2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Updated Odds: Rory McIlroy Favored

2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Updated Odds

Find 2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Updated Odds and a course preview for PGA National below.
Odds via bet365.

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2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Updated Odds

The PGA Tour heads to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for the 2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches (formerly known as The Honda Classic) at PGA National (The Champion) as this marks the first tournament of the Florida Swing.

Chris Kirk, who won earlier this season at The Sentry, is the defending champion this week at the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches and opened at +3300 odds to win outright. His odds to win have drifted to +5000 as of Wednesday evening. Kirk won last year's Honda Classic in a playoff over Eric Cole, who went on to win rookie of the year honors last season. Kirk is looking to bounce back after a missed cut at The Genesis Invitational in his most recent start.

Rory McIlroy, who has a Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches win of his own from 2012, opened as the outright betting favorite at +750 at bet365, and he now sits at +800 as he remains the only golfer with odds at 20-1 or shorter. This will be McIlroy's first start at PGA National since 2018 as he has noted that he is making a deliberate effort to play more tournaments this season before the Masters Tournament in April.

McIlroy won last month in Dubai on the DP World Tour and has made two starts on Tour since then: a T66 in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and a T24 at The Genesis Invitational. McIlroy has a boom-or-bust history at PGA National as he finished either second or better (twice) or 59th or worse (five times) in all of his starts in Palm Beach Gardens between 2011 and 2018.

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PGA Tour rookie Jake Knapp is also in the field this week following his victory over the weekend at the Mexico Open at Vidanta. The UCLA product picked up his first career PGA Tour win in just his fifth start as a PGA Tour member and now makes his first start at PGA National at +8000 odds to win outright after opening at +5000.

Some other notables in the field this week and their outright odds include Cameron Young (+2400), Russell Henley (+2700), J.T. Poston (+3500), Sungjae Im (+3800) and Eric Cole (+3000).

2024 Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Course Preview

PGA National (The Champion) is a 7,147-yard par-71 designed by Tom and George Fazio in 1981 that features bermudagrass greens rolling at a 12 on the stimpmeter. Jack Nicklaus also helped with course renovations in 2002, 2014 and 2018.

The course features some of the bigger putting surfaces on Tour with an average green size of 7,000 square feet. While PGA National is one of the shorter courses on Tour, water is in play on 15 of the 18 holes, which is the most of any course on Tour and consistently has helped this play as one of the tougher courses annually.

Among course changes from last year, the 10th hole will now play as a par-5, and fairway lines were widened in May 2023 back to grassing lines from 2012-13. Overall, one acre of fairway grass has been added since last year.

Historically, over 61% of approach shots come from between 125 and 200 yards, so golfers will need to be strong on approach with their short and mid irons at PGA National.

Strokes Gained (SG): Approach and SG: Putting have been the most correlated metrics with SG: Total at the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches.

SG: Off the Tee and SG: Around the Green are less correlated with SG: Total at PGA National than at an average PGA Tour course. Additionally, both Driving Distance and Driving Accuracy have a decrease in their correlation with SG: Total, which is unusual on Tour.

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Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches Past Winners

McIlroy, Kirk, Sepp Straka, Sungjae Im, Keith Mitchell, Rickie Fowler, Padraig Harrington, Russell Henley, Camilo Villegas and Matt Kuchar are the past champions of the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches in the field this week.