The 2026 Farmers Insurance Open tees off with its first round on Thursday morning from Torrey Pines in California.
This week's event features a number of top players, but the favorite is Xander Schauffele, who checks in at +1800 odds to win.
Last week's tournament, The American Express, was won by Scottie Scheffler, who is not in the field this week.
From favorites to long-shots, props, and more, these are our staff's 2026 Farmers Insurance Open best bets and favorite golf picks.
PGA Tour Expert Picks: Farmers Insurance Open
Cameron Young First Round Leader – South Course (+2000)
By Tony Sartori
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.
Brooks Koepka Outright Winner (+5500) | Top 40 Finish (+120)
The skill gap between Brooks Koepka and the favorites (i.e. Ludvig Aberg, Xander Schauffele, Cameron Young, and Patrick Cantlay) is minimal, if not nonexistent.
The question for Koepka is his endurance. How is he going to fare making his PGA Tour debut this season after making the move back from LIV? Will there be an endurance issue going back to full 4-round tournaments? These questions are fair but do not warrant odds this long.
Koepka is going to make some noise in his return to the PGA Tour.
Hideki Matsuyama Outright Winner (+3000)
Hideki Matsuyama has never won this event, but he has made nine straight cuts here with four top-15 finishes during that stretch.
Whether or not you consider the Hero World Challenge a real event or not, it was good to see him get back in the winner's circle in December. In his first start of the year (Sony Open), he gained 8.4 strokes tee to green and finished T13.
Matsuyama has a good track record in California. He has played well on driver-heavy courses, he tends to shine on difficult courses, and he has good results on long Par 72 courses. His biggest weakness (his putter) is negated a bit, as tee to green matters more than usual this week.
Andrew Novak (-125) over Tony Finau
I once thought this was a spot where Tony Finau would win and wrote about it yearly. Now, I view this as a situation to fade him because of the course history returns that are boosting his price point.
Is it possible that Finau enters Torrey Pines and finds something? Of course! We see this happen yearly for countless players, but it is not as if the current metrics are going to show anything close to what the long-term data suggests for him in my model.
Finau's top-25 grades for California/Poa and Weighted Scoring at similar courses are more influenced by history than by recent results. When that ends up being the case for a golfer, you typically get reduced pricing and more volatility than meets the eye for head-to-head wagers.
Finau's upside is going to surpass his safety if you are looking for markets to play him in this week, but I like this spot because it also delivers an underrated Andrew Novak, who was my fade of the week at the American Express against Johnny Keefer. No Pete Dye should be a massive boost for someone that looked solid for two of three days.
Ryan Gerard Top 20 Finish (+180)
Ryan Gerard has been on a tear lately. His back-to-back second-place finishes at The American Express and the Sony Open are great examples of the start that Gerard is off to.
Gerard played in this event in 2025 and finished T15 and posted just over 1 Stroke Gained overall.
Torrey Pines favors long hitters, a skill that Gerard has. He also has length off of the tee without sacrificing accuracy, ranking 14th in Total Driving.
With multiple top-2 finishes, a top 20 seems like a piece of cake.
