This is a very special couple of weeks on the golf calendar. For just the second time in nearly 117 years, golfers will have a chance to compete at the Olympics—as the men’s tournament commences on Thursday (Wednesday evening for North American viewers) and the women’s event coming the following week.
Americans hold three of the top four spots on the outright betting market on the men’s side—with Collin Morikawa, fresh off his victory at the Open Championship, owning 7-1 odds in the 60-man field at Kasumigaseki Country Club (East) in Saitama, Japan—about 35 miles northwest of Tokyo. In 1931, noted architect C.H. Alison—who also designed top-100 courses Hirono Golf Club, Kawana Hotel (Fiji) and Narou in Japan—tweaked an existing layout to create one of the country’s finest designs, ranking 89th on Golf Digest’s World 100 Greatest rankings in 2018. Tom Fazio and his son, Logan, made several renovations a few years ago, upgrading the greens and moving some fairway bunkers into modern landing zones in addition to other modifications.
The fairways at Kasumigaseki’s East course are tree-lined but quite wide given the fact that the course used to have multiple greens for each hole, which is customary for Japanese courses to allow different grasses to flourish in different times of year. Now all the greens are bentgrass and the fairways are Zoysia. The course is expected to measure about 7,500 yards, with the course setup dictated by some heavy rains expected earlier in the week.
Here are the full list of odds for the Olympics men’s golf competition (courtesy of William Hill as of Monday morning):
Christiaan Bezuidenhout: 28-1
Jazz Janewattananond: 125-1
Maximilian Kieffer: 250-1
Kristian Krogh Johannessen: 300-1
And here are the odds for the women:
Nelly Korda: +650 (bet $10 to win $65)
Emily Kristine Pedersen: 80-1
Nanna Koerstz Madsen: 80-1
Jodi Ewart Shadoff: 100-1
Bianca Pagdanganan: 300-1
Marianne Skarpnord: 350-1
Magdalena Simmermacher: 500-1
Lucrezia Colombotto Rosso: 500-1
Maria Fernanda Torres: 500-1