2025 American Express Bets, Odds, and Course Preview

Last week saw a thrilling final round, with Nick Taylor and Nico Echavarria going head to head in a playoff, with Taylor winning on the second playoff hole. It was the fifth career win for Taylor who eagled his final hole in dramatic fashion to get into the playoff.

This week, we head off the islands and onto the mainland for the American Express, the first of two early-season Pro-Am events, where players will play a rotation of three courses (and play with amateur partners) for the first three rounds. 

2025 American Express Betting Preview

The American Express represents the first mainland event of the 2025 season and the official beginning of the West Coast swing, which will see players play a variety of events in California and Arizona over the next month.

The Amex has gone by several other names in the past, including the Bob Hope Classic, where it was a five-round Pro-Am. The CareerBuilder and the Desert Classic were other monikers it held for a while, but with a big corporate sponsor in American Express on board, this one seems likely to remain a credit card-only event for the foreseeable future.

While the name has changed several times, this event has stayed relatively the same. It was changed to a four-round Pro-Am format way back in 2012 and has stayed that way ever since. The event has always featured a rotation of courses in and around Palm Springs, although more recently it has settled on three courses: La Quinta, Nicklaus Tournament, and TPC Stadium (host).

In a normal year, the pros and their Pro-Am partners play each venue once, with the pros who made the 54-hole cut dueling it out for the win on TPC Stadium in round four. 

The winner here has reached 20-under or better every season since 1990, bar one (2007 Charley Hoffman won at 17-under) as the resort-style courses, easier Pro-Am setups, and mild weather always make it ripe pickings for the professionals.

One thing this event has become synonymous with for betting is its unpredictability. While former World No. 1 Jon Rahm won this event twice when he was on the PGA TOUR (2018 and 2023), it has also produced some serious “out-of-nowhere” longshot winners.

Hudson Swafford was a hefty 200-1 or better when he won off almost no form in 2022 and both Andrew Landry and Adam Long were upwards of 500-1 in spots in their improbable wins from 2019 and 2020. 

Most recently, there was Nick Dunlap, who took home the title at this event last season as an amateur, getting to -29 for a one-stroke win. Dunlap was again listed at the same kind of massive numbers as Landry and Long.

With three easy courses in play that tend to emphasize putting (and don’t require a ton of distance to play well), and the slower amateur rounds, truly anyone can compete this week. For betting that means it’s OK to keep an open mind and leave some funds available for a wild swing or two in the outright and placing markets. 

We’ll discuss more about the course and history below before getting into the bets. 

Let’s dive in and get our American Express PGA week started!

American Express 2025 Course Preview

The Course

• PGA West—Palm Springs, California
• TPC Stadium (host course) 7,113 yards, par 72
• Nicklaus Tournament 7,100-7,150 yards, par 72
• La Quinta Country Club 7,060 yards, par 72

The Facts

• Field Size: 156 players
• Greens: Bermuda
• Fairway: Bermuda
• Rough: Bermuda
• Architect: Pete Dye (Stadium-built in 1986)

TPC Stadium was built specifically by Pete Dye to be used on the PGA Tour. However, after seeing it in play once, the pros actually led a petition to keep it off the Tour as they thought it was too hard. It’s a strange story, but a true one, and the venue wasn’t seen on the PGA again until 2015 when the Tour moved it back into the rotation.

The modern pros seem to have really welcomed the challenge as there’s been little pushback from its inclusion and the venue has led to some exciting finishes since getting into the rotation.

At its core, the Pete Dye-designed TPC Stadium is meant to be a sister setup to TPC Sawgrass, its more famous family member, and host to the PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP every year. The two courses share a ton of similarities including its use of water to test players off the tee and on approaches, its quirky bunker layout, and the placement of a short island Par 3 on the 17th holes. Yes, Stadium also carries an island Par 17, and while it hasn’t led to as much drama as the Sawgrass version, it still brings a lot of excitement to this sometimes overlooked event down the stretch. 

As for the setup, PGA Stadium features smallish greens that emphasize accuracy. Players who miss here aren’t left with brutal rough to deal with—the Bermuda grass in the winter is generally dormant—but bunkers and water make it so bad misses can be punished.

For 2025, the greens at the Stadium Course have also been redone and actually enlarged a bit. The thinking is that there will now be more room to put in more aggressive pin placements and the firmer greens could also make GIR% go up a little. Either way, it wouldn’t be shocking to see this venue slightly tougher in 2025.

Off the tee, you do need to have at least some accuracy as nasty bunkers, mounds, and water will mean bad news for far-off-centre shots. That said, a good off-the-tee game can only take you so far at Stadium, where the name of the game is hitting it close with short irons and sinking putts.

Players who can navigate this quirky layout will almost always have a shot at birdie thanks to the well-manicured smaller greens that don’t have a ton of tiers.

That’s also the same story for Nicklaus and La Quinta, which in many ways are simply scaled-down versions of Stadium. These shorter, resort courses always yield a ton of birdies and eagles and play as two of the easiest venues on TOUR every season.

This rotation of courses makes for a fun week, but it also turns the event into somewhat of a hellacious sprint. Even just one nine-hole stretch where the putter goes cold can ruin a week and players have to be ready from the get-go, or risk falling too far behind to challenge on Sunday or even make the 54-hole cut.

In this respect, anyone who gets off to a hot start and gets himself in position going into Sunday can challenge which makes this event one of the most wide-open tournaments of the season for betting. 

Betting Facts and Stats for the 2025 American Express

Below are the previous 5 winners of the Sentry and their pre-event odds from the beginning of the week of the event.

As mentioned above, this event has seen a wide range of winners. Three of the last five winners of the American Express have now gone off with odds of at least +15000 at most sportsbooks, and in Landry and Dunlap’s cases, much bigger.

This event has also seen some mid-range players from +5000-+8000 in the betting odds hit. Names like Si Woo Kim (2021), Hudson Swafford (2017), and Jason Dufner (2016) all won as reasonable but not absurd long shots.

Then we have Jon Rahm, who blitzed this event twice (2018 and 2023) and won as one of the event favorites. It’s a truly wide-open event that lends itself to taking some shots well down the line, while also not forgetting to add some of the top players to your betting card in the process.

2025 American Express Betting Odds

*2025 American Express Top 10 names in betting odds (DraftKings)

Best Bets for The 2025 American Express

Will Zalatoris 

• Each-Way Top-8 (1/5): +4000 (bet365)
• Top 20: +220

Zalatoris has played well at these stadium-designed venues. His only win came at TPC Southwind, a target venue similar to TPC Stadium with a lot of water and small greens. He’s played well at this event in the past. On top of going 3/3 on made cuts at TPC Stadium, Zalatoris grabbed a T6 finish at this event back in 2022, his first time playing this rotation of courses.

The 2021 Masters runner-up didn’t have the greatest end to 2024, but he’s worked hard to bulk up this offseason and had a nice start over in Maui at the Sentry where he shot 8-under par in Rounds 1 and 3. Given that he had a bit of a poor finish on Sunday at the Plantation Course, we can still get Zalatoris at decent numbers this week (as big as +5500 for an outright on FanDuel).

I think the American is in for a solid start to the year and love the each-way and top 20 prices we’re getting on him this week, especially now with World No. 2 Xander Schauffele having dropped out on Monday. I’d be fine playing him as a naked outright at +5000 or bigger, but like the +4000 for eight places we’re getting for an each-way as well.

Adam Hadwin

• Each-Way Top-8 (1/5): +6600 (bet365)
• Top 20: +280

Hadwin would have likely been on the card for me anyway, but the fact the Canadian just saw his countryman win last week does give him a little boost in my eyes. Both Hadwin and Nick Taylor were the two Canadians left off the most recent Presidents Cup team–in favor of Mac Hughes and Taylor Pendrith–and, as we saw with Taylor last week, the slight did create some motivation. 

It remains to be seen whether Hadwin can match Taylor’s heroics from last week but certainly, this week’s venue is a positive for Hadwin. He shot a career-best 59 at La Quinta in 2017 and has finished T6 or better at this tournament in five of nine career starts.

The 37-year-old had a solid opener in Maui, shooting 67 in Round 1, and did improve with his approaches last week at the Sony. I’m going more off of course history than anything but TPC Stadium, despite the three-course rotation, does have a solid correlation with course experience as we’ve seen with past winners like Rahm and perennial top finishers like Sungjae Im and Patrick Cantlay.

Hadwin is also a competitor who grabbed four top-six finishes in 2024 on the PGA and at +6600 this is much bigger than we’ve seen him at this event in recent years. He’s an add for me this week and love the each-way price we’re getting for eight places on bet365.

Matti Schmid

• Outright: +17000 (FanDuel)
• Top 10: +1200
• Top 20: +500

Schmid is a talented player who tends to perform best in these sort of birdie-fest environments. He’s landed six top-10 finishes on the PGA since 2022 and all have come at lower-scoring events much like this week, with his most recent being a T3 finish at the Shriners at the nearby TPC Summerlin. He also grabbed a surprise T6 at this event/venue in 2023, on his first go around TPC Stadium, and finished a strong T26 at TPC Sawgrass last season, another Dye venue with a ton of correlation to this week’s host course.

While Schmid’s play fell off a little after that start, he’s still 13th in BoB% and 4th in Eagles made over the last 24 rounds and has massive top 10 odds this week—as big as +1200 on FanDuel.

Just given the rate of longshot winners we’ve had this event (with many being first-timers) I’m perfectly fine with adding the German as an outright play.

KH Lee 

• Each Way: +35000 EW-8 1/5 (bet365)
• Top 20: +900

This event has seen plenty of winners come in with virtually no form to grab an improbable win.

Nick Dunlap won off the back of four missed cuts last season, Andrew Landry missed five cuts in a row coming into his win here in 2020 (including an MC at the Sony Open), and 2019 winner Adam Long had a nice string of three missed cuts working (including the Sony) before his improbable win here over Phil Mickelson.

That brings me to this year’s mega-bomb KH Lee. Lee’s riding a four-event missed cut streak at the moment and also missed the cut last week in Hawaii, where he lost 5.5 strokes putting. That’s concerning, but the South Korean does have a habit of breaking his dry spells in a big way. He finished T4 at the Cognizant Classic last season off the back of three missed cuts, and his last win on the PGA came off the back of three missed cuts and a T25 finish.

Lee’s also been a solid desert performer, landing the T6 in Vegas a couple of months ago to go along with a T2 in Phoenix back in 2021— and two top-25 finishes at TPC Stadium from 2020 and 2024.

The numbers on Lee this week don’t reflect his ability to lift himself in a hurry off a bad stretch of finishes, or his desert record. Either way, in this volatile environment, I’m happy to take a piece of him as both a top 20 and an each-way this week at the current prices.