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Horse Racing Grant Thornton Invitational Tip: 10.00 Pick For This Weekend’s Action
Grant Thornton Invitational Tip: Friday, December 8th
Tiburon Golf Club hosts the Grant Thornton Invitational. We have analysed the betting markets to bring you our best Grant Thornton Invitational tip.
Odds via bet365 as at 22.55 December 4th 2023. Odds may now differ.
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Grant Thornton Invitational Overview
Friday, 8th December, 14:00 (UK)
The final event of the year on the PGA Tour gives us one of the most interesting from a betting perspective. The inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational features sixteen mixed pairings, giving us the chance to watch some of the world’s best women compete with some of the world’s best men.
Tiburon is a Greg Norman design, playing as a par 72 for both the men and women. To negate the difference in distance between the players, the women’s course will measure 6,595 yards, with the men playing to a yardage of 7,382.
Teams will play a scramble format on day one, with the best shot taken on each hole until the ball is holed. Day two will be alternate shot foursomes, with day three being a modified four ball format. Interestingly, that modified format will see players drive and then switch balls after their tee shot (the male player will hit his second shot from where his female partner hit her drive and vice versa).
A large number of the 32 players teeing it up this week will have played Tiburon before. The course hosts the CME Group Tour Championship on the LPGA Tour and previously hosted the QBE Shootout (formerly the Shark Shootout). That was the precursor to this event, albeit with two men rather than a mixed pairing. As a result of the change this year, Tom Hoge and Sahith Theegala don’t get the opportunity to defend last year’s title and instead find themselves competing against each other with their new partners.
Grant Thornton Invitational Tip
Tony Finau and Nelly Korda head up the betting at 6.50. The pair have the best combined world ranking and rightly deserve to go off as favourites.
The two strongest golfers don’t always come out on top in these events, a fact that is emphasised by looking at past winners of the QBE Shootout. Harris English, Matt Kuchar, Sean O’Hair and Kenny Perry have all won this event at least twice since the turn of the century, all of whom can get hot with the putter.
The putter may well prove to be the undoing of the favourites though. Finau is 125th for SG: Putting in 2023 and lost strokes on the greens at the Hero World Challenge last week. Add in the fact that Finau and Korda haven’t played in this format together before and I’m prepared to move past them.
If a hot putter is the name of the game, Denny McCarthy has to be under consideration with his partner Megan Khang. McCarthy has ranked inside the top three for SG: Putting in four of the past five seasons on the PGA Tour and is generally considered to be the best putter on Tour. That putting prowess was on full show at the QBE Shootout last year, when he paired up with Nelly Korda to finish 5th. One of only two mixed pairings, the performance was impressive and I probably would have sided with McCarthy had he been paired with Korda once again. However, his pairing with Megan Zhang is an unknown quantity at this stage and I prefer another team at a similar price point.
Justin Rose and Charley Hull tick almost every box for me and they look the team to beat on paper. The pair were teammates at the 2016 Olympics in Rio and Rose has been a significant contributor to the women’s game in the UK, setting up the Rose Series in 2020, a run of events which Charley Hull topped that year. The pair have presumably spent a significant amount of time together and are expected to be comfortable playing with each other.
Rose finished 8th last week in the Bahamas at the Hero World Challenge. His scoring improved every day and it shouldn’t go unnoticed that he signed off with a Sunday 66, the third best score of the day. Only three players on the PGA Tour gained more strokes on the greens in 2023 than the Englishman and he can certainly hole his share of putts, a fact underlined at this year’s Ryder Cup.
Rose isn’t the only one in this pairing with a deft touch on the greens. Hull ranks second in this field for Putting Average on the LPGA Tour. A course winner here in 2016 and runner up in 2019, Hull certainly likes the test presented by Tiburon. The 27 year old will benefit from Rose’s experience and this looks to be a pairing that makes a run for the title.
Back the English pairing of Rose and Hull at odds of 10.00 with bet365.
Odds via bet365 as at 11.55 November 28th 2023. Odds may now differ.
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