The 2026 PGA TOUR season continues with The American Express in California.
While many of the top golfers in the world vie for the year's second 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 The American Express picks and first-round leader prop bets for Thursday.
The American Express Picks: First Round Leader Prop Bets
Alex Noren – Pete Dye Stadium Course (+1800)
The American Express is unique in that the field is evenly distributed across three courses during each of the first three rounds. As a result, there are three separate first-round leader markets, one for each course.
For the purposes of this article, we will focus on two golfers in the Pete Dye Stadium Course market. This course is easier to handicap because it is the only one of the three where ShotLink data is available.
That brings us to Alex Noren, who is tied for the second-shortest odds to lead at this course after Thursday’s opening round, trailing only Harry Hall at +1400.
Greenside play is essential at the Pete Dye Stadium Course. There were two measured rounds at this venue last season, as every golfer who made the cut also played the course again during Sunday’s final round.
Among those golfers, each of the top six finishers ranked 31st or better in the field in strokes gained: around the green across those two rounds at the Pete Dye Stadium Course. No other strokes-gained category showed a similar trend.
That bodes well for Noren, who is coming off a runner-up finish at the Hero World Challenge. In that event, he ranked 10th in the field in strokes gained: around the green and second in scrambling.
Ryan Gerard – Pete Dye Stadium Course (+1800)
Another golfer tied for the second-shortest odds to lead at the Pete Dye Stadium Course after Thursday’s opening round is Ryan Gerard. Like Noren, Gerard enters the tournament in strong form following two straight runner-up performances.
At last week’s Sony Open in Hawaii, Gerard ranked 14th in the field in strokes gained: around the green and 19th in scrambling en route to that second-place finish. He has now gained true strokes around the green in three of his past four tournaments in which ShotLink data was available.
It is also worth noting that Gerard ranked ninth in that tournament in birdie-or-better percentage from 150-175 yards. Last year, 17.1% of approach shots at the Pete Dye Stadium Course came from that range, the largest share of any 25-yard grouping.
Finally, Gerard was one of the strongest starters on the PGA Tour last season, finishing the year ranked 11th in first-round scoring average.
