Course specialists Maverick McNealy and Tony Finau both feature in Ben Coley's preview of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.
Golf betting tips: Farmers Insurance Open
2.5pts e.w. Patrick Cantlay at 28/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Maverick McNealy at 30/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1.5pts e.w. Sam Stevens at 45/1 (bet365, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Tony Finau at 150/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Austin Smotherman at 225/1 (Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
Brooks Koepka's return will take all the headlines at the Farmers Insurance Open, with ESPN set to broadcast the 'Live' feed on their first foray into PGA Tour golf for 20 years. Koepka, who was given a loophole through which to return from LIV Golf, has taken a financial hit which falls well short of the remuneration he received in exile and is back where he feels he belongs, competing for titles with genuine history and prestige.
Of course, at his major-winning peak the narrative was all about how little Koepka cared for ordinary events such as this one. He has just three PGA Tour titles on his CV – the Phoenix Open twice, plus the limited-field CJ Cup – and perhaps nothing sums up this clear distinction between what matters to him and what doesn't than his record here at Torrey Pines. Koepka has played the Farmers Insurance Open four times with no reward. He's played the US Open here once and nearly won the thing.
Perhaps his priorities will change now that he's got a membership to win over, but for the time being expectations ought to be low. The PGA Tour had little choice but to thrust Koepka back into the spotlight alongside two former course winners, Ludvig Aberg and Max Homa, but it's almost four months since he teed it up competitively. Those latest starts did include signs of promise, in France in particular, but this is a totally different ball game at an unforgiving golf course.
Aberg is towards the top of the market and for him the question is one of health, having withdrawn after two rounds of the AmEx despite being well enough placed. Backers at 20/1 are hoping lightning strikes twice, because it was here that he won the re-routed Genesis Invitational following an illness-inflicted withdrawal about a year ago, but they're taking on trust his condition at what would've looked a nice price. Despite believing he'll achieve very big things this year, I can't bring myself to do it.
Both players are made for this challenge, that's for sure. Torrey Pines' South Course remains the longest on the PGA Tour and among its most demanding; its fairways so hard to hit, its roughly reliably thick, its greens small. Good weather will help – sweet relief for those brutalised by high winds during round two last year – but this is a serious test, only partly offset by the 18 holes everyone will get at the much easier North Course.
For those assessing last year's renewal, won by Harris English, that weather and the effect it had is worth remembering. As is so often the way, the easier course became the harder one when the wind came, benefiting English and most of the eventual contenders. Maybe it also helps to explain why someone with such a brilliant short-game emerged on top at a course which, historically, has been more about what you do before that.
On which, long driving is a big weapon to combat the pure yardage, but strong driving might be a better way to describe what's needed. Beyond that, quality iron players like English, often those who can hit the ball as high as Justin Rose and Jason Day can, have thrived. The South is what you might hear announcers call 'a big boy course' and while the AmEx isn't the putting competition Jon Rahm once labelled it, comparing his two wins there with his two wins here is to compare chalk with cheese.
That's not to say the AmEx won't provide some clues and there were some blindingly obvious ones on Sunday, as several Torrey Pines specialists finished the tournament with a wet sail. Among them, note that another two-time Farmers champion, Day, said he still felt he had plenty of work to do with his mid-irons, his short-game having been key to manhandling the Stadium Course. Those mid-irons will certainly be needed here: we've gone from approaches shy of 150 yards to a load of them outside 200.
First into bat for me is PATRICK CANTLAY, who is the same price as last week despite two massive positives: he's now played golf for the first time since the Ryder Cup and, even more significantly, Scheffler is not here.
That to some degree reflects what's a good record in the AmEx and a less obviously good one here, but his first three appearances came in 2013, 2018 and 2019, the former as an amateur and the last two at a time when he had just one PGA Tour win to his name.
Now up to eight, there's still no doubt Cantlay hasn't collected quite the number of titles many of us hoped he would but what we do know is that he's played much better golf at Torrey Pines since finishing 15th in the US Open almost five years ago. One subsequent start in this event yielded a 65 at the North to show what he can do there, then in Aberg's Genesis, held only at the South, he produced a rounded display to be fifth.
Born about an hour and a half away from La Jolla, Cantlay has a first, a second, two thirds, two fourths and two fifths from his last 20 starts in California, and I felt he prepared really nicely last week. No, it wasn't the title challenge we've become accustomed to in the AmEx, but unlike previous years he hadn't been able to prime himself in Hawaii beforehand.
That was a big disadvantage given that he hadn't played since the Ryder Cup – Scheffler had at least contended for the Hero in December, though I felt he too might be more vulnerable than usual – and Cantlay can immediately show the benefits of proper preparation, which now gives him an edge over both Xander Schauffele and Cameron Young at the front of this market.
It's only Cantlay's putter that needs a significant step forward on last week and on that there are two causes for optimism. After a tough run last year he started to hole more than his share on his final few starts, and his best performance of the campaign came here in the Genesis. We'll have to hope he's once again reignited by something familiar, with these greens very different from those of the AmEx and probably more suitable.
Both Schauffele and Young are of course dangerous if they can pick up where they left off, Schauffele having dominated in Japan and Young producing Ryder Cup heroics during a golden autumn, but Cantlay is fancied to be that bit sharper. He can kickstart a big year in his career with a second win in his home state.
Being from California or having spent considerable time on the west coast has to be an advantage, one seen not only through Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, but the likes of Luke List, Nick Watney, and Scott Simpson, who also won the US Open in LA.
However along with fundamentally having the right game for this test, the best pointer down the years has been course form. That's a bit tricky because in general I tend to think it's overvalued, yet the evidence here is unequivocal. In 30 years, we've had two debut winners and just one, Scott Stallings, who had no course form. Everyone else had it, with all bar Jose Maria Olazabal (13th, just one prior start) owning a top-10 finish.
Unfortunately that doesn't rule out many viable candidates bar Young, although it's enough to dissuade me from giving the benefit of the doubt to two of the most promising young players on the circuit, Pierceson Coody and Michael Thorbjornsen. The former is playing so well that it might not stop him and the latter is a Stanford-educated stud with a long-game to die for, but for now we'll take that lack of course form as significant.
Instead, SAM STEVENS can gain deserved compensation for last year's runner-up finish.
Stevens had played from the wrong side of the draw, a disadvantage which equated to a couple of shots, yet still teed off on the 72nd hole with a chance to win. He came up short in the end, making a good par after his approach had found water, but it was a mighty effort in the circumstances.
Unfortunately he didn't kick on and the chief reason for that was poor iron play. In fact, in 28 subsequent starts, only eight times was Stevens above average in strokes-gained approach, and half of those instances were in Signature Events featuring the best players in the world. That leaves four opportunities in comparable tournaments and from those he was second, third, seventh, and 21st.
This is a good demonstration of what this formerly high-class amateur is capable of if he can just find the necessary improvements to the area of the game which most strongly correlates with long-term success. And there are signs he's doing just that. The seventh place mentioned above came on his final start of 2025 and he's since gained strokes in both starts so far in 2026, finishing 31st after a break and then sixth last week.
Stevens was strong through the bag in the AmEx, his driver going up a notch and the putter coming good, so this is an ideal time to be returning to the scene of his best PGA Tour performance to date, plus a previous share of 13th back in 2023. In fact he's shown encouraging signs on all four starts at Torrey Pines, but never more so than when first in strokes-gained tee-to-green despite that draw bias a year ago.
Winning your first PGA Tour title here isn't easy but Rahm, List and Pavon have all done it in recent years and Stevens, a strong driver who can light up the greens on his day, may well have just found the missing piece of the puzzle.
There are plenty of appealing candidates from the middle section of the market including Max Homa, but he was the same price for the low-grade Sanderson Farms in October and 100/1 last week. I think he's about right in the betting now having made a few too many mistakes for comfort in the AmEx, where he got off to a good start but was unable to put himself in the tournament at any stage.
Jake Knapp began the year with 11th in the Sony and returns now to a course he adores, the latter key to siding with him at 250/1 last year. At just 40/1 now and with all of his good form subsequently having come in weaker fields, not to mention ongoing concerns as to his iron play, he too has to go unbacked. Nobody would begrudge him victory, mind you, given what has happened off the course.
Hideki Matsuyama continues to be dangled at big prices on class and strike-rate grounds despite winning the Hero late last year but has never had a chance to win here, which MAVERICK MCNEALY has.
Looking back, I think his 2025 season went a little under-appreciated. Perhaps that's because McNealy couldn't quite back up his RSM Classic win from the previous November, but his good golf was exceptional: seven top-10s, five of them in either Signature Events or the FedExCup Playoffs, and another half a dozen finishes between 11th and 30th.
It must've been close to enough to earn a Ryder Cup pick but perhaps missing out on Bethpage came down to finishing runner-up to Aberg in the Genesis here, ranking second in strokes-gained approach and first in putting, rather than winning. For so much of the final round that's what he looked set to do, but a rare poor approach to the 14th cost him a shot and he just couldn't get it back.
Aberg nevertheless birdied four of the final six holes to pip him so McNealy can count himself a little unfortunate, and maybe he can make up for it by winning this title in his home state.
Had a chance to catch up with Maverick McNealy last week and really enjoyed it.
— RJ Ochoa (@rjochoa) January 26, 2026
Feels like he is in for a big 2026. https://t.co/fpvwnJNZ9v
McNealy's first two really good chances to win came in California at Pebble Beach and at Silverado, and his only missed cut here in eight starts came about because of a bad putting week. He's also been seventh at Riviera, has two California top-10s in the Barracuda, and was narrowly denied a Korn Ferry Tour title here, so it's clear he can raise his game close to home.
The one event he doesn't like is the AmEx, which he's sensibly now decided to skip, and there was abundant promise in his return 24th at the Sony Open, where one bad round was very costly. That was his first start since October, his decision to skip his RSM Classic defence down to the birth of his first child in November, so perhaps the nappy factor can work in our favour too.
Certainly he's a player I hope to see contending for some big titles this year, as a former world number one amateur who has every tool required to make sure he's on the inside rather than the outside when the next Ryder Cup comes along. He rates a big player at one of his very favourite courses on the circuit.
As is increasingly the case, Monday money has come for some of the obvious big-priced candidates, such as the monstrously long Aldrich Potgieter, and former Junior Worlds champion Karl Vilips, that victory having come here. Like Woods before him, Vilips went to Stanford University in California and, now representing Woods' Sun Day Red brand, he would be a big story in his own right were he to contend.
While those two have been cut, AUSTIN SMOTHERMAN has been eased slightly but he's a player with an ideal game for this, albeit without yet having proven himself definitively capable.
At 31 years of age, Smotherman is no spring chicken but if he finds a workable putting method I feel certain he'll do well on his second try at the PGA Tour, having amassed three Korn Ferry Tour titles during a couple of seasons at that level and generally looked a bit too good for it.
The way Smotherman hits the ball he really should be up to picking up a PGA Tour title too and after a narrow missed cut at the Sony Open, 11th place last week was a big improvement. That shootout in the desert won't have suited and his putter was indeed the one issue, but at first in strokes-gained approach and tee-to-green, his 36 holes at the toughest of the three courses were highly promising.
So too was his 11th place here in 2022, when he shot 71, 72 and 66 at the South Course thanks to long, strong driving and brilliant iron play. That renewal was won by List at the expense of Will Zalatoris, should you need confirmation that you can compete for this title without being an elite putter. Zalatoris, who ought to have won, ranked 64th of 79 players for the week.
Smotherman probably won't get away with that but he's a course-proven Californian who has returned to the PGA Tour with his long-game in first-class condition. Maybe he'll find a few more putts on these more familiar poa annua surfaces, with some encouragement to be drawn from his performances here, at the Procore, and at Pebble Beach.
He'll face weaker fields but I don't think he'll play at a more suitable golf course all year, so let's take a chance at big prices.
Finally, I'm going to take the bait and put up TONY FINAU.
With seven top-10s in his last 10 course starts, Finau is more comfortable at Torrey Pines than he is anywhere else; more comfortable here than anybody in the field, you could argue.
The reason he's now a three-figure price having finished fifth for us at 40/1 in a stronger Genesis Invitational last year is that he's without a top-10 finish since, the golf he produced in the autumn some of the worst we've seen since he first arrived on the PGA Tour.
But there is a caveat that hasn't been reported, as far as I can see. Just before December's Grant Thornton Invitational, his first start in a couple of months, Finau revealed on Instagram that he'd had ankle surgery, which is presumably why he chose not to fly to Japan having originally been entered in the Baycurrent Classic won by Schauffele.
Tony Finau 🤝 @Jumpman23 pic.twitter.com/50RcjjJ1Zs
— GOLF.com (@GOLF_com) January 15, 2026
I can't find a report on it anywhere, only a discussion on a podcast where he suggested it links back to 2024 knee surgery, and who knows how exactly he's doing physically. However, after a dismal return in the Sony Open, an event he's generally avoided and isn't suited to, he missed the cut by two shots last week, hitting the ball well during one measured round at the Stadium Course.
Finau, as is his wont, missed three five-foot putts over the closing few holes on Saturday so was very close to making the cut and when you consider that Zalatoris did so by one, then vaulted to a top-20 finish which has rightly been taken seriously by the layers, it may not have taken a great deal for Finau to suddenly look like an each-way candidate for this.
Course form is so vital here that I really could envisage a scenario where he's back in the mix, telling reporters more about the surgery he hopes will set him up for a comeback 2026. It's a longshot but at three-figure prices, I say why not take that chance here, even if we wouldn't anywhere else.
Posted at 08:00 GMT on 27/01/26
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