Golf betting is a well-liked gambling activity, and bookies accept wagers on events all year long. With the help of our guide to the top golf betting sites, you’ll be able to place bets on your favourite players with confidence at trusted websites.
Professional golf has a sure-fire way of determining the greatest golfers of all-time: the four major championships. The Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and British Open are the four pinnacle golf tournaments contested annually to distinguish the best golfers in the world. On top of this the PGA tour is seen as the pinnacle tour in the golf world.
Golf tournaments are multi-day affairs, therefore a significant portion of the betting involves in-play wagering, which is made possible through the live betting portions of online bookmakers.
Having numerous betting accounts is worthwhile because you can receive enhanced odds throughout the event, and since each sportsbook offers a separate set of each-way conditions and odds that vary from one to the next.
It can be difficult to choose which golf betting sites to use, but we believe the ones listed below are a fantastic place to start.
Extra places – When placing a golf “each way” wager, you bet half on the golfer to win the competition and the other half on him or her to place in the top 5, top 6, or however many places are being paid. The participant had to place in the top five in order for that portion of your stake to be successful because the typical number of places rewarded was five. These days, many bookmakers provide additional places, sometimes as many as 10, which significantly improves your odds of winning.
First-round leader specials – The first-round leader is the focus of several golf betting site promotions. These specials are not frequently offered by all online bookmakers, but if you bet on a player to win the game outright and they are in the lead after the first round, you can be eligible for a free bet or perhaps an early payout if the offer is especially lucrative.
Enhanced odds – This is not specific to golf because almost all bookmakers give price increases or improved odds on a wide range of markets every day. With golf enhanced odds, you may increase the likelihood that a particular player will win or place. Many golf betting sites group players together, such as Bryson DeChambeau or Rory McIlroy, as favourites to win.
Free bets – Many online betting firms give free bets as part of sign-up specials or ongoing customer promotions. These free bets aren’t always exclusive to golf betting, however they are frequently eligible when placed on golf events.
Strokeplay tournaments are typically played over four days at the same golf course, and can easily be comprised of over 100 players in competition. This number is usually reduced after the two-day stage, this is called the “cut”, where the low-performing proportion of the field are dropped out.
Picking the outright winner of the tournament is the most popular golf market. Favourites are usually priced at around 10/1 due to the sheer number of golfers competing. Outsiders are commonly available at odds of 250/1 or bigger. They are usually familiar names, who sit towards the top of the World Golf Ranking – the likes of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler.
With the number of players in a tournament, picking the outright winner can be very tough – as the odds suggest – and even for experienced golf bettors, successful bets on outright winners can be few and far-between. An alternative to this is each-way betting. This can be a much more lucrative alternative, as it can reward smart punters who can select a player that performs very well despite not winning the golf tournament.
Each-way betting sees your stake evenly split between an outright win, and the player being placed. ‘Placed’ is finishing in the top few selected places which the bookmakers will decide. The majority will offer 1/4 the odds for a top-five finish, enhanced place terms are often offered by the bookies – especially in the Majors, where six, seven, or even ten places are available for each-way terms.
First Round Leader, Player to Miss the Cut, Top 10/Top 20 Finish, and a range of ‘match bets’ are other betting markets that punters like to bet on in the golf.
First Round Leader involves betting on the golfer you think will be in the lead after all competitors have finished their first 18 holes. It is incredibly hard to play four good rounds of golf consecutively, this is why the tournament favourites odds for being First Round Leader are often longer than they are for the Outright Winner market. After a whole tournament, players’ overall performances will have been averaged out somewhat, with the best players consistently getting better scores.
You can bet on a match-up between two different players. You can pit two against each other even from different groups to make for a more interesting and exciting way to watch golf.
Betting in tournaments where the format is match play still revolves around the outright winner market; the difference is the manner in which the outright winner is decided. In match play tournaments, players are pitted against each other to decide who goes through to the next round, with consecutive knock-out rounds all the way to the final, where the winner is eventually decided. This format much increases the attractiveness of the match betting markets, as the players must shoot lower than their live opponent in order to progress, and ties are not an option.
Team events, such as the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup, are match play events, where two teams of 12 players compete over three days. These are formatted with head-to-head matches between players or groups and teams are awarded 1 point for a win or 0.5 points for a draw.
The outright winner market in this instance pertains to the winning team, Europe or USA. However, individual markets, such as Top Points Scorer, are still available.
