The 2026 PGA Tour season continues with the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in California.
While many of the top golfers in the world vie for the year's third tournament title, there are more ways to bet the tournament than just who will emerge victorious on Sunday. For more instant gratification, we turn to the First Round Leader market to find value on who will sit atop the leaderboard when play comes to an end on Thursday.
Here are my favorite Farmers Insurance Open picks and first-round leader prop bets for Thursday.
2026 Farmers Insurance Open Picks: First Round Leader Prop Bets
Cameron Young +2000 (South Course)
The Farmers Insurance Open is unique in that the field is evenly distributed across two courses during each of the first two rounds. As a result, there are two separate first-round leader markets, one for each course.
Both of my picks come from the South Course, which is the only one with ShotLink data available thus is easier to handicap.
Cameron Young is tied for the third-shortest odds to lead at this course after Thursday’s opening round.
Greenside play is essential at the South Course. There were three measured rounds at this venue last season, as every golfer who made the cut also played the course again during the final two rounds of the weekend.
Among those golfers, each of the top five finishers ranked 26th or better in the field in strokes gained around the green across those three rounds at the South Course. No other strokes-gained category showed a similar trend.
That bodes well for Young, who closed out 2025 in dominant form. He finished inside the top 11 in each of his final six tournaments of the season, including a win at the Wyndham Championship and a T4 finish at the Tour Championship.
Young gained true strokes around the green in five of those six events.
Ryan Gerard +2500 (South Course)
Another golfer playing the South Course during Thursday’s opening round is Ryan Gerard. Like Young, Gerard enters the tournament in excellent form following three straight runner-up finishes.
At last week’s The American Express, Gerard ranked sixth in the field in strokes gained around the green and fourth in scrambling en route to that second-place finish. He has now gained true strokes around the green in four of his past five tournaments in which ShotLink data was available.
It is also worth noting that Gerard finished 2025 nearly 2% above the average in birdie-or-better percentage from 150-175 yards. Last year, 18.8% of approach shots at the South Course came from that range, the largest share of any 25-yard grouping.
Finally, Gerard was one of the strongest starters on the tour last season, finishing the year ranked 11th in first-round scoring average.
