Texas Children’s Houston Open betting guide: 6 picks our gambling expert loves

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 2026 Texas Children’s Houston Open, which gets underway Thursday.

We wrapped up the Florida Swing with our first outright winner of the season in Matt Fitzpatrick. Let’s see if we can continue the winning ways for the next two weeks deep in the heart of Texas — and then of course, in Augusta, Ga., as the first major championship of the year looms ever closer.

On to the Lone Star State it is for the Texas Children’s Houston Open and Memorial Park Golf Course for the first of two final tuneups before the Masters. Min Woo Lee is your defending champion here in Houston and World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who has finished runner-up here three times, was scheduled to play in this event for a seventh straight time. As of Tuesday morning however, Scheffler withdrew, citing family reasons. He did not commit to this tournament until the last minute last Friday and then ended up pulling out as it has become understood that the Schefflers are expecting their second child. It remains to be seen if Scheffler will play next week at the Valero Texas Open or if we won’t see him again until Masters week, which begins on Monday, April 6th.

It changes the landscape of the odds board greatly where Scheffler was once a prohibitive favorite at around +300 to now being a non-starter. It is unfortunate that we don’t get to see Scheffler play this week and secondly, the prices dropping on everyone else that is still scheduled to play. The good news is that in theory, Scheffler’s absence gives our selections a much better chance of winning. We’ll see.

Memorial Park is a very long course at nearly 7,500 yards and is only a par 70. The fairways are very wide by Tour standards and the rough is very low and not very penal. The greens are large and feature a great deal of undulation. It is a bomber’s track and that is who we have seen win here since moving to this golf course six seasons ago. Tom Doak redesigned the course with Brooks Koepka serving as Player Consultant. Koepka missed the cut here in 2021 but finished fifth in 2020. He is in the field this week after consecutive finishes in Florida of 9-13-18.

Scoring around Memorial Park can be especially difficult. Last year was greatly affected by rain and soft conditions when Lee got it to 20 under par. In the previous four editions, the winning score on average was less than 13 under. The winning score proposition bet at Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook this week is Under/Over 264.5, meaning 15.5 under par.

I looked at Driving Distance this week, Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, the 450-500 yard Par 4s, Hole Proximity from 200+ yards, Scrambling, Bogey Avoidance, and Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass). One may find references to these greens being overseeded with Poa Trivialis but with the unseasonably warm temperatures going on in the Southwest, this once dormant Bermuda is waking up ahead of schedule and should figure more prominently into the turf equation this week in Houston.

We have noted that this is a long, driver-heavy golf course and with that, I went in that direction as far as the correlated courses. I used Torrey Pines (Farmers Insurance Open), Quail Hollow Club (Truist Championship), Country Club of Jackson (Sanderson Farms), and Vidanta Vallarta (Mexico Open).

With the Scheffler WD, I am going to use current pricing with my selections rather than what I got when making my plays.

Jake Knapp (20-1)

It was a missed cut at the Players Championship the last time we saw Knapp but prior to that, he had begun the season finishing 11-5-8-8-6, and now he comes to a golf course that I believe really suits his game — long off the tee and requiring great touch on and around the greens. He was a lackluster 27th here last year but has two top-5 finishes at Torrey Pines and a win in 2024 at Vidanta Vallarta. Knapp ranks eighth on Tour in Driving Distance, 65th in SG: Approach, second in SG: Putting, and fourth in Scrambling. I imagine he will be a popular choice this week but I can’t ignore what we are all seeing and how he should fit at this course in Houston.

Nicolai Hojgaard (25-1)

Similar to Knapp, Hojgaard is one of the longer hitters in the game and is having a great start to the season with the putter. He was runner-up at Torrey Pines in 2024 and was eighth last year in Mexico. In addition to the driving and putting, Hojgaard ranks 10th on Tour in Scrambling, 28th in Hole Proximity from 200+ yards, and is 18th in Bogey Avoidance.

Rickie Fowler (30-1)

We tried Fowler a few weeks ago at TPC Sawgrass where he finished 42nd. He is still yet to miss a cut all season and now ranks 61st in the OWGR. This will be the last event for which he can get into the top 50 to qualify for The Masters. Fowler has multiple top-10 finishes at Torrey Pines, was 16th last year at the Sanderson Farms Championship, and has been huge at Quail Hollow Club with multiple top 10s and a win in 2012. Fowler ranks 18th this season on Tour in Ball Striking, is ninth in SG: Putting, 17th in Scrambling, ninth in Bogey Avoidance, and is fourth in Par 4 Scoring.

Ryan Gerard (33-1)

Gerard got off to a start in 2026 that saw him finish runner-up in two consecutive weeks. The spotlight grew quickly and awfully bright as his success was hard to miss. Things have cooled off for a minute on Gerard now and it feels like it might be the right time to swoop back in. After those two second-place finishes, he took 11th at Torrey Pines, where he was 15th last year. He’s been as high as 17th in Mexico, was eighth at last year’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, and finished ninth here in Houston last season in his first-ever visit. Gerard ranks 15th on Tour in Ball Striking and sixth in SG: Approach.

Jordan Smith (65-1)

The Englishman is now full-time on the PGA Tour after having many years of success on the DP World Tour. He has only missed one cut in seven starts this season, finishing 16th in Phoenix last month and third at the Valspar last week. In that field, on a very demanding golf course, Smith ranked fourth for SG: Off the Tee, 13th on approach, 12th in Driving Distance, and was No. 1 for Greens in Regulation. He ranks second on Tour in Ball Striking behind only Collin Morikawa.

Patrick Rodgers (80-1)

A Tour journeyman and Stanford Cardinal still seeking his first Tour victory, Rodgers has always been the big hitter off the tee who can putt, and we’ve seen that play out to the tune of a runner-up finish at Quail Hollow in 2015, two top-20 finishes at the Country Club of Jackson, a sixth and two 10th-place finishes at Vidanta Vallarta and four top-10 finishes at Torrey Pines. About all that is missing is indeed that first win. Rodgers is yet to miss a cut in nine starts this season. He was 16th here in Houston last year.