With the Florida swing wrapping up last week at the Valspar Championship, the PGA Tour travels to Texas for the Houston Open this week. The top heavy field is led #1 and #2 in the Official World Golf Rankings in Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlory. Overall there will be eight of the Top 25 and 19 of the Top 50 players in the world teeing it up this week at Memorial Park Golf Course.
Let’s jump in and take a look at the course, top stats, and some best bets for this week.
The Course: Memorial Park Golf Course
It will be another tough test for golfers as the Memorial Park Golf Course is one of the longest on the PGA Tour and by far the longest when looking at Par 70 courses. There are five par 3’s and the yardages are a mixed bag from 155 to 237 yards. The par 4’s are where the difficult begins as five of them are listed at 490 yards or longer. The beast holes don’t stop there either as two of the three par 5’s are over 600 yards and consistently rank as a Top 5 hardest group of par 5’s on tour.
With the length, distance off the tee will give golfers an advantage if they can keep it on the fairway. I say that as Memorial Park has a lower than Tour average driving accuracy of around 55%. That also leads to a lower than average GIR rate as well which elevates the importance of approach shots both from the fairway and rough. When breaking down the approach shots, long irons play is very important as golfers will see a well above-average amount of approaches from 200+ yards. Finally, scrambling and around the green play is elevated this week with the lower GIR rate and overall tough scoring conditions.
Top Stats in my Model:
- Strokes Gained: Off the Tee
- Driving Distance
- Strokes Gained: Approach
- Proximity from 200+ Yards
- Strokes Gained: Around the Green
With all that said, here are the Top 10 in my stats model for this week:
- Rory McIlroy
- Alex Smalley
- Danny Walker
- Scottie Scheffler
- J.J. Spaun
- Aaron Rai
- Si Woo Kim
- Charley Hoffman
- Keith Mitchell
- Nicolai Hojgaard
Best Bets: Texas Children’s Houston Open
From a betting standpoint, this is a very interesting week with the top-heavy field headlined by Scheffler and McIlroy in the field. There is a huge gap in the outright market with Scheffler at +300, McIlroy at +700 then no one else better than +3000. With that, I am going to be building my bet card a bit different this week. Let’s dive in!
Rory McIlroy over Scottie Scheffler Full Tourney Matchup
At the time of writing this there are no head-to-head matchups up yet but I will be locking this in once it pops up assuming Rory is the underdog in this matchup. He should be considering Scheffler has three straight Top 10’s at Memorial Park including two runner-up finishes while McIlroy has no course history here. These for this pick is based almost solely on current form as Rory has won twice in four events in 2025 with a 15th and 17th in the other two. Scheffler, on the other hand(no pun intended), still looks a bit rusty and has just two Top 10’s in five events this season. The biggest area of concern for me with him is the short game as he has lost strokes around the green in three of those five events and ranks 9th in SG: Putting during that time, as well.
I am not too high on betting either of these guys outrights but if I was to bet one(still undecided), it would be Rory who we can still find at around +750 on some books.
Davis Riley Outright (+12000) / Top 5 (+2000) / Top 10 (+900) / Top 20 (+360)
For my ladder bet of the week, I love the value with Davis Riley, who not only has an excellent course history but is also coming in with very good form. His finishes here have all been inside the Top 30 with a career-best T14 last year. He comes into this year’s event with Top 10’s in two of his last three events and ranks(in this field), 4th in SG: total, 14th in driving distance, 6th in SG: approach, and 5th in SG: around the green during that stretch. Shopping around for the best number is key for Riley as I have seen him as low as +8000 while the number listed above is from the FanDuel Sportsbook. I will have the most units on the Top 20, then the Top 10 and Top 5, and sprinkle some on the outright.
Mackenzie Hughes Top 10 (+700) / Top 20 (+260)
While the form doesn’t exactly jump off the page, Hughes returns to Memorial Park with some of the best course history at the Houston Open since the event moved to the course. He has finished inside the Top 30 in all four trips including a Top 10 in 2021, back-to-back finishes of 16th and 14th in 2023 and 2024, and ranks 6th in SG: total here. Like Riley, I will be betting the Top 20 the heaviest followed by the Top 10. I am not yet sold on the Top 5 or outright and might just wait and see if the number moves any leading up to tee off.
