Golf
Sony Open in Hawaii preview: Lee and Mitchell fancied to go well at Waialae
The first full field event of the season takes place this week as the PGA Tour hops from Maui to Honolulu and the Waialae Country Club for the Sony Open.
This week’s test is very different to the one the players faced last week with much narrower fairways and certainly fewer birdie opportunities. That’s not to say this isn’t a tournament where birdies aren’t required, though, and while we won’t see the near 30-under par we saw last week, we can still expect the winning score to be north of 20-under.
Count on K.H.
While trends are never a definite when it comes to betting on golf, they are certainly a useful tool for narrowing down the field and the one trend that sticks out this week is the record of players who took part in last week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. Six players since the turn of the century have won at both the Plantation Course and Waialae and if you delve even deeper, the results show that in fact eight of the last 10 Sony winners played at the earlier Tournament of Champions. So, in essence, particularly recently, a competitive run-out last week seems to make a massive difference ahead of this tournament.
Korean K.H. Lee hit a final round 67 to finish tied-seventh for his first top-10 of 2023, declaring himself “very happy” with his performance. Most notably, the 31-year-old finished fourth for strokes gained in his putting, which will serve as a key skill on these greens at Waialae.
The Korean certainly possesses the form and the technique to flourish here, and can be backed at 33/1 each way to succeed in Waialae and record his third win on the PGA Tour.
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Get your teeth into Keith
Keith Mitchell it yet to feature on Tour this year but is a big fan of the Waialae course, finishing T7 in this tournament last year after previous finishes of T14 and T16, showcasing his notable improvement as a player over the past three years. After impressing consistently throughout 2022, he now finds himself ranked 57 in the world.
Mitchell will climb into the world top 50 with a win this week, which would be his second success on Tour, having won the Honda Classic on similar Florida greens in 2019. The Tennessee-born player will be keen to guarantee himself a spot in April’s Masters, so a strong performance here could be in the offing. He has shown in the past that he isn’t scared to go low and make a lot of birdies, something that will be crucial here, so his price of 35/1 may look very appealing come Sunday.
