Golf Betting at Bally Bet Sportsbook

For a truly worldwide game, look no further than golf. More than 80 million people are estimated to play the sport globally, 450 million people call themselves golf fans, and, on the professional side, dozens of nations appear in the World Golf Rankings.

When it comes to betting, the annual betting handle for golf is between $4.5 and $5 billion. And with multiple professional golf tours there are plenty of betting markets and lines to choose from.

Whether it’s picking the outright winner of an event or choosing the Top 10 – not forgetting made and missed cuts, head-to-head props, and live wagering on individual holes - golf betting offers a little something for every taste.

Read on to find out more.

How to Read Golf Betting Odds

Standard golf odds read like moneyline odds for other sports, whether that's betting on football, baseball, or basketball. Even money odds are displayed as +100. That means that if you wager $100 on an event, your potential winnings are $100.

Anything greater than +100 pays out more than your original wager, so with odds of +120, a $100 wager has potential winnings of $120. Odds of +150 with a $100 wager has potential winnings of $150.

The baseline for American odds is $100, but you can wager any amount you choose. The same proportion of winnings is used no matter how much you wager. So, with odds of +120, a $50 wager has potential winnings of $60 and odds of +150 with a $20 wager has potential winnings of $30.

If you see a minus sign - a negative number - that means that potential winnings are less than the original bet. This is because the bet is favored to win. Most golf bets won't feature a golfer who is the favorite, as they feature multiple winning options, but head-to-head matchups will give you negative odds on one golfer. Here, with odds of -120 to win $100, you'd be wagering $120, and odds of -150 would require a wager of $150 to win $100.

For some specialty events and one-on-one matches, you might see over/under spreads on strokes won by or holes won by (in match play). This is most often seen in events like the Ryder Cup and the U.S. Amateur.

Other special match play events, like when Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs played Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors, also have over/unders on holes won.

Popular Golf Bets

Bettors less familiar with golf betting markets don't realize just how many types of golf bets there are. Here are some of the most popular:

Winner

The simplest and most popular golf bet is picking the winner of the event or tournament. With 100 or more golfers in a field, picking the winner can be challenging, but the payout for an accurate prediction can be high. Even the favorites to win can pay +1000 or more.

In 2023, when Jon Rahm of Spain won the Masters, he was ranked No. 3 in the world, yet he still paid +900 as the winner.

Place Finish

Instead of focusing on the one golfer who wins the event, you can pick a golfer to finish in the top 5, top 10, or even top 20 of an event. The odds will naturally pay less, but you're also much more likely to win your bet.

In that same 2023 Masters, Viktor Hovland was +3500 to win the tournament (a bet that lost), but he was +300 to finish in the top 10 (a bet that won).

Round Props

Most professional golf tournaments are four rounds, and you can bet on how well players will do in each round. Betting on the first-round leader is a common proposition bet, but you can also bet on the leaders after the second and third rounds as well.

If you bet on Phil Mickelson to be the leader after 18 holes - and he is - your bet wins. After that, it doesn't really matter what he does for the rest of the tournament.

Head-to-Head Matchups

Some golf events will feature head-to-head golf battles. But even in the majority of tournaments that don't, you can still wager on how two golfers will do against one another. The golfer that scores the best in a designated round, or over the entirety of the tournament, wins the bet. These are popular bets because it is much easier to predict how one golfer does against a single golfer, than how they will do against 100 golfers.

Nationality Prop Bets

Almost every golf event features players from all over the world, and this is especially true for the four major golf tournaments. It's common to see proposition bets that pay out on the nationality of the eventual winner, or which golfer from a particular country will finish highest on the leaderboard.

Live Golf Betting

It's been around for a few years now, but many regular golf bettors are just discovering live betting, which is also called in-play betting. These are bets placed while an event is taking place, and the odds and possible wagers continually shift as the tournament progresses.

For example, you can bet on an individual hole and whether a golfer will finish with a birdie, par, or bogey. Then their tee shot goes into the rough. The odds will change to favor a higher score on the hole because of the errant tee shot.

With wagers on individual shots, holes, or specific matchups between pairings, there is no shortage of potential wagers.

Golf Betting Tips & Advice

With weekly tournaments for the PGA, LPGA, and European Tours, you can wager on golf all year long. But how do you keep clued in on who's likely to excel and where?

Know the course

Different golf courses play to different strengths. Some golfers are great putters and do well against the field on fast and difficult greens. Other golfers are big hitters off the tee and do best when the fairways are wide and long. And then there the golfers who are incredibly accurate, and do their best when the rough gets long.

Be sure to research which golfers have traditionally done well on the type of course that's being played on.

Keep an eye on the weather

When the PGA Tour plays its annual Pro-Am event at Pebble Beach, rain and wind are almost always in the forecast. On particularly hot days, the later in the day, the dryer the greens become, making them harder to hit.

When in the day a golfer tees off and the weather conditions they will face have a huge influence on which golfers will have the best rounds.

Brush up on recent games

Perhaps here more than in any other sport, good play last week results in good play this week. When a swing is right, it often stays right. But when a swing is off, that too is often an indicator of things to come. Before placing any wager, look at how the golfer has played over the previous month.

Betting on the PGA Tour

The majority of golf betting is done on the PGA Tour. It's the most competitive professional tour in the world, and there are 36 regular season events and three events to decide the winner of the FedEx Cup.

The PGA Tour season begins in early January, the FedEx Cup Playoffs take us into early September, and then the Fall Series runs from mid-September through the middle of December.

Betting on the LPGA Tour

The LPGA is becoming more popular by the year, and the women now have nearly as many events on their yearly calendar as the men.

The LPGA also begins in January and runs into December. It features five major championships: The Chevron Championship, Women's PGA Championship, U.S. Women's Open, The Evian Championship, and The Women's Open. The Evian Championship is played in France, and The Women's Open is played in the United Kingdom.

Betting on the European Tour

Legally it's known as the PGA European Tour, but in the more recent years, the European Tour has become a worldwide tour.

It begins in November with a Southern Hemisphere swing through Australia and South Africa, then in January there are a number of big tournaments in the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. From there, it goes to Asia for two months, and then it closes out with five months of European play.

Betting on Major Tournaments and Special Events

The first of the four major championships for men's golf is the Masters, played annually in April in Augusta, Georgia. The PGA Championship is played in May, the U.S. Open in June, and The Open Championship (also known as The British Open) in July.

What makes the betting on these tournaments different from other events is the scope of the available bets, but also the pre-wagering run-up to the event. You can place futures bets on the winner of each of the majors months in advance.

Every two years, the best team event in golf takes place at the Ryder Cup. Twelve golfers are selected to represent the United States, and they go head-to-head against 12 golfers from Europe in a total of 28 matches. You can bet on all 28 of the matches, as well as the overall winner of the event.