Ben Coley's golf betting tips: The Sentry preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: The Sentry

2pts e.w. Jordan Spieth at 25/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1.5pts e.w. Brian Harman at 55/1 (Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Justin Rose at 90/1 (BetVictor, Betfred 1/4 1,2,3,4,5)

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I am generally not in favour of golf tournaments that are missing a bit of their name – think The AmEx, The Barclays, The Northern Trust – but will gladly make an exception for The Sentry, which once again kicks off not just a new year but a new season on the PGA Tour and does so free from its misleading title.

Formerly known as the Tournament of Champions, officials worked back-to-front by first inviting a collection of non-champions, then adjusting name of the thing to fit. And so was reborn The Sentry Tournament of Excellent Golfers Who Meet the Criteria, or The Sentry for short, and it once again takes place at Kapalua's spectacular Plantation Course in Hawaii.

Dramatically undulating and one of the most challenging walks players will face all year, the Plantation otherwise represents a gentle reintroduction to competitive golf. This is where Cam Smith shot a record 34-under par to win two years ago, and where Jon Rahm's 27-under total took the title after Collin Morikawa collapsed having held a seven-shot lead during the final round.

With wide fairways and big greens it is a shootout, plain and simple, and a fun way to shed the Christmas rust for those so inclined. Only wind can alter the dynamics and there's barely a breath of it in the forecast, so look for something like four rounds of 67 around this par 73 to be competitive – if the course is again receptive, that 24-under total may well be a few short of what's required to win.

Exactly what it takes to do that here is difficult to pin down. We've had some of the world's finest putters capture two of the last three renewals, but Dustin Johnson won twice having produced some astronomical numbers off the tee. A run of nine overseas champions gave people something to ponder around the turn of the previous decade, but then came 11 in a row for the home team. Undulating it may be, but Kapalua has been a level playing field.

There are though three things which we can combine to at least help clear things a little: you're probably going to have to putt well (the last three champions led the field, for what it's worth), you're probably going to have to be an elite golfer, and you're probably going to have played here before. Kapalua has always taken some knowing but such is the promise of Ludvig Aberg, we'd better avoid ruling anything out.

That experience angle isn't the only thing that ties Kapalua to Augusta National, where every year we're reminded that the last debut champion came in 1979. The courses also share in common the fact that a lot of approach shots are played from uneven lies, and neither places any real pressure on players off the tee, with distance an advantage but not a necessity.

Put all that together and you'll find a handful of the market principals fit the bill, but so does BRIAN HARMAN and the Open champion looks the best bet at 40/1 and upwards, with a couple of firms offering 66/1 to four places.

Harman's Masters record is admittedly poor on the whole but he did contend in 2020, when scoring was much lower than usual. As ever, in doing so he overcame a distance handicap in a renewal won in runaway fashion by Dustin Johnson, something that might've felt familiar to him given what happened here a couple of years earlier.

Playing Kapalua for the second time after closing with an eight-under 65 on debut, Harman was always giving vain pursuit to Johnson, who went on to win by a wide margin as Harman settled for third place. He's only been back once since, at this time last year, and while only slightly better than mid-pack it's worth noting he ranked seventh in strokes-gained tee-to-green but putted poorly.

Harman's putter is typically a strength, as we saw in devastating fashion as he produced a decent impersonation of Johnson when dominating the Open at Hoylake, and his short-game was excellent when last we saw him in December's Hero World Challenge following his rusty return to action at the RSM Classic before that.

Recent winners of this event either played the Hero or contended somewhere late into November or December, so I like the fact that Harman dusted off the clubs for two starts at the end of a career-best year following an extended post-Ryder Cup break. It should mean he's sharper than someone like Patrick Cantlay for instance, who hasn't played competitively since Rome.

A prime candidate to putt the lights out, if his volatile approach work is on a going week then Harman is a danger to all having finished just outside the places in elite company on his Albany debut just a month ago.

Harman doesn't strike me as the type to suffer a significant post-major lull – it's not like he's become an overnight star, after all – and a strong Sony Open record confirms he's generally ready to go after Christmas.

I would note that last year he turned up as a 40/1 chance in a field headed by eventual champion Jon Rahm, and having not won for approaching six years he felt a little short. Now a major champion and Ryder Cup player, in a field absent of Rahm and course specialist Justin Thomas, bigger odds this time look extremely generous.

Will favourite keep holing the putts?

Scottie Scheffler is plainly the man to beat after bossing the Hero and wouldn't be the first to land a limited-field double in the space of five weeks.

Thanks it seems to his link-up with putting doyen Phil Kenyon, Scheffler suddenly looked back to his old self on the greens when last we saw him and that's a scary proposition for everyone else given his sensational long-game numbers.

I've just two nagging doubts: one is whether he'll back that putting performance up, the other is that he's not hit the ball all that well in two previous starts here. Given that he's a shorter price in this stronger field, they're enough to let him go unbacked even if there's a strong possibility he takes another step forward at the course.

I find the front of the betting generally unappealing, with Collin Morikawa similarly vulnerable to an off-week with the putter and better suited to a more rigorous tee-to-green test, for all that he should've won this a year ago (when making nearly everything). Viktor Hovland has been no great shakes here so far, and Aberg is short enough despite his freakish talent.

With Cantlay perhaps underdone and the same concern applying to Xander Schauffele, Max Homa is the solid option. His record in this event is straightforwardly progressive (25-15-3), he's a frequent winner these days including on the DP World Tour late last year, and the way he played in the Ryder Cup suggests he's on the cusp of taking another step up in the coming months.

Spieth looks best of the rest

Homa is respected but tentative preference is for 2016 champion JORDAN SPIETH, who seems to be feeling much better about his troublesome wrist and might just be able to win this for a second time.

My nagging issue with Spieth 2.0, the version who returned to form in 2021 after a lean spell, is that he's not yet beaten the very best players in the world since doing so. A handful featured in both victories, latterly when he beat Cantlay in a play-off, but his last genuinely top-level win was the Open Championship in 2017.

However this isn't as strong as it might've been given what's happened in golf lately, the last two Kapalua champions now absent along with Johnson, and just as there was an opportunistic element to wins either side of the Masters in the Texas Open and RBC Heritage, he could catch a few of the top players cold at a course he loves.

It goes without saying that Spieth is a Masters champion and bonafide course specialist, so it makes sense that he's been so effective here. Indeed parallels are particularly strong where he is concerned, as his first two goes at both Augusta and the Plantation Course saw him finish runner-up and then return to go one better a year later.

Slow starts cost him here in 2017 and 2018 but there was promise in both, as there has been in two more recent visits, and all told he's been under-par in 23 of his 24 rounds. Width off the tee, an emphasis on controlling approaches from awkward lies and a need to get the putter hot on bermuda greens all suits Spieth down to the ground when he's at his best, so he really does have his conditions.

The fact that he struck his irons so well at Albany when last we saw him in action is a big plus, Spieth having ranked second only to JUSTIN ROSE in strokes-gained approach, and I rate him a more likely contender than all of those who join him in making up the second wave of the betting, among whom debut fifth Tom Kim is the other interesting option.

It's Rose though who completes the staking plan, preferred among those at bigger prices to Sahith Theegala and Cam Davis, and to Cam Young who probably gets left behind on the greens in a shootout like this.

All four made promising debuts but while Rose's came way back in 2011, it was seriously eye-catching as he climbed from last but one following an opening 75 to finish a solid 12th. An Augusta specialist having habitually contended there and lost a play-off in 2017, Rose certainly has the game for this challenge.

There's no doubt he's past his peak now but Rose was excellent at the Ryder Cup, having returned to the side thanks to several strong displays following his win at Pebble Beach in February. When he was firing during the summer, he was around the same price as Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton and Tommy Fleetwood for the RBC Canadian Open, which for a while he looked like winning.

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Much has happened since but Rose's game is probably in better health than odds of 66/1 and bigger imply. He had a couple of shockers with the putter after that leadership role he played in Rome, but had been on the fringes in a pair of FedEx Cup Playoff events before that, and then found something when eighth in the Hero, where he ranked first in approach play and, crucially, second in putting.

We can't take much from the Grant Thornton Invitational, the pairs event where he and Charley Hull didn't really feature after a strong start, but if Rose returns playing as he did in the Bahamas then he has to be a live each-way runner. The things he did well there are the things I expected the winner will have to do well here and while that's simplistic, his promising debut and Augusta record should merit shorter prices.

I wrote earlier that this will likely go to an elite player and stand by that view. How you define elite will vary from person to person but while none of this trio is threatening the very top of the world rankings, each is a major champion who featured in the Ryder Cup just three months ago.

They're among the most likely candidates to deny Scheffler, Hovland, and the rest of their teammates and opponents.

Posted at 1100 GMT on 02/01/24

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