Masters three-ball bet — Tony Finau to beat Sepp Straka and Phil Mickelson in Round 2 (+115, FanDuel)
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The first round of the Masters will continue early Friday morning after a weather delay pushed back the start 2 1/2 hours on Thursday. The group of Tony Finau, Sepp Straka and Phil Mickelson started in the morning wave, and they were able to complete their rounds. They’re slated to begin their second round Friday at 12:48 p.m. ET.
Finau is clearly the trio’s best player at this stage of their careers, and I believe he should be the odds-on pick to have the best second-round score of the three. He shot a respectable 1-under 71 on Thursday, but the underlying stats indicate he could be in line for a positive bump.
The 34-year-old Finau ranked second on Thursday in strokes gained approach, according to the live Masters stats on datagolf.com. One of my golf betting philosophies is to target players in between rounds who are gaining strokes on the field off the tee or on approach because that is usually an indicator of who is playing the best. Finau is losing strokes to the field on the greens, but there’s a lot of variance in putting.
Straka and Mickelson both shot 1-over 73 in the first round. Straka is an Austrian player who went to college down the road at the University of Georgia, but he hasn’t been impressive in 2024 after making the Europe Ryder Cup team in 2023. Mickelson is a player I bet against in the top lefty market because he hasn’t been competitive on the LIV Tour and he was carried by his putter in the first round.
Finau is as deep as +8000 in the outright market to win the Masters after Bryson DeChambeau set the pace with a 7-under 65 and pre-tournament favorite Scottie Scheffler lived up to his short price with a 6-under 66. I don’t trust Finau’s putter enough to bet on him to win the Masters, but this 18-hole three-ball wager on Friday is another bet I have added to my portfolio.