The deepest field of the 2021-2022 PGA Tour season will tee it up in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines Golf Club in San Diego this week with a rare Wednesday start to accommodate CBS and their NFL coverage.
Other than that change and the cancellation of the tournament’s pro-am, circumstances surrounding the event will be back to normal, with no spectator restrictions and full corporate hospitality participation.
Six of the top 10 and 16 of the top 30 players in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) will be in attendance, including world number one Jon Rahm, who won the 2021 U.S. Open that was also held at Torrey Pines.
Fourth-ranked Dustin Johnson is making his first Tour start since the CJ CUP@SUMMIT in October, and sixth-ranked Justin Thomas is playing in just his fourth official event of 2021-2022 and his first full-field tournament in the 2022 calendar year.
Patrick Reed is the defending champion, outdistancing a quintet of players by five shots at 14 under par 274 over the North and South Courses at Torrey Pines. Reed opened with an eight under par 64 on the easier North Course and closed out the tournament by posting six under par 138 on the weekend to win his ninth career Tour event.
Both courses play to par 72, with the North at 7,258 yards with the South stretching to 7,765 yards, with both affording stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. The players alternate the first two rounds on both courses, with the South hosting all of the play on the weekend, which will be televised in prime time by CBS.
Betting Odds
Rahm is a big favorite with odds of +700 after finishing in the top ten in five of the past six tournaments held at Torrey Pines since 2017, including two victories. At +1200, Thomas is next in the odds following two consecutive top-five finishes on Tour and will be looking to add his 15th career victory following his 2021 win in The Players Championship.
Xander Schauffele, who was one of the runners-up in last year’s Farmers Insurance Open and then followed up with a tie for seventh in the U.S. Open, has odds of +1600 as the seventh player in the OWGR.
Following a competitive layoff of over three months, Johnson has odds of +1800, the same as Bryson DeChambeau and two-time 2021-2022 winner Hideki Matsuyama.
Underdog Picks
Tom Hoge came within two shots of Hudson Swafford at last week’s American Express, finishing as the runner up for his second top-four finish in his last three starts. He has a fifth-place finish in the 2020 Farmers Insurance Open, and at 10th place in the FedEx Cup standings, his +7000 odds are extremely attractive.
With odds of +5000, Ryan Palmer may be poised to end a 12-year individual event victory drought after finishing in the big group that was five shots behind Reed last year. It was his second runner-up performance in the Farmers Insurance Open in the past four years.
Lanto Griffin has three top-ten finishes in seven 2021-2022 starts and is coming off a third-place tie last week in the American Express. He has odds of +6600 to grab his second Tour win and follow up his seventh-place performance in last year’s Farmers Insurance Open with a victory at Torrey Pines.
