Golf
William Hill Golf tips: So far in 2024
With both the PGA Tour and DP World Tour taking a week off, we’re using this opportunity to look back at how our selections have performed so far this year.
The PGA is beginning to wind down with only some of its minor events still to play before the three-week Christmas break commences.
The race to Dubai is hotting up on the DP World Tour, with the Play-Offs for the Race to Dubai commencing next week with the Abu Dhabi Championship.
But before all that, we’re going to cast our eye over this year’s selections so far, as we seek inspiration for a successful end to the season.
Shaky start on the PGA Tour
We started off 2024 on the PGA Tour, but it’s fair to say the first part of the season wasn’t the most successful. Big outsiders took the reins in the early part of the season. The first four tournaments saw Chris Kirk land the Sentry (200/1), the late Grayson Murray winning the Sony Open in Hawaii (400/1), amateur Nick Dunlap winning the American Express (300/1), and Matthieu Pavon taking home the Farmers Insurance Open trophy.
Like many, we didn’t manage to land a successful selection, with our first coming at the Phoenix Open where we turned to the trusty Scottie Scheffler, although he could only finish T3 at odds of 9/2, not quite turning a profit.
The PGA Tour was far from kind to us, but the Majors came to the rescue and the Masters was our next port of call for a successful selection. With four picks for each Major our chances were always boosted, and one of ours was Xander Schauffele who finished T8 to return at 16/1. Chris Kirk almost came up trumps for us there, finishing T16 at huge odds of 150/1.
We followed that up the next week with a 16/1 selection in the form of Patrick Cantlay at the RBC Heritage, who finished T3 to return for the second week running. Sadly the winning selections did not snowball and we had to wait for the PGA Championship to see a return to winning ways.
Major successes stop the rot
With no luck on the PGA Tour, it was the PGA Championship and US Open that provided our next successes. Starting with the PGA, we ended up with two out of four successful picks. The first of which was Collin Morikawa who finished a valiant T4 at 28/1. The real success story for us at Valhalla was Shane Lowry, as he finished T6 to return each-way at 90/1, our most profitable up to that date.
The US Open followed in a similar vein and, although only one of our selections was successful, it happened to be our first champion of the year. Bryson DeChambeau, tipped at 18/1, pipped Rory McIlroy to the title in nail-biting fashion to land our first outright winner of the year.
Morikawa came close to returning again at The Open, finishing T16, but it wasn’t to be for us at Royal Troon, and the PGA Tour selections continued in a similar manner.
Finishing strong on the PGA Tour
As the PGA Tour begins to wind up towards the Tour Championship, it seems we started to finally find our feet as some big outsiders began to land and we found ourselves picking out a second winner of the season.
The lesser-known Patrick Fishburn, picked at 70/1, came good at the 3M Open as he emerged from the shadows to finish T7, which was just the second time in his career that he’d finished in the 8 places available with William Hill. Two weeks later it was Billy Horschel’s turn to return a profit, as he finished T7 at the Wyndham Championship at 25/1; but that isn’t the last we’ll hear of him…
Back-to-back returns were in order and, not only that, another winner was selected! The FedEx St. Jude Championship saw us take on the FedExCup Play-offs and Scottie Scheffler headfirst. Hideki Matsuyama was our man to break the American dominance, doing so at 25/1. That was the last of our successful selections on the PGA Tour as we turned our attentions elsewhere following the Tour Championship.
Dominating the DP World Tour
With the PGA Tour winding down we turned our attentions to the DP World Tour and the success we saw on our six-week stretch there left us scratching our heads as to why that hadn’t been our focus for the entire season.
We got off to the perfect start, taking on the Omega European Masters as our first DP World Tour venture of the season. Matthew Jordan was our Englishman of choice at 16/1 and, although he didn’t make it easy, he saw off Alfredo Garcia-Heredia to claim victory.
The Irish Open was unsuccessful, but the same could not be said a week later at the BMW PGA Championship. For us, the forecast at Wentworth did not simply concern the weather, as our selections finished as the top two on the leaderboard! There are worse situations to be in than having two of three players left in a play-off on Sunday afternoon, and our man Billy Horschel saw off Rory McIlroy and our other selection Thriston Lawrence, to win at 14/1 whilst Lawrence returned each-way at 35/1. That was no doubt the highlight of the season for us so far.
We finished our six-week DP World Tour stretch at the Open de France which also brought about our most recent successful selection, with Yannik Paul finishing an agonising T2, but still returning nicely at 40/1.
With a month and a half left until both Tours take a few weeks off, we’re hoping to add to our list of successful selections for the year, and keep our strong end to the season going.
