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 Austin Championship, which gets underway on Thursday.
The encore was a successful one. Can we now make it three weeks in a row?
Mexico was quite kind to us, hitting Andrew Novak at Vidanta Vallarta and Blades Brown last week in Los Cabos – but now we venture into parts unknown as the Tour heads back stateside to the Barton Creek Resort in Austin, Texas for the Austin Championship presented by Compliance Solutions.
The Canyons Course is a Tom Fazio design and a new one on Tour that we haven’t ever seen before. The golf course opened in 1999 and was redesigned by Fazio again in 2022 to get it ready for modern-day Tour standards. We know that it is a par 72 and it stretches to well over 7,400 yards. The course features a great deal of slope and elevation change from tee to green. The fairways are very wide and there isn’t really much rough to speak of. The property is wall-to-wall Bermudagrass and with it being mid-November, that Bermudagrass is getting awfully close to its winter dormancy, so thick, nasty, lush rough will not be the case — but there has been a lot of rain in the area, which we expect will make the track play long and soft.
Without having any tournament history, I am going to rely on some basics like Strokes Gained: Approach and Strokes Gained: Off the Tee. The majority of the Par 4s are around 450 yards or longer and three of the four Par 3s are over 200 yards, so I looked at Hole Proximity from 150 yards up to 200 yards plus. I am also leaning heavily on Scrambling and did take into account Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermudagrass).
The weather looks like it will be very pleasant in Austin with temperatures in the high 70s and very little wind, so I expect birdies too.
As far as correlated courses, these are simply educated guesses based on course layout, characteristics, and location. I used Vidanta Vallarta, where they just played the Mexico Open, and TPC Summerlin, the former home of the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas. I also used a couple of Texas tracks, TPC San Antonio (Valero Texas Open) and Memorial Park, where they play the Houston Open.
Brian Harman (33-1)
Harman was the first name that jumped off the page at me with his win last season at TPC San Antonio and his win back in 2017 at Eagle Point Golf Club in North Carolina. Eagle Point was used instead of Quail Hollow that season for the Wells Fargo Championship. It is a Fazio design and shares many of the same classic Fazio design elements as Barton Creek. Harman is a wonderful scrambler and putter and flourishes on a Bermudagrass surface. I’ll take a stab with one of the more accomplished, better players in this field, who also seems to make some sense at this golf course.
Zach Bauchou (40-1)
The young American has been playing solid golf this season and in Cabo San Lucas last week, he ranked ninth in that field for SG: Approach for the week, 14th in Driving Distance, and 18th in Scrambling. Bauchou recorded a top-10 finish a month ago at the Baycurrent Classic and also did earlier this season at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, also located in the Lone Star State. Over the last 20 rounds, he ranks 10th in this field for Birdie or Better Percentage and is eighth for Hole Proximity from 200+ yards.
Johnny Keefer (40-1)
Keefer missed the cut in both events in Mexico but was seventh and 10th just a few weeks prior in Asheville and at Black Desert in Utah. He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and evidently has an affinity for golf in the area with a third-place finish earlier this season at Memorial Park in Houston and a ninth-place finish at the Byron Nelson. Keefer is especially long off the tee, ranking 11th in this field for SG: Off the Tee over the last 20-rounds. He is 10th and 12th in this field for Hole Proximity from 175-200 yards and 200+ yards, respectively.
David Ford (42-1)
I tried the Tar Heel from UNC a few weeks ago and I’m going to ride that horse again here in Austin after he finished fifth last week at El Cardonal. Ford finished third five weeks ago in Utah and is No. 1 in this field for SG: Off the Tee over the last 20 rounds. He ranks fourth in Scrambling — and to top it off, he was a winner in Texas during his college years at Colonial Country Club.
Ben Kohles (45-1)
Kohles was born in Dallas and hasn’t missed a cut on Tour in five months. Over that span, he has made 12 starts and not once has he finished worse than 29th. Over the last 20 rounds, Kohles ranks 13th in this field for SG: Off the Tee, 10th for SG: Approach, sixth in Scrambling, and eighth in Birdie or Better Percentage. It might be time for BK to find the winner’s circle.
