Our staff of golf betting analysts has already made a pair of Sanderson Farms Championship picks for this weekend, so let's get right into their outright predictions.
2024 Sanderson Farms Championship Picks & Predictions
Matt Gannon: Michael Thorbjornsen (+12500, bet365)
Michael Thorbjornsen had a very solid start to his fall season out in Napa at the Procore Championship.
Through rounds 1-3, he gained around six strokes to the field and lost nearly all of it on Sunday. Looking at the result, it looks like a very middling performance, but Thorbjornsen was nails-up until the final day.
Obviously, that is not ideal and he will need to improve on that going forward. His talent and skill set suits this course tremendously.
Thorbjornsen is an elite driver of the golf ball and he is very aggressive doing so. From there, he is not afraid to make 5+ birdies in a round.
This is a great number on the rookie who has a very high ceiling. Look for Thorjornsen to keep the pedal down in Jackson.
Spencer Aguiar: Michael Thorbjornsen (+12500, bet365)
I always recommend shooting for the ceiling on an outright ticket since the safety concerns of a missed cut shouldn't be considered in an upside market.
Matt did a great job of touching on those points when talking about Michael Thorbjornsen, whom I also liked this week. If you have access to bet365, you can shop around and find that ticket as high as 125-1 for a golfer who has been a bit of an enigma early in his career.
When you dive into the data, you might find that the 23-year-old's metrics have been extremely boom-or-bust between starts. Heavy gains with the driver and irons quickly have been erased when the course isn't geared toward his game. That is something that we saw in an even more condensed situation at the Procore Championship to start the season after Thorbjornsen worked himself into the top 15 heading into Sunday before firing a six-over round to plummet down the leaderboard.
There is a real chance we will wake up on Thursday and see the young American near the bottom of the leaderboard. Still, if you tell me that this watered-down contest allows a minimal missed fairway penalty (the same answer we saw during his second place at the John Deere Classic), I will bite when it is accompanied by an increase in Expected Proximity.
I did find myself liking some of the names in that middle section of Mac Meissner, Chan Kim and Andrew Novak if you want a 40-60/1 option, although Thorbjornsen and Ryo Hisatsune were the two youth options that felt worth a dart-throw chance if we believe this contest is one of the weaker tournaments of the season for two golfers that have more unknown variables.
Tony Sartori: Eric Cole (+4000, BetRivers)
The Sanderson Farms Championship returns to the Country Club of Jackson, which has hosted this event annually since 2014. The Country Club is a par-72, 7,461-yard track that underwent a redesign by John Fought in 2008. There are two things to focus on at this venue.
First, 18.2% of approach shots come from the 150-175 range, which is the largest distribution of approach shots among any of the 25-yard groupings. Since it is relatively easy to score here, I will be looking at birdie or better percentages in that range.
Second, putting matters here. Last season, four of the top five finishers ranked in the top-seven among the field in strokes gained putting, the only metric in which such a trend occurred.
That brings me to Eric Cole, who has been one of the hottest putters among this field. Cole has gained true strokes putting in eight of his past nine tournaments, only missing one cut while adding three top-seven finishes across that stretch.
He also ranks 43rd on the PGA Tour in birdie or better percentage from the 150-175 range, which is one of the best marks against this relatively watered-down field.
