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This week’s tournament is a curve ball five years in the making.
Delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Olympics have finally taken center stage in Tokyo. Included among the Summer Games is the second iteration of golf in more than a century, as the sport looks to build upon its 2016 return which saw Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson and Matt Kuchar earn medals in Rio.
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None of the three qualified for the 60-man field this time around, and major winners Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau were both barred from playing because of recent COVID-19 test results. But the field still includes the likes of Open champ Collin Morikawa, four-time major winner Rory McIlroy and Masters champ Hideki Matsuyama, who will look to add a gold medal to his green jacket on a course where he won the Asia-Pacific Amateur back in 2010.
With most countries capped at two players per nation, the tournament is sure to take on an international flair. And that’s where I’m looking with my selections, starting with a Norwegian by way of Stillwater who may earn the biggest win of his career in Japan:
To Win (odds via PointsBet Sportsbook)
Viktor Hovland (+1200): Morikawa deserves to be the betting favorite, two weeks removed from a clinical iron display at Royal St. George’s, but Hovland isn’t far behind him on the stat line. Already a winner twice in his young PGA Tour career, he bounced back from a scratched cornea a the U.S. Open to win the European Tour’s BMW International Open in his very next start. A T-12 result at The Open showed that his game remains in very good shape.
Over the last 50 rounds played it’s only Morikawa ahead of Hovland in terms of total strokes gained, and the Norwegian ranks among the top five this week in SG: Off the Tee, Tee to Green and Ball-Striking. His relative weak spot, around the greens, could be mitigated by approach play that has been trending in a positive direction in recent starts. Hovland is one of the players who has stated an overt enthusiasm to play in the Olympics, hoping to add a summer medal to a nation that packs away plenty of hardware during the winter sports. The odds seem a bit tilted toward the American contingent, which means a little extra value on a player who can absolutely go toe-to-toe with the likes of Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele.
Tommy Fleetwood (+3300): There’s a lot of buzz around Mexico’s Abraham Ancer (+2000) this week as a player who might strike gold despite going years without a PGA Tour win. I gave him strong consideration, but instead opted for a more proven player (at a higher price) who is equally winless in the U.S.
Fleetwood hasn’t been as good this year as he was in 2018-19, when he finished second at both the U.S. Open and The Open. But he knows what it takes to win on a big stage, having lifted some of Europe’s biggest trophies and more than handled things at the 2018 Ryder Cup. Fleetwood has displayed unabashed enthusiasm about this week’s event, as both he and fellow Brit Paul Casey (+1400) seem genuinely excited to be in Tokyo. It’s a minor factor but one to consider, as players descend upon Japan with various levels of emotional investment.
Fleetwood’s Achilles’ heel this year has been off the tee, but if the driver cooperates his iron game is more than good enough to contend. His recent work hasn’t received much fan fare, but the results - three straight weeks of T-33 or better across the marquee European links events - have actually been pretty solid.
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Mito Pereira (+10000): Hardly an Olympic juggernaut, Chile boasts two legitimate chances to medal here in Pereira and Joaquin Neimann. I’m going to side with the bigger price, as Pereira is going off as a triple-digit longshot despite a torrid summer that has seen him earn a three-win promotion onto the PGA Tour. He was the first Korn Ferry player to earn such a bump during this marathon season, and he has already found quick success: a T-5 finish at the Barbasol, followed by a T-6 finish last week at the 3M Open.
Pereira is assured of playing status on the main circuit in 2022, and this week he’s not thinking about points or status. Instead he’ll focus on bringing a medal back to Chile, coming off a three-start stretch where his tee-to-green work has been at an elite level (and a trip to Minnesota where his putter finally surfaced). In a 60-man field where potentially half of the participants stand little chance at making the podium, Pereira is very much a live play - assuming he has sorted out the Minnesota-to-Japan jetlag by now.
Top Finishes (odds via PointsBet)
Corey Conners (+1000 to win any medal): Conners is one of the best ball-strikers in the world, and getting his short game and putting up to Tour average has been enough for him to flourish over the last several months. The Canadian raced through a torrid spring, including a third-place showing at Bay Hill and a T-8 finish at the Masters, and after a couple of lean weeks he bounced back in England with a T-15 result at The Open. Conners had drifted as low as +2500 to win gold, but I still like this number on what amounts to a top-3 market. He should be able to create plenty of birdie opportunities at Kasumigaseki, and if he’s able to roll in a few he’ll likely be in medal contention coming down the stretch.
Rory Sabbatini (+250 top-20 finish): In a 60-man field we’re talking about getting into the top third, which seems like a bar that Sabbatini can clear given he changed citizenship to earn a spot in these Games. Born in South Africa, Sabbatini now plays under the Slovakian flag thanks to a rather lengthy process that has included a few trips to Bratislava. Sabbatini has missed each of his last four cuts on the PGA Tour, but his scoring average over his last five rounds is actually below 70. He won’t have a cut line to worry about, and playing for the pride of his adopted homeland should be plenty of motivation this week in an event in which it has clearly been a priority for him to participate.
Fabrizio Zanotti (+500 top-20 finish): Hailing from Paraguay, Zanotti is one of a handful of players who also teed it up in the 2016 Rio Olympics. There he finished a respectable T-15, and as a result he’s familiar with both the format and cadence of how this week will go. Zanotti plays primarily on the European Tour but he did finish T-22 in Punta Cana in his lone PGA Tour start this fall. Overall he has made nine of 11 worldwide cuts this year, topping out with top-15 finishes in Abu Dhabi and Qatar. That sort of result should be within reach this week for a player whose deft short game outpaces his name recognition.
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