Valero Texas Open odds, picks: Ludvig Åberg returns as favorite

This year’s Texas Two-Step concludes with the Valero Texas Open at TPC San Antonio, where the winner — if not otherwise exempt — will receive the last invite into the 2025 Masters Tournament next week at Augusta National.

Twenty-seven players in this week’s Valero Texas Open 149-man field will play at this year’s Masters. That includes the likes of Ludvig Åberg, Tommy Fleetwood, Corey Conners, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, and 2021 Masters Champion Hideki Matsuyama. All of these players are listed among the favorites this week as well.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and World No. 2 Rory McIlroy are not playing at TPC San Antonio, opting to get their final start before the Masters at last week’s Texas Children’s Houston Open. But that should not shy away from the fact that this year’s edition of the Valero Texas Open boasts an impressive field. Six of the top-16 players in the world will tee it up, including Åberg, who is currently fifth.

Last year’s winner, Akshay Bhatia, currently the 23rd-ranked player in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR), will look to defend his title this week. Bhatia’s win over Denny McCarthy awarded him a spot at The Masters the following week, when he became the first player to qualify for the season’s first major after being a Drive, Chip, and Putt participant in his youth. Other past champions in this year’s field include Conners, who has won this event twice in 2019 and 2023, Spieth, Charley Hoffman, Jimmy Walker, Martin Laird, and 2023 Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson.

Interestingly, four of the last seven champions at the Valero Texas Open claimed their first PGA Tour victory with their win at TPC San Antonio. That was most recently the case with J.J. Spaun, who won in 2022. The other three players that this applies to are Conners in 2019, Andrew Landry in 2018, and Kevin Chappell in 2017. Perhaps this week will produce another first-time champion, which will not only give them a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour but also book them a trip to Augusta National.

Players who keep the ball in play, as do those who flush their irons with precision and accuracy, tend to do well here. Unlike last week at Memorial Park, TPC San Antonio is not a bomber’s paradise, but having distance does not hurt. What does hurt is being out of position and attacking these green complexes from a poor angle.

Valero Texas Open Odds:

Here are the latest odds for players to win the Valero Texas Open, courtesy of FanDuel:

Ludvig Åberg +1200

Tommy Fleetwood +1400

Corey Conners +1600

Patrick Cantlay +1800

Jordan Spieth +2200

Hideki Matsuyama +2200

Keegan Bradley +2500

Denny McCarthy +3000

Si Woo Kim +3500

Daniel Berger +3500

Tony Finau +4000

Keith Mitchell +4500

Maverick McNealy +4500

Tom Kim +4500

Bud Cauley +5000

Sam Burns +5000

J.T. Poston +5000

Samuel Stevens +5500

Gary Woodland +5500

Ben Griffin +5500

Matt Fitzpatrick +6000

Harry Hall +6000

Rico Hoey +6500

Kurt Kitayama +6500

Lee Hodges +7000

Jake Knapp +7000

Andrew Novak +7000

Charley Hoffman +7500

Alex Smalley +7500

Rickie Fowler +7500

Patrick Rodgers +8000

Ryan Fox +8000

Ryan Gerard +8000

Seamus Power +9000

Brian Harman +9000

Justin Rose +9000

Beau Hossler +9000

Tom Hoge +9000

Chris Kirk +9000

Thorbjørn Olesen +9000

Victor Perez +10000

Matt Kuchar +10000

Niklas Nørgaard +10000

Matt Wallace +10000

Photo by Raj Mehta/Getty Images

Playing Through’s Picks:

Jack Milko — Staff Writer, Golf

TPC San Antonio requires good positioning off the tee and solid iron play into these undulating green complexes. Bud Cauley fits that billing, especially considering that he is fifth on the PGA Tour in overall strokes gained and 13th in strokes gained from tee-to-green.

He is not the longest of hitters by any means, but this is a golf course that favors the golfer who plays from the proper angles instead of those who bomb and gauge. The former Alabama standout picks and plots away around a golf course, which helps explain why he is second on tour, trailing only Collin Morikawa, in proximity to the hole. His short game is solid too.

Cauley arrives at the Valero Texas Open in good form as well. In his last two starts, at The Players Championship and the Valspar Championship, Cauley tied for sixth at TPC Sawgrass and then posted a T-4 at Innisbrook.

He began the final round at The Players one stroke behind J.J. Spaun, but a couple of early bogies kept him at bay. He tallied a 2-over 74 then, but still had plenty of folks cheering him on from the course, at home, and on television. Perhaps nobody rooted harder for Cauley than Justin Thomas, his college teammate.

Thomas said that he would have done “really weird things” for Cauley to win The Players, a testament to their friendship but also to Cauley’s lengthy injury history. Just hours after missing the cut at the 2018 Memorial Tournament, Cauley was in a terrible car accident. He immediately underwent surgery to repair six broken ribs, a fractured leg, and a collapsed lung. He then had to suffer through complications from that incident for years, and even had a “hole in his chest” in the spring of 2021. He did not return to the PGA Tour until early 2024.

Before that accident, many considered Cauley the next big star and predicted he would someday become a major champion. That still could happen, but this week, Cauley becomes a star in his own right and gets the job done at TPC San Antonio. He has experienced the final round pressure before, especially over the last few weeks, and gets over the hump to capture the first win of his PGA Tour career. And, with his win, Cauley will head to Augusta National for his first Masters appearance.

FanDuel Odds: Cauley to win at +5000

Photo by Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images

RJ Ochoa — Senior Producer, Blogging the Boys

When it comes to the week before the Masters it is difficult to take anything super seriously, all due respect to the Valero Texas Open that I hold near and dear to my heart as someone who lived in San Antonio for a decade.

This week feels like one in which we are going to get a name that surprises us but also one that we are somewhat familiar with. Akshay Bhatia had that vibe a year ago.

For this year’s Valero Texas Open, I am going to go with someone who checks those boxes in Keegan Bradley. So far this season, Bradley has been knocking on the door. We continue to have these conversations about how weird it would be if he qualified for the Ryder Cup in the year he is captaining it. A win in San Antonio would not necessarily merit that, but it would stir the pot before one of the biggest weeks of the year.

Give me the captain on the way to Augusta.

FanDuel Odds: Bradley to win at +2500

Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Mark Schofield — Staff Writer, NFL and Formula 1

First off, a hearty congratulations to our fearless leader Jack, who nailed last week’s predictions with his choice of Min Woo Lee to win. He joins RJ, who correctly selected Ludvig Åberg at the Genesis Invitational.

Will I join them in the winner’s circle this week?

Probably not, but you can’t make birdie if you don’t tee it up, so here we go.

Going chalk last week with Rory McIlroy did not pan out, so we are going back to our original method of finding a longshot in the field. In doing my research for this week, I stumbled across this note: In four of the last six Valero Texas Opens, the winner has ranked first for Strokes Gained: Approach during the tournament.

That leads me to Tom Kim, who currently ranks seventh on the PGA Tour in that statistic this season, with a SG: Approach of 0.878. It has been a slow start to the season for Kim, who has just one Top Ten finish on the year, coming at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am back at the start of February. Since then he has finished no higher than T36, which came the last time out at the Valspar Championship.

Still, that note has me thinking he could make a run this week.

FanDuel Odds: Kim to win at +4500

Photo by Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images