Matt Cooper is back with his preview of the Genesis Invitational final round and the big names are fancied to come to the fore.
Golf betting tips: Genesis Invitational final round
3pts win Ludvig Åberg at 3/1 (General)
1pt win Rory McIlroy at 14/1 (General)
In the beginning of the third round of the Genesis Invitational Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy looked set for a weekend top-of-the-table tussle in the PGA Tour’s return to Torrey Pines. In stumbling to third rounds of 74 and 76, however, the two stars haven’t created what many hoped for, but the 54-hole leaderboard is intriguing and enticing in multi, rather than two, dimensional ways.
Patrick Rodgers leads on 8-under 208, one blow clear of Denny McCarthy and two ahead of LUDVIG ÅBERG. Ben Coley’s pre-tournament selections Tony Finau and Patrick Cantlay sit alongside Tommy Fleetwood and Davis Thompson on 4-under with Scheffler and McIlroy locked in a share of eighth beside Nico Echavarria, Maverick McNealy and Justin Thomas on 3-under.
Being five strokes back is far from an impossible position. Luke List and Max Homa won the 2022 and 2023 Farmers Insurance Open with the same pre-final round deficit while Scheffler, McIlroy and Thomas have histories of mounting a Sunday charge and, moreover, have experience of winning from that far back. As golfing predators they will also view the two pace-setters as potential prey because neither Rodgers nor McCarthy have won on the PGA Tour.
Rodgers has seven top three finishes at this level without a trophy and has had four 54-hole leads in the past including a share of top spot at this stage in the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open when a final round 72 left him fourth. He’s yet to break 70 from this position but he’d also probably take a 70 and maybe even a 72 right now. McCarthy has a trio of top threes on the PGA but the last two saw him pipped at the post in play-offs. Rodgers has three top 10s at Torrey Pines and is 3-for-6 at breaking par in the final round but did go 76-76 there at the weekend last month. McCarthy has never cracked the top 60 in four attempts on this course and before yesterday’s 71 he had never broken 73 at the weekend.
In terms of any blood sniffing of the metaphorical hunting kind, Åberg's nostrils must be twitching the most. He fired 65-64 at the weekend to land fifth place in his first start of the year at The Sentry and then grabbed the halfway lead at 2025’s first visit to Torrey Pines at which point you’d think he’d have been feeling very chipper. Except that’s exactly what he wasn’t feeling. His second round had been a battle against a bad bout of the flu. His third round was, too, and the fourth round broke him.
A few days later he tried to shrug it off at Pebble Beach but the tank was empty. A lovely start to the year had been completely wiped out by a bug but he has bounced back in style. Moreover, the early promise of last month’s trip to Torrey Pines was no one-off because the Swede was also ninth on the course last year on debut when he carded 69-70 at the weekend. He won a couple of third tier events in Sweden as an amateur from on the shoulder of the leaders and claimed his first main tour win from second at this stage in the 2023 European Masters.
“It’s hard,” the 25-year-old said about Torrey Pines after his third round.
“Off the tee it’s hard, but the good thing or the cool thing about this course is, I mean I had a front row seat to Patrick today, he played amazing and he was great off the tee. You can be rewarded and have a lot of good chances into the greens, but as soon as you start missing the fairways, it gets pretty difficult.”
It’s a distinct difficulty: not just distant fairways, or narrow ones, but straight-ish ones that don’t offer the visual assistance of right-to-left or left-to-right shaping. Åberg currently ranks second in Strokes Gained Off the Tee and it is a career strength. There is a standout 16/5 available but we’ll take the 3/1 widely on offer – I’d have had him the other side of 5/2.
Will the fact that Scheffler and McIlroy play together impact on their performance?
Neither are particularly keen on Californian Poa Annua but the Northern Irishman did win at Pebble Beach and he'd recorded a score in the 60s in five of his eight weekends rounds at Torrey Pines before this year while his last eight final rounds anywhere have been in the 60s (most on easier tracks but many of them demanding from the tee).
If the top three twitch, or Torrey Pines trips them up, McILROY could be the man to pounce. We’ll add a saver at 14/1 which leaves us with the best two drivers in the field this week (plus Ben’s Cantlay and Finau).
Posted at 1115 GMT on 16/02/25
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