Hayden Buckley among the top long shot bets to make ahead of this weekend’s Canadian Open

The 2024 PGA Tour season continues to follow a pattern. Either we see an out-of-nowhere longshot winner like we did with Davis Riley (+25000) at last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge, or it’s one of the super-elites (like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele) that lifts the trophy.

This week sets up to follow that pattern.

Scheffler isn’t in the field, but McIlroy has Scheffler-like odds at the top of the board. The Northern Irishman, who went back-to-back at this event in 2021 and 2022, is +360 to win, way ahead of a chasing pack that includes Tommy Fleetwood (+1600), Sahith Theegala (+1800), Shane Lowry (+2200) and Cam Young (+2200).

But outside of McIrloy, who will be tough to beat considering his form, there isn’t much starpower to contend with and that should open things up for another long shot to contend.

A mainstay in this column because of his upside and price, Robert MacIntyre’s game seemed to be headed in the right direction up until a missed-cut last week at Colonial. But instead of getting caught up on a MC at a tough course, I’ll continue to buy low on a player that finished T13 and T8 in his previous two starts (the latter coming at the PGA Championship). We know MacIntyre’s got the talent to contend with any player in the world on his day, so let’s hope this weak field gives him an avenue to contention.

Things looked ugly for Hayden Buckley up until about a month ago when the American made a couple of cuts in a row at the CJ Cup and the Myrtle Beach Classic. Those results were nothing to write home about, but it stopped the bleeding for the 28-year-old and he clearly carried some momentum into the Charles Schwab Challenge, where he finished T5. That’s enough for me to back a player with Buckley’s toolkit at a massive price and it also doesn’t hurt that Buckley spent a considerable amount of time playing the Canadian circuit so he should be familiar with the conditions at Hamilton.

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