Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Travelers Championship preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Travelers Championship

4pts win Rory McIlroy at 14/1 (General - 16.5 via Betfair Exchange)

1.5pts e.w. Russell Henley at 40/1 (Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Jordan Spieth at 45/1 (Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Daniel Berger at 66/1 (Paddy Power, Unibet 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)

1pt e.w. Bud Cauley at 90/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Tom Hoge at 100/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

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Few tournaments offer such an explicit demonstration of why analysis should cover contenders, not just winners, as the Travelers Championship.

Spin through the last 10 renewals, before and after its questionable elevation to Signature status, and you'll see names like Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley, and Scottie Scheffler on the honours board. But if you look at who finished second, you get a very different, much more illuminating list: Tom Kim, Zac Blair, Brian Harman and JT Poston among the most recent.

Not that we should need it. TPC River Highlands has been a regular PGA Tour stop since 1984 and we know all about its key characteristics. It is short, first and foremost, it is designed by Pete Dye, and scoring is typically low – Cameron Young shot an 11-under 59 last year and it wasn't enough to match the course record, still held by Jim Furyk after he became the first and so far only player to shoot 58 on the PGA Tour.

Young and Furyk help further demonstrate that anyone can play here and it's a real shame that more aren't invited, especially one week after the US Open. The key flaw in the Signature Event model is that it relies so heavily on money to motivate players and when we've one of them taking place days after Oakmont, money may not be enough. There will be players here who need a break, who simply are not ready to win.

Last year, Scheffler bounced back from his single worst performance of the season to beat Tom Kim in a play-off and that too tells us something. Kim had faded from a decent position at Pinehurst but like Scheffler was never really a factor and both Sungjae Im and Tom Hoge, tied for third behind them, had missed the cut. The best of the US Open performers was Patrick Cantlay in fifth (third the previous week), but he really does love it here and almost always plays well.

There are conflicting examples, most tellingly Chez Reavie's straightforward victory after an excellent US Open top-five, but I wonder if the difficulty of the preceding major championship might be a good indicator.

When you go back to 2016 and the event immediately after Oakmont, you'll see that it went to Billy Hurley at a huge price after he'd shot 78-75 in the US Open. The only one of his challengers who'd played well in it was actually a new pro by the name of Jon Rahm; others in the mix for the Quicken Loans National had either played poorly or not at all.

Now that the schedule has been altered there aren't many in this field who didn't play last week so it's hard to find a freshness angle, but I would certainly caution against paying any great attention to Oakmont form, which is likely to prove somewhat flimsy as far as a guide to the future goes. Whatever you thought of the US Open, course and conditions contrast starkly with most events coming up on the schedule.

All that being said the top two in the betting are probably the best value and at the prices, I'll fall into the trap and put up RORY MCILROY, despite having had no intention whatsoever of doing so until a show of betting emerged.

By now we know that McIlroy has gone through a bit of a post-Masters funk, admitting last week that having 'climbed my Everest', he needed to find a new mountain. At least he didn't go as far as saying the only way from there is down and, by the end of the week, he was much more positive.

That's because he led the field in strokes-gained off-the-tee and it's hard to overstate how important that could be, if not for this week then for the rest of summer. McIlroy's non-conforming driver episode at the PGA not only upset him and affected his relationship with the media, but it presented a very real problem, and it looks like at last he and his team might have found the solution.

Signing off with the low round of the day means he comes here on the back of his most encouraging golf since Augusta given those driving statistics and while yes, he did say he's looking forward to getting back to Europe, a weekend off in Canada before Oakmont means he's hardly been overworked lately. He should be plenty fresh enough.

If McIlroy is engaged mentally, which is not a given, then he has a massive chance at a course where he's never played badly. Without ever lighting up the greens his record reads 17-12-11-19-7, gaining over two strokes per round from tee-to-green on average, and while a short course like this can't be called his ideal set-up, something similar was said when he won a Signature Event at Pebble Beach at the start of the year.

Then, as now, he had drifted to 14/1 and I can't get my head around the price. It is significantly too large. We have players here like Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas who missed the cut last week and are much shorter in the betting than they were then. And while no, I don't think Oakmont will be a great guide and yes, there are strong cases for both those players, McIlroy answered a big question last week.

For my money, only one remains: is he going to properly engage mentally, or does that wait until he arrives back home? That would've been a doubt sufficient enough to overlook him at 13/2, the price he is for the Open no less, but at 14s I have to side with him. Dustin Johnson won this tournament when dangled at a silly price and McIlroy can hopefully follow suit. If he drives it as he did last week, he definitely can.

Scheffler is more tempting than I usually find him, too. Again, he's the same price as he was for the US Open yet we didn't know how he'd handle Oakmont, whereas seven of his last eight rounds here have been 65 or less. The worry would be that his putter has cooled slightly again, especially on Sunday when it kept him from properly entering the conversation, and modest putting cost him here in 2022 and 2023.

A few firms quote McIlroy at 9/1 without Scheffler if you do want to remove the world number one from calculations and that seems a very reasonable approach to things. One way or another, the market demands getting McIlroy on-side.

Spieth ready to strike

There is an especially strong case to be written for Cantlay but it simply cannot be written by me, I'm afraid, and in general the head of the market is difficult to unpick. Perhaps Collin Morikawa will win after a hopeless putting week, something he's done more than once before, but his record here is so far poor and his failure to build on a promising start 12 months ago perhaps confirms it's not an ideal fit.

Preference then is for JORDAN SPIETH, who I've felt has been a big eye-catcher for most of this year.

Results haven't necessarily supported that notion but he's only missed two cuts, latterly because of his putter alone at the PGA Championship, and last week he produced his ninth top-30 finish since February. Given that he had surgery in the off-season, things have gone really well if you ask me.

Spieth was on my list for last week's US Open and played well to be 23rd and, like McIlroy, there was one big positive for all that the form itself doesn't carry as much weight as I'd like. In his case this was his approach play, which was excellent, and if he can marry it with the way he'd been driving the ball then good things should follow.

Consistently strong around the greens and still capable of lighting them up with the putter, albeit that happens less often these days, Spieth can win soon on the right course and we know that this qualifies, as he produced a stunning bunker hole-out to win in a play-off back in 2017.

Granted, he's not done much here since he led after round one a year later, but a short, technical test works well and he has generally performed on other Pete Dye layouts: ninth Crooked Stick, second Whistling Straits, fourth Sawgrass, 30th Kiawah Island, fourth Louisiana, first and second Harbour Town, which was the scene of his latest win and his most recent near-miss.

Like the Travelers, that event takes place immediately after a major championship and if we rewind to 2017, Spieth arrived here on the back of an encouraging but frustrating mid-pack finish in the US Open, where his long-game was good. I think there's a chance history repeats.

When Spieth won it was DANIEL BERGER who could count himself somewhat unlucky and it wouldn't surprise me if he finally gained a measure of revenge and earned another plaid jacket to go with the one they hand out at Colonial.

Berger was going off very short prices as recently as May, when he finished 11th in the Truist as a 28/1 shot and went off not much bigger for the PGA Championship, where he was among the best ball-strikers in the field on a long, soft course, but putted badly to finish 33rd.

Form figures of MC-MC-46 since then have sent him back down the betting but the first was all putter, the second courtesy of one bad round at Muirfield Village, where his record is patchy, and then last week he hit the ball fine and finished 46th in the US Open.

I don't think this short run of frustration is likely to tell us much at all whereas we know for sure that a short course like this is ideal. Berger sacrificed distance for accuracy earlier in his career and his wins, two at Southwind plus one each at Colonial and Pebble Beach, have come at shorter, positional courses where he can compete with longer drivers.

That's certainly true of River Highlands, where his first two visits resulted in fifth and second thanks to strong iron play, and like Spieth his wider Dye record includes two top-threes at Harbour Town, sixth at Louisiana, 10th at Crooked Stick, and two top-10 finishes at Sawgrass where he was 20th earlier this year.

Berger was also third at Harbour Town when selected on these pages at 40/1 and, under near-identical circumstances at a course we know he likes, I'm very happy to go in again at anything that price or bigger. He's currently 66/1 with Paddy Power, Unibet and some smaller firms for six places, or 60/1 for eight with bet365.

Brian Harman's course record entitles him to huge respect but he's done little since winning in Texas to suggest he'll make this his first two-win season so far, whereas RUSSELL HENLEY looks more than capable of doing so.

Given his Presidents Cup display last year I think Henley only need keep ticking over to make his Ryder Cup debut in September, but he's just fallen out of the top six automatic qualification spots and with some lesser lights advertising their credentials, and JJ Spaun leapfrogging him, there's no room for a significant dip in form.

He'll be scrapping for every point and he's another player who I felt would open much shorter. Henley was 50/1 last week and is still 50/1 in places for this weaker event, at a course where he finished 11th and first on his first two visits and would have more than four top-20 finishes had his putter behaved.

That club improved last week and was better than it's been at any time since he won at Bay Hill, so with his iron play also peaking with his best two performances of the season coming over his last two starts, everything looks in place for Henley to contend once more.

The world number six is another with a strong record at Harbour Town, the short, accuracy-favouring, Dye-designed course which occupies the slot in the schedule immediately after the Masters, and while his record here has cooled down the years his closing 63 last time was his best round so far.

It is definitely a good venue for Henley if he can match last week's putting numbers and it's worth saying that three times in seven appearances he's entered the final round in the top three. Never before has he been better prepared to capitalise should such an opportunity present itself again.

There are a few tempting options in the mid-range, JT Poston, Denny McCarthy and Akshay Bhatia among them, but my final two selections are TOM HOGE and BUD CAULEY.

Hoge is a massive fan of Dye's most famous course, Sawgrass, where he was third back in March, and since then he's generally played well. Three missed cuts in his last four might suggest otherwise but all were narrow and two were in majors, where he rallied after slow starts but couldn't quite claw his way to the right side of the line.

Last week's long-game numbers were outstanding and before that he was seventh in the Memorial, so again he's one who is probably playing just as well as he was when he followed that PLAYERS effort with fifth in Texas, 14th in the Masters, and 18th at the aforementioned Harbour Town.

Another past champion at Pebble Beach, he took an age to get to grips with this place but did so in style last year, shooting rounds of 63 and 62 on his way to third place, and as you'd expect that was courtesy of a top-class ball-striking display. It was Hoge, not Scheffler, who was the best iron player in the field.

His putter would be the main concern but again it was fine on his penultimate start and he looks a value bet at 80s and upwards.

Sticking to the theme, Cauley may appear to have cooled since he contended at Sawgrass but he was third three starts ago and then struck it beautifully at Muirfield Village, where a poor putting display kept him stuck in the middle of the leaderboard.

He started well then faded at Oakmont but if we overlook that he's an in-form, rock-solid ball-striker with all the correlating form you could wish for: third at Sedgefield, sixth Sawgrass, eighth Sea Island, third Colonial, ninth Harbour Town, 11th Louisiana, fourth Greenbrier, fourth Canada. He has an ideal profile for this.

And at the start of his career, before injury struck, he showed it to be suitable. Cauley closed with a 65 on debut and opened with a 63 on his way to 11th in 2014, before struggling during a period of all kinds of form and fitness issues.

Returning after five years away, he's looked ready to complete the comeback story for a while now and at 58th in the world, a good week here, whether he wins or not, will get him to where he's always belonged. A top-20 iron player whose putter has generally behaved this year, I don't see why he can't go very close.

Posted at 1800 BST on 16/06/25

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