With the Ryder Cup on the horizon and the opportunity for a second straight off week following a crazy closing stretch to the 2020-’21 season, you’d think Jon Rahm would be taking it easy this week. Unfortunately for the rest of the field at the 2021-’22 PGA Tour season opener, the 2021 Fortinet Championship, that does not appear to be the case.
Rahm, No. 1 in the world for an eighth straight week now, is showing up in Napa, Calif., and not surprisingly is the heavy favorite to win. The Spaniard opened at +300 on the DraftKings Sportsbook and +350 on MyBookie, with the next closest player, Webb Simpson, opening at 14-1.
To put Rahm’s odds in perspective: +350 are the lowest pre-tournament odds posted for a player in a PGA Tour event (non Tour Championship) since gambling was legalized in 2018. These are Tiger Woods-in-his-prime-type numbers … speaking to Rahm’s incredible run in 2021 — and the strength of the rest of the field (Hideki Matsuyama is the only other player in the field that ranks inside the top 20 of the official World Golf Ranking).
Just below Rahm, Simpson and Matsuyama on the odds board is PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Will Zalatoris, who is 22-1 at DraftKings. Zalatoris is still in search of his first PGA Tour victory, and wouldn’t it be fitting for him to get it in his first start as a full PGA Tour member?
Here are all the odds (updated in real-time, thanks to our friends at Metabet) for the 2021 Fortinet Championship: