The Four Craftsmen are the golf betting favourites to win the US Open – which will be played June 15th-18th at Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin –; that is, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Jason Day. However, if the first major tournament of the PGA Tour is any indication, people who bet on golf should not take potential sleepers for granted.
Dustin Johnson
DJ is your current reigning and defending US Open champions, winning his first and thus far only major tournament by shooting a 69 final round finishing three strokes ahead of runner-ups Jim Furyk, Shane Lowry, and Scott Piercy. Johnson missed his second cut of the season at the Memorial Tournament, but if people who bet on golf can see patterns in random events, then that was just the calm before the storm. DJ finished 3rd at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and then won three starts in a row – the Genesis Open, the WGC – Mexico Championship, and the WGC – Dell Technologies Match Play – after missing the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open. Just sayin’.
Rory McIlroy
Wee Mac won the first of four majors at the 2011 US Open but missed the cut the following year, finished tied for 41st in 2013, T23 in 2014, and tied for 9th place in 2015, which would have been a nice progression back to the top had he not missed the cut again last year. We haven’t seen Rory since the Players Championship but he recently got married, so golf betting aficionados can expect him to have been honing his hole-in-one skills.
Jordan Spieth
Spieth won both the Masters and the Open in 2015, and finished T4 in the Open Championship and 2nd in the PGA championship. The next year he runner-upped the Masters but tied for 37th at the US Open, for 30th at the Open Championship, and for 13th at the PGA Championship. If 2016 was an off year for Spieth, then fans who bet on golf might expect 2017 to be a return to for. He placed T11 in this year’s Masters but has three top 3 finishes – including a win at the Farmers – and one top 10 finish.
Jason Day
Day is the one of the four who has yet to win the US Open where his best finish has been a solo 2nd in 2011. The Australian has been pretty much coasting on his reputation recently, resting on his laurels if you will. A win at Erin Hills could propel him back to relevance.
US Open golf betting sleepers
We have 2017 Masters Tournament winner Sergio Garcia who would not be the first to win his first two majors in the same year – or win the Masters and Open back-to-back for that matter. There is also Justin Rose, who won the 2013 edition. More recently, Rose was the runner-up to Garcia in the Masters. And a very long shot – Jim Furyk, who won it in 2003 and has six top 5 finishes at Erin Hills.