U.S. Open betting storylines and picks

The 2025 U.S. Open has arrived and, if Oakmont Country Club plays as difficult as we believe, then you better buckle up. 

It’s been nine years since Dustin Johnson won the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont with a winning score of -4. That week, Johnson was one of only four golfers to finish the 72 holes with a score under par as Jim Furyk, Shane Lowry and Scott Piercy tied for second at -1. 

Earlier this week World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler called Oakmont “arguably the hardest golf course in the world” and, after listening to a number of players speak, it seems that a good attitude is going to be just as important this week as showing up with your A-game. 

Everyone will miss fairways and everyone will get bad bounces. The winner this week will likely be whoever can keep those papercuts from turning into full-blown trips to the emergency room. 

It’s going to be look like a warzone out there, so grab something bubbly and enjoy watching the best golfers in the world struggle. 

Let’s get to a few storylines before some bets. 

How low can you go? 

Ask almost anyone and they’re tell you they are expecting a winning score over par this week at the U.S. Open. 

FanDuel doesn’t seem to agree. 

Listed under “Tourney Specials” is a winning score prop with the number posted at 278.5 shots with the under at -145. 

Oakmont will play as a Par 70 this week, meaning a score under 278.5 would be at worst -2 at 278. 

As mentioned earlier, Johnson was the only player in the 2016 U.S. Open to go under this number. 

In 2007, Angel Cabrera shot 285 (+5) to beat Tiger Woods and Furyk by one shot. 

Here is a look at the all the winning scores at U.S. Opens hosted at Oakmont since 1927. 

The last U.S. Open won with a score-to-par worse than -2 was in 2018 when Brooks Koepka won at Shinnecock Hills at +1. 

It’s starting to feel like 2000 

Is Scottie Scheffler going to win this tournament by more than 10 shots? 

I don’t want to say yes, but I’m not sure I can definitively say no. 

According to DataGolf, the current “peak” of Scheffler ranks as the second-best of all-time with a DG Index of +3.09, trailing only Tiger Woods’s DG Index of +3.88 in September 2000. 

DG index is an estimate of the quality of each golfer's recent performances relative to the average PGA Tour field. It is in units of strokes-gained per round. 

It’s impossible for me to see that Scottie has crept as close to Tiger on this list without thinking about Pebble Beach in 2000 when Tiger won the U.S. Open by 15(!) shots. 

At the time it was only Woods’s third major championship win of his career. This week Scheffler looks for his fourth. 

Scheffler, after a slow start to his season, already has three wins in 2025 with wins by four, five and eight shots in those three events. 

His three major wins have all come by three or more shots, as well. 

While speaking to the media earlier this week, Rory McIlroy said this about Oakmont: “If you put it in the fairway, it’s certainly playable. But then you just have to think about leaving your ball below the hole and just trying to make as many pars as you can. You get yourself in the way of a few birdies, that’s a bonus.”  

Need someone to hit a fairway? Scottie is your guy. 

Need someone to leave the ball in the right spot? Scottie is your guy. 

Need someone to make a few bonus birdies? Scottie is your guy. 

The more guys talk about the grind this event will be, and more I hear about how much discipline it’ll take to win this week, the more I think there is a chance Scheffler can absolutely run away with this tournament. 

Scheffler is +280 to win the U.S. Open on FanDuel and can be found at 11-to-1 in some spots to win by four or more shots, something he has done in seven of his 16 PGA Tour wins and four-straight dating back to the 2024 Tour Championship. 

"Innovate beyond what’s known so far"

Bryson DeChambeau has new irons… again. 

You might remember hearing about his set of 3D-printed Avoda blades that he debuted at the 2024 Masters where he posted a T6 for his best performance at Augusta up until that point of his career. 

Well, now he’s back with new irons that are supposedly better than ever. Last week at LIV Virginia, DeChambeau broke out his new LA Golf BAD V3-W irons after months of testing. 

"The curvature on the face was a little different, the weight on the toe didn't feel right for some reason, and there were some internal things that we worked on in the club that made the face more resilient when you hit it all across the face," DeChambeau said of the decision to go back and create a third version of the iron. "That's ultimately why it wasn't ready, and we had to print another version."

After reading into it for a few minutes, it seems to boil down to one simple issue. Bryson likes to swing fast and, typically when you swing fast and miss the centre of the club face, the ball goes all over the place. 

But with these new irons, and thanks to the “bulge radius progression through the set,” it should allow Bryson to swing hard, hit it anywhere on the face and avoid those severe hooks or slices that we saw a lot over the weekend at this year’s Masters. 

Last week with his new set of irons, DeChambeau finished tied for fourth and, according to RickRunGood.com, he gained over 1.7 strokes on approach, the third-best week for him on approach in 2025 and his eighth-best since the start of 2024. 

Bryson said this iron concept could “innovate beyond what’s known so far.” To that, I say good luck. 

Notes and Hopes 

Most weeks the PGA Tour turns into a birdie-fest with scores in the high teens and low 20s. 

So with this week expecting to be the toughest challenge of the year, I found the 10 events this season with a winner score of -12 or higher on the PGA Tour. 

To no surprise, Scheffler leads the way with two of his three wins this season coming in these events and his worst finish coming at The Players Championship in a tie for 20th. 

Very high on the list is Canadian Corey Conners with four top-10s in eight starts in these events. Conners’s U.S. Open history isn’t great, but a tie for ninth at Pinehurst last year proved he has the stuff to compete in golf’s toughest test. 

Here is a look at the 10 best PGA Tour golfers in the harder events on the tour’s schedule this year.

As for LIV guys, only the event in Miami meets my criteria with a winning score of -6. Here is a look at the best LIV players in the two majors and LIV Miami this season.

Finally, before I get to some picks… 

Ludvig Aberg might have been built for the U.S. Open. 

Arguably already one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the world, it’s his putting that I’m interested in this week.

While he’s only played in six majors, Aberg is statistically the third-best putter in major championships since 2020.

Four of his eight best putting weeks in his career have come at majors and the only time he lost strokes in a major championship was the 2024 Open where he ended up on the wrong side of the draw and missed the cut. 

Aberg’s resume in majors is short, but the yellow boxes on his Wiki page are already adding up. In those six starts, his best finish came at the 2024 Masters where he finished solo second. He also finished seventh at the Masters this year and nearly missed another yellow box with a T12 the 2024 U.S. Open. 

Aberg has been hit or miss this season, but his hits have been big with a win at Torrey Pines (a U.S. Open venue) already under his belt. 

If he putts well again this week, I fully expect him to get in the mix on Sunday. 

The Card 

Outright 

Rahm 12-1

Aberg 24-1  

Hovland 55-1 

Spieth 60-1 

To Miss Cut 

Brooks Koepka +100 

Sepp Straka +166 

Top Finish (including ties) 

Top 5 

Scheffler -190

Cam Young +1600 

Top 10

Tommy Fleetwood +230 

Ryan Gerard +340 

Jordan Spieth +430 

Top 20 

Corey Conners +140 

Daniel Berger +200 

Aaron Rai +230 

Top Debutant

Johnny Keefer +1100