Scottie Scheffler starts the Houston Open on Thursday as a huge favourite to win the event, but the world number one still has a way to go to reach Tiger Woods territory.
The 27-year-old's results and statistics have drawn comparisons to the kind of form Woods showed at his peak, and that is reflected in the odds for this week's PGA Tour event at Memorial Park. Scheffler is as short as 11/4 to win the title in Texas this week after back-to-back victories.
After finding a solution to his putting woes, transitioning to a mallet head rather than a blade, the 2022 Masters champion cruised to victory at the Bay Hill Invitational earlier this month. And he made it back-to-back victories, producing a sensational final round of 64 to surge through the field and win The Players Championship by one shot from Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele, retaining his title at TPC Sawgrass.
Scheffler's odds give him an implied chance of 26 per cent of winning the event, a staggering number considering there are close to 150 players in the field. Clark is the second-favourite in Houston, priced at 12/1 – an implied probability of 7.69 per cent.
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Scheffler's pre-tournament odds of victory are the shortest in the RickRunGood database, which collates data from all PGA Tour events dating back to 2019. Jon Rahm's price of 19/5 at last year's Mexico Open was the previous low. The Spaniard went on to finish second behind Tony Finau.
Although Scheffler's strokes gained statistics are in the same stratosphere as Woods at his very best, he is yet to receive the same kind of respect from the oddsmakers that was once afforded to the 15-time major champion.
Woods won the 2008 Buick Invitational as an even-money favourite (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)Woods enjoyed an epic run to conclude the 2007 season, winning five of his final six stars. Woods started the 2008 Buick Invitational as an even-money favourite as a result, and he duly lifted the title before going on to win two more tournaments in succession. That year, Woods started The Masters as a 3/1 favourite, but lost out by three shots to Trevor Immelman.
Scheffler is a 9/2 shot to win The Masters next month, with the bookmakers not expecting Woods to make much of an impression on the leaderboard. The 48-year-old has not completed a PGA Tour event in the past year due to injury, and he pulled out in the second round of February's Genesis Invitational with flu.
Woods is available at as much as 175/1 with some bookmakers, a far cry from the ominous figure he once posed on the leaderboard at Augusta National.
“It doesn’t look like Tiger will play again before Augusta and that means he’ll have had less than two competitive rounds this year which is hardly the prep he needs," Lee Phelps of William Hill said. "We haven’t seen much interest in him yet, but punters always have a soft spot for Tiger and we’d expect to see plenty of bets on him winning it, while the 10/1 about him finishing in the top-10 will appeal to plenty too.”
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