The 2025 Sony Open Preview

The Tour is still on island time as we wrap up the Hawaiian Swing in Honolulu where the breezes will surely be blowing. Thursday should see wind speeds in the mid-teens before picking up closer to 20 MPH by mid-day Friday.

For final analysis on weather advantages and tee times, make sure you tune into the Nut Hut live chat starting around 9pm ET for the latest and final thoughts on the weather this week...GET IN THERE

Eric Cole -127 ($7500) vs. Billy Horschel -103 ($7900)

Let’s take a look at the $7k range where the sharp oddsmakers have Eric Cole as a favorite over Billy Horschel in a four-round matchup despite a $400 discount on the former in DraftKings DFS.

Unsurprisingly, PGA Tour journeyman Billy Ho has the course experience advantage with seven prior starts at Waialae including a T18 last year. Cole on the other hand is making his third start at the Sony following a T13 finish here in 2024.

According to our Nut Hut ownership projections available in the Discord, Horschel is the more popular play this week coming in around 8%, so Cole might be a nice sleeper play in this range at around 6.5% owned.

Welcome to the Show
Get to know the 2025 PGA Tour Rookies

Thanks to recent eligibility changes from the PGA Tour, 45 newly-minted Tour Cards were handed out ahead of the 2025 season. Each week, we’ll spotlight a few up-and-comers whose names will be important to know as the year progresses.

• Matt McCarty - Scottsdale, AZ

  You may not know it, but we already have a rookie winner on Tour this season and we’re not even through January. A month after receiving his shiny new Tour card following a T5 at the season-ending KFT Championship, McCarty found himself in the winner's circle at the Black Desert Championship in October. Was it the strongest field of all time? No. But it proves that this guy is made to win – something he did a lot of on his way to golf’s biggest stage. The 27-year-old Scottsdale, Ariz. native finished atop the KFT season-long points list after three wins in a stretch of six starts last summer, becoming the 13th player in KFT history to earn his call-up thanks to the 3 Three Win Rule. McCarty turned pro in 2021 following five seasons on the Santa Clara University golf team.

• Max McGreevy - Edmond, OK

  It didn’t take long for the Oklahoma native to rebound back to the PGA Tour after a disappointing 2023 season cost him his card for last year. The 29-year-old quickly secured his return to the big leagues with victories at the Memorial Health Championship and the Magnit Championship on his way to the No. 2 ranking in the KFT season-long points list. McGreevy will make his 2025 debut this week at the Sony, and he should be feeling good after a win on the Japan Tour in his last outing. McGreevy first broke into the PGA Tour as a KFT graduate in 2021. He turned pro in 2017 following a decorated collegiate career at the University of Oklahoma, where he helped lead the Sooners to a national title at the 2017 NCAA Team National Championship.

Over/Unders for the Sony Open

Keeping it simple with a straightforward, uninsured two-legger at Waialea and backing a couple of guys to basically have an above-average round on Thursday.

I like Ben Griffin on a few plays this week, namely because he’s an excellent approach player and is riding some good form coming into this week. He ranks highly in the BTN model too with above-average short game play on bermuda.

As for Sepp, he too has been playing well with back-to-back top-15 finishes. He hasn’t played this event in a couple of years, but he’s shot lower than 68 in six of his last eight rounds at Waialae.

BTN Weekly Prop Play 
2025 Record: (0-1)

Rd. 1 Matchup — Ben Griffin (-140) v Patrick Fishburn

We were a round early on Sungjae last week as he saved his low totals for the weekend, so we’re going with a safer bet just to see one go in and get out of the blocks for 2025.

Few were playing better golf to close 2024 than Ben Griffin, who bagged four straight top-25 finishes to end the year. His accurate and methodical style fits Waialae well, and he’s never finished worse than T30 here in two starts. Fishburn on the other hand is making his debut here in just his second season on TOUR, and his numbers on and around bermuda greens have been less than ideal.

*DISCLAIMER: The Chalk Bomb is CHALK for a reason! This is a ballsy call. We're simply giving you 1 player projected to be highly owned that we think could warrant a fade in order to gain leverage in DFS GPP Tournaments. Sack up & fade OR Ignore the play. 

With the first big event of the year under our belts, the 2025 PGA Tour season is well and truly off and running as we turn our attention to the second event of the Hawaiian swing, the Sony Open at Waialae.

It was a so-so start to the campaign for the Chalk Bomb as Ludvig Aberg rewarded his backers with a T5, but optimal lineups featured the likes of Morikawa and Sungjae in the the higher price range.

As for this week, we’re back at Waialae, another course that anyone who’s watched golf this time of year is very familiar with. Like last week’s fellow Hawaiian venue, this course can yield some low scores, but we’ve also seen coastal winds pound this layout and make this into a much tougher scoring tournament. Though significantly shorter (and two strokes fewer at Par-70) than Kapalua, Waialae actually plays longer thanks to sharp doglegs that will force layups and less-than-driver tee shots.

So who to fade at a course like this? Well, we’ve got plenty to choose from as eight golfers are eligible for the honor. As always, the Chalk Bomb is limited to players projected at over 15% ownership in DFS according to our proprietary projections available in the Tour Junkies Discord.

Looking at what the analysts at Bet the Number have cooked up, they’re honing in on some unique driving and recovery statistics that we will use to identify this week’s Chalk Bomb. Off the tee, BTN is using ‘Distance from Edge of Fairway’ (i.e. when you miss the fairway, how far offline are you?), ‘Left Rough Tendency’ (BTN scouts say left misses are more problematic at Waialae than your average course, this stat measures how often a player finds themself in the left lettuce), SG: Approach from 100-185 yards out of the rough, and lastly, SG: Around the Green on bermuda chipping surfaces.

Re-read that if you need to, because it’s important to know where this week’s Chalk Bomb ranks among the field of 105 in those stat categories:

• Distance from Edge of Fairway — 37th

• Left Rough Tendency — 54th

• SG: APP 100-185 yds from Rough — 63rd

• SG: ARG on Bermuda — 45th

As for his track record at this event, few players have as much experience at Waialae as this guy — but his is a colorful history to say the least. The Chalk Bomb has played the Sony Open in each of the last nine years and 12 times total. The good? He’s amassed four top-15 finishes over that stretch, including a T2 last year. The bad? He has the same number of missed cuts (4), and has just one other top-30 finish excluding the four mentioned.

At $9500 on DK, he’s the fifth-most expensive as well as the fifth-highest-owned player with a percentage north of 16%. With that in mind, you’d better hope he’s boom rather than bust, and I’m not willing to take that risk near the top of my lineup.

So, the honor of the second Chalk Bomb of 2025 goes to… Keegan Bradley!

It feels like a blessing that humans don’t mark their territory like dogs.

I can for sure tell it’s definitely not butter

It’s never really explained how Santa gets into apartment buildings. I mean, it’s high time someone takes care of this in movies and books.

As far as I’m concerned, drones have really ruined the whole aura around UFO sightings. Kind of bullshit if you ask me.

Alright folks! That’s all I got for the Sony Open this week. Stay well and good luck with all your PGA DFS lineups and bets. BOME!