Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator, Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a host and regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sports betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow Brady on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the 2025 Hero World Challenge, which gets underway Thursday in the Bahamas. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both free-to-play and daily fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.
With the calendar flipping to December and winter temperatures setting in, who wouldn’t want to play in Tiger’s golf tournament in the Bahamas? Not a bad gig if you happen to be one of the lucky 20 players in this week’s event — the Hero World Challenge in Albany.
This is our final column for 2025. Next up is the Sony Open in mid-January as the 2026 PGA Tour season gets underway. Normally, we’d have our sights set on Kapalua in Maui but The Sentry has been canceled for 2026 due to drought conditions in the northwest Maui area. Interestingly, I played the Plantation Course at Kapalua this past summer and was warned about dry conditions. We received some of that typical afternoon mist in the days leading up to our reservation that is so often experienced in Hawaii and I hardly noticed any drought-like conditions. Fast-forward to late October and the announcement was made that the PGA Tour event that has kicked off the season since 1999 was not going to happen in 2026. A real bummer. Mother Nature has dealt Maui some tough hands in recent years.
On to the Caribbean/Atlantic Ocean, where the Tour has been hanging out for a few weeks now. Roughly a month ago, Adam Schenk won the Bermuda Championship and then back stateside Sami Valimaki won the RSM Classic before the Thanksgiving holiday. Now it’s a short trip to the Bahamas just off the tip of Florida before we take about a six-week break.
The Albany Resort is located on New Providence Island in the Bahamas about 20 minutes from Nassau. The championship golf course is a par 72 that stretches to just a tick over 7,300 yards. It is an Ernie Els design that opened in 2010 and has hosted this event since 2015. A two-time Open Championship winner, Els compares this course to an Open-like design. He says the bunkering reminds him of Australian sandbelt courses.
Here are the past winners of the Hero World Challenge:
2024 – Scottie Scheffler
2023 – Scottie Scheffler
2022 – Viktor Hovland
2021 – Viktor Hovland
2019 – Henrik Stenson
2018 – Jon Rahm
2017 – Rickie Fowler
2016 – Hideki Matsuyama
2015 – Bubba Watson
The golf course is relatively flat, a links-style with sand, water hazards and dunes bordering narrow-ish fairways. The greens are on the smaller side and the turf is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass. When looking at that list of past winners, Els’ reference to a British Open-type design makes sense with plenty of Open Championship success on that list. Total Driving and Ball Striking jump out at me as far as skill sets, and also WM Phoenix Open success comes to mind with multiple past champions having also hoisted the trophy here at Albany.
The layout of the golf course is unique with five par 5, five par 3s and eight par 4s. In addition to Total Driving and Ball Striking, I also looked at Par 5 Scoring, Strokes Gained: Approach, Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass), Scrambling and Hole Proximity from 175 to 200+ yards out.
As far as correlated courses, we have mentioned the connection in design to courses in the Open rota. Specifically, I looked at Royal Troon, Royal Liverpool and Royal Portrush. Here at home, I looked at TPC Scottsdale, where they play the aforementioned WM Phoenix Open, TPC Craig Ranch (Byron Nelson) and TPC Southwind (FedEx St. Jude).
It has been a solid 2025 here in this column. We’ve had a number of near misses and we’ve had a few wins as well. It began way back in January with Matsuyama at Kapalua. We also found the winner’s circle at Torrey Pines for both the Farmers Insurance Open and the Genesis Invitational. We landed correctly on Andrew Novak and Ben Griffin in New Orleans and wrapped up the season with Tommy Fleetwood at the Tour Championship. Most recently, we had Europe to win the Ryder Cup by 1-3 points. We have been on Scottie Scheffler correctly each of the last two years here at the Hero World Challenge. Let’s see if we — and he — can make it a Hat Trick.
Scottie Scheffler (+140)
It is really something to see this price and the next closest competitor be in the neighborhood of 12-1. Two years ago, I was on Scheffler at around 4-1. Last year it was at +225. My feeling is he really ought to be at less than even money, as crazy as that is to say. Over the last 24 rounds, for every stat I looked at this week, Scheffler is ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in this field — except for SG: Putting (Bermudagrass), where he is fifth. And by the way, he’s won at Royal Portrush, at TPC Craig Ranch and twice at TPC Scottsdale.
Hideki Matsuyama (+1800)
Matsuyama basically comes up in second position for me in everything I handicapped. He’s right there with Scheffler in Hole Proximity from 175 to 200+ yards out and he’s one of the best scramblers in the world. He won here back in 2016, won at TPC Southwind in 2024 and, like Scheffler, has also won twice in Phoenix. Matsuyama was 16th this past summer at Royal Portrush, 13th at Royal Liverpool in 2023 and 14th at Royal Birkdale in 2017, the latter the Open course Els specifically referenced when saying Albany reminded him of Open designs.
And finally, thank you to all the readers for another great year. Happy Holidays and we’ll see you at Waialae in January.
