If you can peel your eyes away from the stunning mountain views and red lava rock hues, there’s a pretty decent Bank of Utah Championship underway at the Black Desert Resort, where a former Ryder Cupper is amongst those to consider for your live bets.

Danish golfer Thorbjørn Olesen is among those in the clubhouse with a 6-under 65 in the opening round and is now the +850 betting favorite via DraftKings Sportsbook.

David Lipsky and Jesper Svensson also posted 65s to join the Dane, while Cameron Champ, Paul Peterson, Justin Lower, Ryan Gerard, Jackson Suber, Nick Dunlap and Frankie Capan III all sit just a shot behind at 5-under. Play was suspended when the sun dropped behind the mountains, leaving plenty of players unfinished in their opening rounds.

Of those still to complete round one, Austin Cook, Kevin Yu and Takumi Kanaya were the pace setters. Cook had joined the leaders at 6-under through 13 holes while Yu had just dropped from the lead to 4-under through 16. Kanaya is 4-under through 13.

A year ago, we had Adam Svensson blistering the course in 60 shots to open, and eventual winner Matt McCarty started with a 62, but scoring was a little tougher this time around. With the temperature down from the 90s in 2024 to the 70s this time out, the ball didn’t fly as far and the birdies were harder to find.

Those near the top of the board were doing so predominatly via great approach play with eight of the top 10 players in Strokes Gained: Approach all sitting inside the top 12 of the leaderboard, while Olesen also had just 24 putts to help him along.

Here are the updated outright odds via DraftKings:

• +850: Thorbjørn Olesen
• +1100: Kevin Yu
• +1200: Alex Noren
• +1200: Jesper Svensson
• +1800: Takumi Kanaya
• +1800: Ryan Gerard
• +2200: Cameron Champ
• +2500: Rico Hoey

Just like a handful of holes out there on this course, there is a risk-reward approach we can take at this point in a tournament in a golf betting sense. There are more conservative plays and more aggressive ones. Let’s try to find some examples of both.

Conservatively, we can extrapolate from what we’ve seen and the data collected to potentially help us with live wagers for those playing at Black Desert. We can look at the players playing well on approach that generally do just that. Those who don’t usually ball strike this well become options in your aggressive approach.

Cautious bets

Thorbjørn Olesen, +900 to win – Firstly, if you can, wait till Olesen is about to start his second round as you will potentially get higher odds than the current number as players stretch the lead in the morning wave. But given the eight-time DP World Tour winner is coming off a decent T14 at the Sanderson Farms and a T9 at the Spanish Open, I’m sensing a chance. The scary part, he hasn’t won on the PGA TOUR and we’ve seen that chase for several of his European peers come up short under that pressure.

“I haven't quite finished it off on Sundays,” Olesen admitted. “I feel like (this season) I have been in some pretty good positions on Friday and Saturday and just sort of had nine bad holes and that's costing me. It only takes a couple of good Sundays and then it would've been a good season. That's how I look at it. There are still quite a few tournaments left. There are some good opportunities.”

Olesen ranks ninth in SG: Approach this week and fourth in SG: Putting, two metrics he ranks positively over this season so I am hoping for little or no regression.

Matt McCarty, +320 Top 10 and Ties – Am I crazy? Conservative to pick a +320 guy who is T46? I think so, yes. The defending champion returns to his awesome victory, where he went lights out, with good vibes and it was just two small errors that saw him shoot 69 instead of something lower on Thursday. I think McCarty could put a very low number on the board in his next round, much like the 60 he finished with in Japan last start. It could have been a 58 that day. I’m not convinced he won’t threaten something like that again.

Big swings

Frankie Capan III, +8000 to win – Why is a guy one off the clubhouse lead +8000, you may ask? Well, remember those SG: Approach stats we spoke of? Capan III is 167th on TOUR this season in approach so seeing him rank fifth in the field in round one is certainly an outlier. But, if you are looking for a reason to suggest he could hold his form for three more days, remember he was T6 recently at Sanderson Farms, just his second top 10 of the season. Perhaps the +450 Top 10 and ties is where you could look with more confidence.

Austin Cook, +7500 outright, +900 Top 5 and Ties – Cook has a chance to come back out in the morning and make a 19-foot birdie putt to take the outright lead. Even if he doesn’t, he has a par-5 18th to come to go deeper in the opening round and potentially take First Round Leader honors. But Cook has missed five of his last six cuts and hasn’t been the guy who won the 2017 RSM Classic in a while. Can we really trust a blast from the past performance? Probably not. But we get the juice if we want to try.

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