores that week in 72-holes. Jack had had enough, and the bulldozers were brought in after the 2020 edition.
Since the course renovation, the average winning score at The Memorial is 10 under par. Well done Mr. Nicklaus. Seventy-two players are ready to take this year’s exam. The top 50 (and ties), along with any player within 10 shots of the lead, will make the weekend. The purse is $20 million, and first place takes home $4 million. I’m not a big fan of limited field events, but at least Genesis, API, and The Memorial are close to being a solid solution for these next-generation money grabs.
The past two years, it has been incredibly hot in Dublin, Ohio, for the tournament. As such, the course played very firm and fast. The Columbus region received about 9/10 of an inch of rain last week. Tuesday’s practice rounds also saw a little precipitation. It has been a cool, damp spring in middle America, and the course shows it. The four-inch rough is ridiculous, and the entire course is incredibly green. The overall health, along with Precision-Air under the green surfaces, will help the agronomy team create a perfect playing field. Temperatures are predicted to start each day in the mid-50s and top out in the low-70s. This is extremely good golf weather and a welcome break considering the conditions we were all walking through the last two years!
Pay attention, because The Memorial is going to be a great preview for the US Open in a couple of weeks. The two courses are about 200 miles apart and are commonly found in similar weather patterns. The agronomy conditions should play similarly, and thus give us some clues on who can handle these specific types of greens and grasses. We haven’t been to Oakmont in nine years. Much like the winner in 2016, Dustin Johnson, those leaderboards are gone. We have a new crop of elite players to handicap for one of golf’s all-time greatest tests, and Muirfield Village will give us some clues.
Muirfield Village Golf Club is a par-72 scorecard displaying 7,569 yards of great Golden Bear golf. Not known for creating a plethora of architecturally respected courses, all agree these 18 holes are his finest work.
Just start with the shortest holes, three of the four par 3s are inside the top six toughest holes on the course relative to par. Fourteen holes have a bogey rate over 15 percent. Take away the four par 5s and the short par-4 14th, and just five holes have a birdie rate over 15 percent.
Look at the last two winning scores: Scottie Scheffler at eight under par and Viktor Hovland one year earlier at seven under. Those two years were pretty crusty, but I still think the winner is right around the Vegas over/under for winning score: -9.5. The greens are small targets at 5,000 sq/ft, covered in Bentgrass and surrounded by 50 bunkers. Sixty-eight bunkers dot the landscape in total, along with 13 holes that feature a water penalty area.
The four-inch rough should be pure cabbage; thick, juicy, and horrible if you find yourself in it. Eight of the top 10 in the OWGR have joined Jack this week. Bryson (OWGR 10) is not eligible, and Rory McIlroy is heading to TPC Toronto in a week instead of taking this major-worthy test. It’s great that he goes to Canada every year, and this field does not need any more star power.
Many of this weekend’s stars sit in that middle range on the odds board above. Let’s call them Henley hopefuls. Can Fairway Jesus (Tommy Fleetwood) rise from the ashes of 27 top-5 finishes? Or will the Irish Bear (Shane Lowry) get a handshake from the Golden Bear on Sunday after a decade of close calls since his first PGA TOUR victory in 2015? Those are two worthy souls, but we all know the golf gods do not have a heart. Winning on the PGA TOUR is very hard (see – Ben Griffin Sunday), and crossing this finish line will take even more resolve than capturing the Charles Schwab.
Surely, Scheffler will probably win by three or four. However, if the signature trend tells us anything, those men in the middle will have a say at some point this upcoming Sunday.
For full coverage of the Memorial Tournament, subscribe to our Read The Line newsletter (it’s free!) and follow us on Twitter!
The Memorial Tournament 2025: Muirfield Village Golf Club course overview
Not many venues have hosted a US Amateur (1992 – Justin Leonard), Ryder Cup (1987 – Europe), Presidents Cup (2013 – United States), and a PGA TOUR event for nearly 50 years. Sure, it is Jack Nicklaus’ home course, but much like the Golden Bear himself, Muirfield Village continues to evolve with the professional game. Few par-72 scorecards can curtail scoring like MVGC. When you take a 30,000-foot view of the property, it can be tough to decipher why. Sure, the golf course is long, but length seldom slows these guys down. TPC Craig Ranch was 7,600 yards, and Scottie Scheffler shot 31 under par!
I love going to Dublin for this event. Every detail is designed to appreciate the experience one receives when they visit, just like The Masters. Nicklaus loved Augusta National and Muirfield. Both designs do one thing incredibly well: test your decision-making. What always stands out when I’m walking with the competitors at MVGC is watching them go through their options. Jack presents so many wonderful risk-reward opportunities around these 18 holes, and as a result, course management is one strokes gained category we cannot emphasize enough. That’s not to say a debutant couldn’t win here, but rather MVGC favors players who are willing to take what the golf course gives them, rather than attacking it with a pure scoring mentality.
In saying this, Scottie Scheffler is the first and last name you need to know when coming here. This is why Tiger Woods was so successful at MVGC. The careful combination of planning and precision is how you climb the leaderboard. Muirfield Village requires an attention to detail that most PGA TOUR venues do not. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- MVGC favors a left-to-right ball flight off the tee. A fade for righties and a draw bias for lefties. Look at the past champions: Woods, Matsuyama, Rahm, Cantlay, Morikawa (Workday), Hovland, etc. Now, consider the best players in the world who have not won here. Rory McIlroy has 13 starts and just two top 5s, and Xander Schauffele has one top 10 in seven starts. Two world-class players who love to move the ball opposite the Golden Bear off the tee.
- Strokes gained around the green have only increased in importance since the 2020 renovation. The green complexes are small at MVGC, considering the length required to get there. Twelve of the final top 20 on the final leaderboard were inside the top 15 for SG:ARG. You cannot hit every GIR, and this layout has a great blend of bunkers, closely mown areas, and deep rough surrounding these green surfaces. Take players who are trending with their short game.
- Half of the successful short game formula comes down to converting on the green. Putting also helps one score, and the last 10 winners have averaged 21 BoB scores the week they won. Even Viktor Hovland had 19 sub-scores when he beat Denny McCarthy in a playoff two years ago. They tied at seven under par! Jack’s putting surfaces can get a little wild at times, so much like Augusta National, you don’t have to be the greatest putter to win here. Just make the putts you should convert and two-putt the long ones.
- There are four primary strokes gained categories: OTT, ARG, Putt, and APP. I saved the best for last. Just like Muirfield and Augusta National, Nicklaus has designed a true iron players’ kingdom. Scheffler gained 13 strokes on approach last year and finished at 8 under par. The year before, Scottie gained 12 strokes on approach. You can REALLY separate at MVGC with your iron game. These are the guys we are searching for.
Confidence on contact from 500 yards, 150 yards, and 20 yards will be tested. A complementary player who can lead the field in proximity from 175-200 and scramble is our ideal candidate. The last five champions have gained 11 strokes on the field playing the par 4s, and they do a majority of their scoring damage on the par 5s. Bogey avoidance and birdie acumen, sounds like we are handicapping a major championship! Even if Scottie wins this tournament by 10, there will be a ton to ascertain from this competition. Picking the outright is always the goal, but developing a successful betting card means we also pick Harry Hall to finish top 10 at Colonial (+600), or Bryson to finish second at Quail Hollow (+700).
Muirfield Village Golf Club is part Augusta National and part TPC Scottsdale, and that’s what makes it an incredible venue. Long-term success is built on a careful game plan of making aggressive swings to conservative targets. Sounds easy, but it can be very tough not to fire at a specific pin from 165 yards with a nine iron. Just look at these par ranges where players differentiate.
- Par 3 – 175-200
- Par 4 – 450-500
- Par 5 – 500-550
Many of these men hit an eight iron from 180! I love this week because it truly does separate the men from the boys. With a venue like Oakmont approaching in two weeks, what better way to understand who is and who is not ready for our national championship?
Read The Line is the leading golf betting insights service led by 5-time award-winning PGA Professional Keith Stewart. Read The Line has 39 outright wins and covers the TGL, LPGA, and PGA TOUR, raising your golf betting acumen week after week. Subscribe to Read The Line’s weekly newsletter and follow us on social media: TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
