Ben Coley has five selections at big prices for the Bank of Utah Championship, where Sam Ryder can threaten a long-awaited PGA Tour breakthrough.
Golf betting tips: Bank of Utah Championship
1pt e.w. Mac Meissner at 50/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Lee Hodges at 55/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Kevin Roy at 60/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Sam Ryder at 66/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Carson Young at 80/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook
When the Black Desert Resort hosted its first PGA Tour event last year, all the talk was of the golf course. Players were right to suggest that it would look fantastic on TV, the contrast between pristine fairways and the black lava rock they’re built upon offering something altogether different from the norm. And they were sort of right about the threat that lava rock would present for anyone who couldn’t find what are extremely wide fairways, with plenty of unplayable lies catching out the unfortunate.
Matt McCarty hit 75% of fairways in winning, which sounds good until you realise that saw him rank 65th of 69 in driving accuracy. The leader in that category managed 94.6%, which translates to hitting 53 of 56. Together, the field produced a fairways-hit percentage of almost 90, which places Black Desert out on its own: nowhere on the PGA Tour have fairways proven this easy to hit, albeit we only have one year of evidence.
I’d venture that while McCarty missed one in four, those misses were narrow, hence he was able still to gain strokes off the tee. In general he is an accurate driver and there were a few of those in the mix, underlining again that it’s not often the longer, wilder drivers who benefit from wide fairways, particularly at altitude where length comes easily enough to everyone. Under these conditions, straight does tend to be best, a fact we’ve also seen at El Caronal in Mexico.
Broadly speaking, powerhouses can best put that to use when everyone is missing fairways so while that club will be in use a lot, therefore offering an opportunity for such players to impose themselves, my feeling is that steadier players should be our focus for this desert shootout. McCarty is one – he ranks 30th in driving accuracy this season – and the presence of Lucas Glover, Kevin Streelman, Joe Highsmith, Harris English, Lee Hodges and Henrik Norlander in the top 10 could prove instructive.
I’m sure some will call this a putting contest, the default description when fairways are wide and scoring is low, but while I wouldn’t want to be chancing persistently poor putters, for me the formula is a solid player capable of giving themselves plenty of looks and capable of holing enough of them. That too is overly simplistic and the simple truth is that this is wide open on paper. Almost anyone can win.
You do of course have to be in it to win it and it’s a real shame that Tony Finau has again elected not to play. He’s the sole PGA Tour star from Utah and would’ve added plenty to this, even with his game in disarray. In his absence there’s a real lack of star power, with Ryder Cup vice captain Alex Noren the standout on recent form, Maverick McNealy the pick of the American challengers, and Michael Thorbjornsen offering star potential rather than power for now.
Thorbjornsen has struck the ball wonderfully well the last twice but has only putted well enough once, perhaps twice at most this year and I’d rather side with him when his prodigious driving gives him a pronounced advantage. Preference at the top of the market would be for McNealy, who has stacks of experience playing desert golf at altitude and can light up the greens, but to my eye this isn’t an event for betting in that sort of price range.
I’ll keep things reasonably speculative and begin with my favourite bet, SAM RYDER.
Ryder is a longstanding maiden so let’s not be too bullish about his chances of winning on PGA Tour start number 226, but I do think he’s a quietly impressive operator who has done really well to keep his head above water. He’s the sort who could easily have been left behind in today’s game and it’d be nice were he to be rewarded with silverware at some point.
Ryder’s issue is that he’s shorter than average and not especially accurate, making driver his weakest club, but his approach play and putting can both be very good and that means we have to target a specific set of courses. Anywhere demanding off the tee really ought not to fit and while there are always exceptions, such as a top-five finish at Torrey Pines when for a while he looked like winning, most of his best golf has come in this grade on courses where you don’t need to be elite with the big stick.
I think Black Desert applies and the strength of this field certainly does. It’s a bit better than the places we’ve generally seen him go close but the standout performance of his career to date probably came when third in the Shriners, which means Nevada altitude, desert golf, and a field which would actually have been better than this.
Also runner-up in a couple of opposite-field events and third in the John Deere Classic, we’re probably best focusing on low scoring as well as the aforementioned factors so it makes sense that Ryder played quite well here on debut, shooting 64-66 to lie sixth at halfway. He’d been playing poorly coming in and not only does that elevate his performance over those first 36 holes, but it probably explains why he stalled thereafter at a time when his putting was in crisis.
Not so now. Ryder ranks sixth for the season, second among this field, and while his approach play has dropped off he has found form with his irons again lately, gaining strokes in the Sanderson Farms and then ranking second in Japan. First and fourth after round one in these two events, he’s been showing flashes of promise and a return here might help him to see it through from 106th in the FedExFall standings, with the top 100 set to secure full status for next year.
Ryder is used to battling for his playing rights, something he alluded to recently in stating that it tends to bring out his best, and for a final hint he won at Indian Creek on the Korn Ferry Tour, just like McCarty. There might not be much in that but it’s somewhat at altitude (nothing like this, but enough to be a factor), scoring is low, and fairways are wide. It’s exactly the type of place Ryder is suited to and so is this.
CARSON YOUNG is quite similar, if a better driver overall, and he’s another for whom this really is his level. Yes, he’s upped his game for top-20s in a couple of Signature Events, but for now he’s just one step below that and I’d say three top-10 finishes across two courses in Mexico have as much to do with the grade than they do the courses.
As it happens, both of them are wide and second place at El Cardonal, where he’d been ninth previously, could be a strong clue. The fairways there are similarly wide and if you were to boil it down then you’re looking at a course where the second and third shots are key: approach play plus putting equals a potentially winning formula.
Like the winner of that event, Austin Eckroat, Young’s putting comes and goes but his iron play is much more reliable and right now, it’s red hot. He gained over 1.3 strokes per round in the Procore and was better again in the Sanderson Farms, where unfortunately he produced his worst driving numbers in three years and therefore couldn’t threaten the top of the leaderboard.
I’d expect that to prove an aberration at a course he just hasn’t got to grips with and better can be expected here at Black Desert, where he was strong in all departments on his way to 11th place last year. Throw in top-20s in the AmEx and the Barracuda and that’s a solid bank of desert and altitude form, while he has five more top-10s in lesser fields plus 13th at Myrtle Beach earlier this year.
The Roy line of succession
Like many, my instinct was to look for players with plenty of desert and altitude familiarity, a point Scottsdale resident McCarty referred to last year. The trouble is I couldn’t find an ideal candidate and while William Mouw could be the pick of the west coast players, I’m far from sure he wants a shootout. Yes, his putter has triggered this sharp upturn, but he’s a proper ball-striker whose win came on a much tougher course.
So while tempting to side with exciting profiles like his, I think the value lies in those who are less flashy and I’d certainly include KEVIN ROY in that, a player whose father Jim once played on the PGA Tour.
Born in New York and now living in Florida, Roy presumably didn’t grow up playing at altitude but he has plenty of eye-catching form when up in the thin air. That includes a record of six top-30s from six starts across Utah and Colorado, three top-10s at lower altitude in Kansas and some good form in Missouri, plus a standout second place behind McCarty in Boise.
Last year’s runner-up Stephan Jaeger is also a winner of that shootout as is 11th-placed Greyson Sigg, so there are some decent early indications that it’ll prove a good guide to this. In general, altitude form does stack up nicely and it seems a worthy place to go hunting form form clues.
Roy is also a rock-solid ball-striker who is well above-average in putting and after a solid 18th in the Sanderson Farms, he was up there early in Japan before gradually fading. Ultimately, there was enough in that performance to suggest he’s close to the levels we saw in summer and from a statistical standpoint, he’s a little underrated.
Roy’s ceiling might not be much higher than we’ve seen during 2025 but I suspect he’s a far better fit for this course than many would assume and with that altitude form in mind, he’s capable of contending.
Back up the betting, Thorbjorn Olesen has won a desert shootout on the DP World Tour and has five top-20s in his last seven, without his putter really firing. We know that it can and he might not have played in many more suitable PGA Tour events, so this looks a good opportunity to potentially go ahead and move inside the top 100.
He’s priced accordingly though as is Emiliano Grillo, whose putter is firing at present, but as with Sigg I wouldn’t bet on that continuing. The latter has always been a promising, tidy tee-to-green player and he’s stepped up markedly on the greens lately, without appearing like the type to gain a stroke or more per round and really contend at the business end of the tournament.
MAC MEISSNER on the other hand has been doing that lately and having been a good 14th when we sided with him in Jackson, he’s one I want to stick with under these very different conditions.
Meissner finished 25th here last year to showcase a fondness for the course, ranking third in strokes-gained approach and ninth from tee-to-green, only to putt poorly. That club remains up and down but he holed plenty when second at the Wyndham and has four positive returns from his last six starts, so there’s a bit of substance there now.
From tee-to-green, few in this field have been more solid lately. He’s now produced five strong displays in a row, only finishing outside the top 30 when he putted really poorly in the Procore, and he played some really nice golf over the final three rounds of the Baycurrent Classic in Japan last time out.
Meissner is another from the east coast but he’s been fourth and 10th at altitude in California and Utah respectively plus fifth at the aforementioned Indian Creek, where McCarty won, and above all else he’s a highly promising former Walker Cup player who is getting better all the time.
Inside the top 100 in the world and with his card all but safe for next year, Meissner’s second look at Black Desert could unearth plenty of improvement. If he putts well enough, I think he’ll be thereabouts.
It’s probably time to walk away from Ben Kohles, one of the very best iron players in the world right now but enduring a putting crisis. He did tempt me though for two reasons: one, he was second at halfway last year and that sort of thing gets missed; two, he was runner-up at the Nelson 18 months ago, a tournament played at a wide-open, easy golf course. There’s just been no sign of life on the greens as yet.
There’s always a risk that the putter costs LEE HODGES but he was a big eye-catcher in Japan and gets the final vote.
An impressive winner of the 3M Open little more than two years ago, it was here last October that he secured his first top-10 finish since that victory, a wait of more than 12 months.
That in itself is encouraging, as is the way he struck the ball to rank fifth from tee-to-green, and this accurate driver has started to sharpen up his short-game lately, enough to believe everything could fall together.
His approach play might look to have dropped a level on the face of it and that’s where he’s typically at his strongest, but it was round one in Japan, playing in bad weather, that undermined some very nice work over the closing 54 holes, where he was back hitting it nicely.
With the putter firing there to make it three positive performances in four, Hodges is a player I can see contending soon and while I may not have assumed this would be ideal, his performance and those of Lucas Glover and Kevin Streelman last year suggests it just could be.
Hodges won a big college title in the Arizona desert, too, and he’s a very good player in this kind of company, one with a job to do from 109th in FedEx Cup points. One way or another I expect him to, hopefully in one go this week.
Posted at 1350 BST on 21/10/25
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