Finding the Top Golf Betting Sites in 2024

The relationship between golf and sports betting is growing at an incredible pace. There used to be a time when picking a winner before the tournament began was your only way to get in on the action. Nowadays, matchups and prop bets have become mainstream, and daily fantasy golf has absolutely blown up.

If you’re excited about all of the potential, consider this your ideal destination. This guide is devoted to unveiling the best golf betting sites, as well as delivering all sorts of valuable tips that will help you profit when betting on golf online.

We didn’t just recommend these online sportsbooks because they had the best software or the largest selection of wagers. Of course, those aspects represent a big chunk of how our sports betting sites get ranked, but we dive much deeper than that.

From providing trusted banking options to offering competitive pricing, we endure an assiduous process to ensure that a golf betting site we endorse will leave you completely satisfied when it comes to betting on golf for real money.

If you’ve been wondering where to bet on golf online, you need wonder no more.

The online sports betting industry is super competitive, and lots of real money betting sites want to garner your business. Unfortunately, not all golf betting sites on the internet are safe and secure. If you want to avoid all of the headaches and anguish caused by placing real money wagers at troublesome online betting sites, stick to betting at the sportsbooks we suggest.

As far as how we compiled our rankings on this page, the headlines below illustrate the types of things we’re looking for in the best golf betting sites.

Trying to pick a winner before a golf tournament begins can be fun, and most sports betting sites offer odds to win for all PGA Tour events. However, “one betting market” for “one tour” simply isn’t sufficient enough to be classified as one of the top golf betting sites out there.

We look for golf sportsbooks that offer all sorts of options. That could mean offering odds for individuals “to finish inside the top 20,” offering pricing for “low American,” or “whether or not there will be a playoff.”

This could also include allowing bettors to place wagers on other tours, such as the LPGA Tour or the European Tour. We like to see plenty of head-to-head matchups for tournaments, too.

Lots of people want to add funds to their online betting accounts instantaneously by utilizing credit cards and debit cards. Others might want to transfer money from their PayPal account or start cashing in on the Bitcoin they have saved up.

Since not everyone has access to the same type of currency, we look for real-money golf betting sites that are flexible in this department. At the same time, anything less than a proven and trusted banking option will get red-flagged immediately.

Have faith knowing that if and when you deposit or withdraw any funds on the golf betting sites we advocate, your money and personal information will be fully protected. You can also expect these transactions to be completed in a timely manner.

What is the customer experience like and how easy is the site to use? To be blunt, these are some of the most underrated facets of scrutinizing how good or bad a golf betting site is. Not for us though, as we take this area very seriously.

We touched on how having a sizeable collection of golf wagers to choose from is vital, but they have to be arranged in a systematic way so that we’re completely aware of our choices.

Once any of these procedures seem complicated or take too long, we won’t waste any time demoting that particular sportsbook.

One of the more unappreciated qualities of our top-rated golf betting sites is how attentive and helpful the customer service agents are. Once you start firing away on PGA Tour betting, you may have a question regarding a specific bet that is being offered. Perhaps you’ll run into an issue where you thought you qualified for a certain promotion but never received the associated benefits.

The good news is, at the best golf sportsbooks, they treat these matters purposefully.

Is there anything more annoying than writing an email that disappears into somebody’s spam folder? How about pleading for help while no one is even there to provide the courtesy of a response?

Sign up and stay active at any of the online bookmakers we support, and you can forget about all of that nonsense.

Betting on golf online can become addicting once you get the ball rolling. The combination of how fun and easy it is to place real money golf bets on the internet has countless people enthralled. From scouring through endless possibilities to rapidly locking bets in, the overall landscape is hard to beat.

After shedding light on where you should you bet on golf online and why the best golf betting sites reign supreme, let’s chat about the major benefits of online golf betting.

If you want to bet at a brick-and-mortar casino or a betting parlor, you have to abide by whatever rules and odds they have in place. When you bet golf tournaments online, you can shop your odds and place real money wagers 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Betting on golf online means there’s no worrying about the logistics of physically getting to your destination. And, if you use the top-ranked golf betting sites, there’s no fretting about whether or not your bookie is going to pay your winnings.

Nowadays, betting on golf tournaments has expanded into a full-on parade of money-making opportunities. We want you to join the party that is “making money on all the available golf bets”.

Let’s get started by discussing the variety of golf bets you will encounter.

Win bets are the ones that you are most likely the most used to. This is where you bet on a golfer to win a particular round or a particular tournament. The premise of the bet is simple.

If the golfer you picked wins the round or the tournament, you win your bet!

We’d love to sound cool and overcomplicate this somehow but we can’t- it’s really that simple.

One of the perks of these bets is that they almost always pay way better than even money. Now that Tiger Woods in his prime is out of the picture, even the heavy favorites will offer nice payouts.

Picking someone to win out of a large field is tricky, and therefore the sportsbooks will reward you if you are correct.

For Example:

We looked at the odds for an upcoming tournament and the favorite to win was at +700. This means that if you bet $100 on that golfer and he wins, you would win a profit of $700! A $10 wager on that winning golfer would net you $80 total ($70 profit, $10 original bet).

These bets usually come into play in the later rounds of a tournament when there is a clear favorite to win that is well out in front of everyone else. You basically will be betting that anyone else other than that golfer will win.

For example, if Dustin Johnson is out in front by 5 strokes going into the last round, you can bet that anyone but Dustin Johnson will win (betting the field). You can also choose the other side of the bet with a standard To Win bet for Dustin.

In the golf majors, you will see more of the “vs the field” bets at the beginning of the tournament. They will group golfers together based on rank or nationality and offer bets vs the field.

For example, the following bet was offered in the 2017 United States Open:

Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson VS. the field

This bet was offered at an 8:1 price. Essentially if you bet $100 on three golfers vs the field, you would need either Garcia, Rose, or Stenson to win the tournament. If any of the three men were victorious, you would profit $800.

These bets are not only a lot of fun, but a great spot to make money if you have a strong read on how specific golfers are going to play. Head to head matchups are where the sportsbook will pick two golfers, and you get to pick which of the two you think is going to beat the other one.

With these bets, it does not matter how well the golfers do against the rest of the field. It does not matter if they win the tournament or anything like that. All that matters is how well they do against the other golfer in the bet.

You will find head to head matchups based on the individual rounds as well as head to head overall tournament matchups.

An example with two evenly matched golfers might look like this.

If one golfer is favored over the other, it may look more like this.

If you bet in a brick-and-mortar casino, you may or may not have the option to place this head to head matchup bet. Sometimes they will offer one or two options, but that will be it. You may see a few more during bigger tournaments or majors.

Online sportsbooks, on the other hand, will offer much more variety with this bet type for you to choose from. This is awesome as it gives you that much more flexibility with your bets and more opportunities to leverage specific knowledge you have on specific golfers.

Futures bets are popular bets in all types of sports. They are bets that are not decided in the near future but take an extended period to decide. The futures bet that you will see the most in professional golf is a bet on who will be the FedEx Cup winner.

The bet is simple and the payoff is extremely nice as it can be tough to predict correctly. Futures bets on who will win the FedEx Cup are available all year long, but most people tend to make their bets at the beginning of the year or right before the playoffs start.

Your odds will typically be better at the beginning of the year as there is so much that can happen throughout the year. The better a golfer plays, the worse his odds get for us bettors. However, if a certain golfer is struggling in the early part of the season- you can bet your bottom dollar his futures odds will be reflected.

As golfers’ chances of winning the Championship increase or decrease, their payout odds should increase and decrease as well. A good strategy with these bets is to look for online sportsbooks that overreact to a player’s result in one specific tournament.

Don’t be late to the party. You don’t want to jump on a guy the week after he won an event. That’s what the majority of the public does. Remember, when we bet golf, we want to do the opposite of the general public. The average person doesn’t win money betting on golf, so don’t bet golf like the average person does!

An example of how a futures bet may change drastically is what happened to Justin Thomas at the beginning of the 2017 season. He opened as a 50:1 shot to win the FedEx Cup. After winning three tournaments before January had even ended, he was leading the FedEx Cup.

As you can imagine, the days of getting Justin Thomas at 50:1 to win the FedEx Cup were long gone.

The best way to attack futures odds is putting stock in a guy that is coming off a couple less than stellar performances.

Betting sites must reflect what takes place on the course and how bettors are reacting to it. Clearly, if a golfer struggles for a three-week stretch, that golfer isn’t going to be receiving a lot of action on him during that period. You may see his odds go from 20:1 to 30:1. A couple more bad events and suddenly he is 50:1.

As we will explain in the betting strategies section, this can be a very profitable way to bet on future FedEx Cup winners.

Short for proposition bets, prop bets are wagers on whether or not something will happen (or how many times it will) during a round or tournament.

Prop bets come in all shapes and sizes but can typically be classified into skilled and non-skilled prop bets. While you won’t ever see them sorted this way at the sportsbook, it’s important that you are able to tell the distinction.

These are the fun, wild, and wacky bets.

For example, you can bet on whether or not a hole-in-one will be made during the course of the tournament. At the Masters, you can bet on if the winning player will kiss his significant other on the 18^th green.

Obviously, there isn’t any skill involved in bets like this. These bets are purely for entertainment value and should never be part of a long-term winning betting strategy. There’s nothing wrong with making unskilled prop bets as long as you are aware that you are gambling and that winning these bets long-term is not sustainable.

For example, you could see a bet on whether or not there are over or under X number of birdies on a particular hole. You can weigh in the weather conditions (are they better or worse for scoring), the skill of the golfers playing that week, how the hole lends itself to the golfers playing that week, etc.

Some sites have more golf props than others, but there are plenty to sift through any day of the week.

Come tournament time, you will encounter group betting. That could mean picking the low man among a threesome that’s teeing off together, or that could be betting on the low man from a specific region.

At first glance, a wager like this might seem like an unskilled prop bet, but there is a lot of information you can weigh to make a better-informed decision.

Unskilled bets are only for entertainment, and skilled prop bets can be for entertainment and/or part of a long-term winning golf betting strategy.

Please don’t be one of those guys or gals that convinces themselves that the crazy unskilled prop bets are beatable. They are strictly for entertainment value.

Live betting golf tournaments are becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon, and it’s only going to get bigger. Golf is a sport where it can be especially beneficial to pounce when the time is right, and lots of enthusiasts are quite captivated. For example, rather than bet on a golfer to win an event at the start of the week, you can wait and see how somebody performs in round 1.

Heck, the odds get adjusted so frequently that you can even place wagers in the middle of tournament rounds. It’s only a matter of time until you’re able to bet on whether or not a player will hole his upcoming putt!

While many land-based sportsbooks offer “in-game” betting for golf tournaments, who wants to stand in a line? By the time it’s your turn to bet, you could have already missed out on the value. That’s not a problem at the top golf betting sites.

Established in 2007, the FedEx Cup has changed the way players and fans approach each PGA Tour season. Most other major sports have a regular season that builds toward the playoffs. While athletes in other major sports in the US have a designated offseason, there’s no rest for the weary on the PGA Tour. The TOUR Championship signals the end of a PGA Tour season (around Labor Day); the next season gets underway the very next week.

Betting on who wins the TOUR Championship is essentially the same thing as betting on who wins the FedEx Cup. You can also bet on these markets.

There are tons of US Open betting markets at your disposal before and during the tournament.

Scheduled annually in mid-July, it’s the final golf major of the year. But you don’t have to wait until the summer months arrive to begin your preparation to make money betting the Open Championship. There’s a large assortment of bets for this special occasion.

Historically the fourth golf major of the year, the PGA Championship is now sandwiched between the US Master and the US Open. It takes place in the middle of May, and betting on the tournament is available all year round at most online sportsbooks. These are the bets you can expect to see for the PGA.

Hosted every other year, the Ryder Cup represents the zenith in team golf. A lot of planning goes into this revered competition that alternates between US and European soil, and there are tons of ways to get in on the action.

Due to the way this tournament is structured, the online bets for the Solheim Cup are unique compared to when you traditionally bet on women’s golf. Here are some of the most common Solheim Cup wagers you’ll find online.

The 12 best American golfers face off against the 12 best International players in an exhilarating 4 days of nonstop action-packed golf. The first Presidents Cup was in 1994 and has taken place in the fall every other year since the tragedies of 9/11 in 2001 forced the Presidents Cup to be postponed until the next year, which is why it now takes place during even-numbered years. The waiting time in between each Presidents Cup adds to the momentum buildup each year.

Whether it’s the John Deere Classic or the PGA Championship, there’s a baseline approach you can utilize to bet on golf and win money.

We will get into some of the specific golf betting tips later on, but we need to lay the groundwork first.

You don’t have to dissect the golf course and familiarize yourself with every hole, but be aware of the layout and the region that it’s in.

For example, a lot of the courses on the West Coast Swing have poa annua putting surfaces. These are traditionally bumpy, especially late in the afternoon, and a lot of the guys from the Southeast struggle to make the transition. There are others who thrive on this surface. Conversely, a lot of the golf courses in Florida are played on Bermuda greens.

Look at if the venue is tree-lined with lots of doglegs or open off the tee with really long par-4s. Is the rough going to be up, or can you get away with spraying it off the tee? These are the types of things worth assessing before you place your bets.

One rule of thumb is to target golfers playing in an area/on a putting surface they are comfortable in. Phil Mickelson grew up in San Diego and went to college at Arizona State – it’s not just a coincidence that each of his first seven victories occurred on the west coast.

Once you garner some knowledge about the golf course, it’s time to take a look at the weather forecast for the week. Just like a baseball bettor can look at a team’s splits versus righties and lefties, golf bettors can estimate what the weather will be like during the morning and afternoon waves.

If you know that it’ll be benign on Thursday morning but is supposed to blow 20+ mph in the afternoon, use that knowledge to your advantage. Perhaps pile on some FRL (first-round lead) bets on some guys teeing off early.

Another way to exploit a potential discrepancy of weather between each wave is in the head-to-head matchup selection.

Weather discrepancies won’t be baked into the pricing when the best golf betting sites initially release their H2H odds. While the matchups are unveiled on Tuesday morning (EST), first- and second-round tee times typically don’t get released until Tuesday afternoon.

Do not be in a hurry to fire your wagers in. Take the time to evaluate your options and get a look at the full scope.

The overall winner is the first market that hits the scene for each golf tournament. Ironically, it’s probably the hardest one to sustain a long-term profit in.

Don’t fall victim to recency bias. This is different than following recent form, which we will tackle in the section below. Here’s an easy way to apply this theory. 

If a +20,000 longshot wins a golf tournament, you’ll probably want to stay away the following week when he/she gets listed around +6,000.

The bookies are accounting for expected bets to come pouring in on the last week’s winner; that’s the reason for the price tag getting slashed in half. For the most part, that golfer should probably be priced closer to the “original” +20,000 number.

Digging into the numbers is what’s going to set you apart from the individual who’s not doing enough homework. Shopping the lines and getting the best prices available is essential to stay ahead, that goes without saying. However, it’s not enough to carry you to long-term profitability.

Golf is a fickle game. We have seen guys make multiple cuts in a row and then drop off significantly. We’ve seen golfers come out of the woodwork when nothing about their recent game log suggested they would perform well. But, for the most part, golf is a predictive sport.

Riding a golfer in a groove is a great way to bolster your ROI. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to bet on golf. Let’s look at an example to illustrate why.

Abraham Ancer was hanging out at +200 to finish inside the top 20 at the 2021 PGA Championship. There was good reason to think this was a value bet.

Given he had an active streak of four consecutive top-20s and had finished 26^th or better in eight straight, +200 was too juicy to ignore. As it panned out, Abraham tallied a T8 at the PGA. His top-20 bet was cashed with plenty of room to spare.

When Viktor Hovland won the 2020 Mayakoba Golf Classic, it wasn’t a surprise. Hovland had connected on 16 cuts in a row and had landed inside the top 15 in four of his previous five starts.

On the flip side, Dustin Johnson unexpectedly missed the cut in his hometown state at the 2021 PGA Championship. But was DJ’s MC really that unexpected?

Johnson arrived in Kiawah Island with no top-10s in his prior six starts and was coming off a T48 and a WD. We could go on and on providing these types of two-way examples.

In terms of other data worth exploring, combing through a player’s stats gives you a leg up on the bettors who bet blindly. Statistics portray strengths and weaknesses, and they help determine how good of a course fit a golfer may or may not be. Best of all, they do so in a simplistic manner.

The Strokes Gained data introduced by Mark Broadie in 2011 was a breakthrough for bettors who prefer an analytical approach. Instead of theorizing how good someone is in a certain area of their game, the SG numbers give us real-life feedback.

The Strokes Gained data analyzes how many shots it takes a golfer (on average) to hole out from a specific place, relative to the other golfers in the field. It’s become the most accurate way of depicting how good or bad a player is at a certain facet of their game.

In all, there are six SG categories accounted for.

Once you study the course at hand, pick out three or four stats you deem key for the week.

If a tournament is being played at a par-72 venue with four par-5s, par-5 scoring is a stat that should be weighted more heavily than if it was a par-70 track with only two par-5s. And you can dive deeper than that.

If the golf course has small greens and yields a low GIR %, golfers who are good at scrambling tend to be better picks. If the course is long and the rough is down, driving distance should receive a bump on any betting models.

Betting on who wins a tournament is the most popular way to bet on golf. There is no confusion; the player you bet on to win either hoists the trophy at week’s end or doesn’t.

One of the advantages of this market is that you don’t have to wait until the week of the tournament to get your money down for the biggest events in the sport. And in many cases, you shouldn’t.

Odds for the majors and team events (Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup, Solheim Cup) are offered year-round. Almost as soon as the current edition is finished, odds for the next year are released. They’re then updated frequently.

Markets trend toward efficiency as we get nearer to the event. What this means is that the closer we get to the start of a tournament, the less of an edge we are going to find throughout the tournament’s odds.

If you bet on Jordan Spieth winning the Masters at +3300 in January, you’ve already “won” if Spieth closes at +1400 in April.

Let’s expand on this point.

Justin Rose seemingly always plays well at Augusta. If you know you want to bet on Rose to win the Masters, betting on him six months out when he’s in a bit of a slump has a lot of merit.

Catching Justin coming off a couple of missed cuts in a row in October means you might be able to snatch him at +5,000 to win the Masters.  If you wait until he rounds into form in March, his price tag might be reduced to +2,500.

Another strategy for betting on golf majors as it pertains to winning is don’t be drawn in by the appetizing upside attached to the dark horses.

Shaun Micheel’s name is forever engrained on the Wanamaker Trophy. Nobody can ever take the Claret Jug away from Ben Curtis or Todd Hamilton. However, players ranked outside of the top 50 in the world rarely win the biggest tournaments in golf.

Here is a good piece of trivia to help illustrate that point.

Phil Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship despite entering the week ranked 116^th in the world. Who was the last golfer before that to win a major after entering the week outside of the top 50?

Darren Clarke at the 2011 Open Championship at Royal St George’s Golf Club. Clarke arrived in England that week ranked 111^th.

As you can gather, it’s pretty hard to accurately predict who’s going to win a golf tournament. One way to hedge your action is to attack the top-5, top-10, and top-20 markets.

Here is what your options could look like.

Most UK-based sportsbooks offer each-way bets, which is an extension of what you see above combined with the “to win” market. You can bet on a golfer each-way and be paid out accordingly depending on his finishing position.

This allows you to reduce the variance while still presenting enough upside to make the bets worthwhile.

While a golfer’s odds to be the last man standing will be the most alluring, certain golfers are better targeted in the top-10 markets. Tony Finau is the perfect example. As of the end of May 2021, Finau had registered 38 top-10s since his last victory. Next up on that list is Kevin Streelman at 18.

A good chunk of serious golf bettors will tell you that attacking the head-to-head matchups is their bread and butter for betting golf online.

We referenced the difficulty of trying to pick a winner, and even the top-20 markets are from a guarantee. Capturing a top-20 finish on the PGA Tour still involves defeating 136 others (in most cases).

Betting golf matchups is a great way to improve your chances of winning money.

Here’s how they work, and some useful advice.

In the H2H market, you are zeroing in on mano-a-mano matchups where you’re only concerned about a golfer beating one opponent.

We will toss out some examples from various tours.

You can bet on 72-hole matchups if you want to let the tournament play out, but you can also bet on round-by-round matchups if that’s something that piques your interest.

Say you missed the start of the European Tour event because you weren’t keeping track of the time difference. Don’t fret.

Instead of being closed out of the action for the rest of the week, you can start targeting second-round matchups as soon as the first-round ends.

While far from a bullet-proof plan, we’ve noticed that meticulously pursuing the plus-money golfers in matchups can pay huge dividends. Betting at -120 or -130 all the time is probably going to negatively affect the bottom line.

Rather than bank on favorites beating up on the lesser names, remember that the difference between the 50^th-ranked golfer and the 75^th-ranked golfer is negligible.

Find a player at +100 who you would be willing to back at -110. Or better yet, if you like Abraham Ancer over Daniel Berger at -110, diligently shop that line across all of the best bookmakers. The matchup will likely be listed at several of the sportsbooks; one of them might have Ancer lurking at +100.

During the majority of the calendar year, the PGA Tour hosts an event from Thursday to Sunday. The European Tour adopts a similar schedule, while the LPGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions, and Korn Ferry Tour play a little bit more sparsely.

Here’s what’s on the horizon in the world of professional golf. Rest assured that the best golf betting sites will be covering all these events.

If you want to bet on any of the golf tournaments you see above, the top golf betting sites are where you want to be. We also have a golf pundit who covers each and every PGA Tour event from all angles.

For a taste of what our golf experts generate, check out some samples like betting on golf and the sport in general below.

In addition to ranking the best sites for betting on golf, we’ve also ranked the best sites for betting on specific tournaments and events.