The American Express 2024: Odds, Field, and Best Bets

THE AMERICAN EXPRESS 2023: ODDS, FIELD, AND BEST BETS – The PGA Tour is back on the mainland after spending a fortnight in Hawaii to open the 2024 season.

As per usual in La Quinta, the players will be playing multiple courses. They’ll tee it up twice at the Pete Dye Stadium Course, and play a round apiece at PGA West and LaQuinta Country Club. The cut will be after 54-holes when all the players have played a round at each course in the rotation. 

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There isn’t anything tricky about these courses, they’re all under 7,200 yards and play to par-72. The Poa annua greens should be immaculate and scoring conditions should be excellent. This tournament is always a birdie-fest, and it’s a certainty that it will be again. 

It’s a loaded field with many of the California guys like Cantlay and Xander in the field along with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.

Here are three picks I’m rolling with this week.

Favorites

Min Woo Lee (+2500)

His ascendance has been pretty damn rapid into golf’s elite. He had a great season last year with multiple top-10s in majors. Then he went out and won twice internationally in the fall/winter and notched two more top-5s.

He’s pretty good at basically everything. If there’s a weakness, it could be accuracy off the tee or a relatively average iron game. He’s so good at everything else though that it doesn’t matter. He’s going to pop up and win a Tour event soon. The more shocking thing, at this point, is that it hasn’t happened yet. 

Midtier

Wyndham Clark (+4000)

The reigning US Open champion hasn’t played great since the Tour Championship, but it’s been a strange mix of international events and silly season type stuff. I’m willing to bet he starts to find his game now that the Tour has moved into the West Coast Swing portion of the schedule. 

The basic criteria I’m using for this tournament is guys who are solid off the tee and can make a lot of putts. Wyndham fits both criteria. 

I wouldn’t talk anyone out of some other midtier guys like Beau Hossler or Taylor Montgomery if they wanted to add them to their betting card. I’ll likely have one or both on my card. 

Longshot

Harry Hall (+30000)

Two triple-digit winners have cashed to start the season after Chris Kirk and Grayson Murray took home titles in Hawaii. Why not three in a row?

This is mostly a hit-and-hope type of deal. He’s an elite putter, ranking 6th in SG: Putting last season. And he’s capable of moving it decently off the tee. He isn’t a very good iron player and his short game isn’t great either. 

This feels like a sneaky play just because his irons were relatively solid last week and the putter let him down a little. If those two things can line up, he can definitely roll in enough birdies to be around on the weekend.