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A recent visit to Hawaii is a big plus
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Great event for outsiders and Sunday trading
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Tournament History
The American Express began life in 1960 as the Palm Springs Desert Golf Challenge - a five-round pro-am won by Arnold Palmer.
Between 1965 and 2012 it was known as the Bob Hope Classic before Humana took over sponsorship and revived its fortunes.
The tournament had been failing to attract quality fields, and the perception was that the five-round format had much to do with its demise. It was reduced to the conventional four rounds in 2012, and it's been a much better received event as a result.
The tournament is a pro-am staged over three different courses (listed below) in rotation over the first three days with the host course, the Pete Dye Stadium Course (known previously as the PGA West TPC Stadium Course), staging the final round on Sunday.
Venue
PGA West - La Quinta Country Club, California.
Course Details
Pete Dye Stadium Course (Stadium Course), par 72, 7,210 yards - Scoring Average in 2025 - 71.35
PGA West (Nicklaus Tournament Course), par 72, 7,147 yards - Scoring Average in 2025 - 68.24
La Quinta Country Club, par 72, 7,060 yards - Scoring Average in 2025 - 68.59
The Pete Dye-designed Pete Dye Stadium Course, which up until 2024 was known as the PGA West Stadium Course, was used for the first time a decade ago and it's usually the hardest of the three courses used.
With amateurs playing, the set-ups are deliberately less demanding than usually encountered on the PGA Tour and very low scoring is the norm.
Every winner since the event was reduced to four rounds in 2012 has reached at least 20-under-par and the 2024 winner, Nick Dunlap, set a new tournament record with a 29-under-par total.
The Bermuda greens are usually set at around 11.5 on the Stimpmeter and the rough is minimal.
Weather Forecast
TV Coverage
Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 16:30 on Thursday in the UK.
Last 10 Winners with Pre-event Exchange Prices
2025 - Sepp Straka -25 65.064/1
2024 - Nick Dunlap -29 1000.0999/1
2023 - Jon Rahm -27 8.07/1
2022 - Hudson Swafford -23 250.0249/1
2021 - Si Woo Kim -23 55.054/1
2020 - Andrew Landry -26 500.0499/1
2019 - Adam Long -26 1000.0999/1
2018 - Jon Rahm -22 10.519/2 (playoff)
2017 - Hudson Swafford -20 70.069/1
2016 - Jason Dufner -25 48.047/1
What Will it Take to Win The American Express?
Straka ranked ninth for Driving Accuracy and only 47th for Driving Distance when winning last year but the 2024 winner, Dunlap, ranked as high as third for DD and the three victors before him all ranked better for DD than they did for DA.
Length does appear slightly more important than accuracy overall, but what you do off the tee in this event is largely irrelevant.
As a demonstration of how unimportant the driving stats are, the 2020 winner, Andrew Landry, ranked only 61st for Driving Distance and when Hudson Swafford won the title for the first time in 2017, he ranked only 61st for Driving Accuracy. Landry ranked third for DA and Swafford ranked fifth for DD.
Straka ranked third for Greens In Regulation 12 months ago but that doesn't look like a key metric either.
Wyndham Clark ranked first for GIR in 2024, but he finished only tied 39th and nobody that finished inside the top 16 two years ago ranked inside the top 10 for GIR.
Dunlap only ranked 21st and the average GIR ranking of the 15 winners before him was 11.3 so that can't be described as a vital stat.
This is a tough event to evaluate statistically as it's basically just a birdie-fest and it usually boils down to who holes the most putts on Sunday.
It's tough to know what we should be looking at, but Par 4 Scoring Average or Par 4 Performance are possibly stats to consider.
The first five home have all ranked inside the top 10 for Par 4 Scoring in each of the last two years, and although the 2021 winner, Si Woo Kim, only ranked 10th, the two winners after him, Swafford and Rahm, ranked second, and the two winners before him, Landry and Adam Long, ranked first and second.
Rahm only ranked fifth when he won here for the first time in 2018 but the seven winners before him topped the Par 4 Scoring.
A recent visit to Hawaii is a big plus
Dunlop, who was the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event since Phil Mickelson way back in 1991, had only played in three PGA Tour events before taking the title as a 1000.0999/1 outsider two years ago.
He'd missed the cut at two US Opens, in 2022 and 2023, and he'd also missed the cut at the Bermuda Championship two months before winning here but most winners have knocked a bit of rust of in either The Sentry or the Sony Open, or both, in Hawaii.
Since Charley Hoffman won this when playing in his first event of the year back in 2007, 16 of the next 18 winners had all had at least one start. Bill Haas, back in 2015, is the other odd man out.
The red-hot favourite, Jon Rahm, was winning his third event in four starts when he won in 2023, but a decent performance doesn't appear to be vital.
Straka had finished 15th in The Sentry and 30th in the Sony Open and Swafford had finished 48th in the Sony Open the week before when he won here four years ago. Kim had also finished a respectable 25th in the Sony five years ago but the two winners before him both missed the cut in that event (Long in 2018 and Landry in 2019), and that was also the case for the five winners between 2008 and 2012.
The 2013 winner, Brian Gay, had finished 31st at the Sony in his sole previous start and Patrick Reed, the 2014 champ, had finished 16th in The Sentry but the three winners before Long had all shown something significant before they won.
Jason Dufner took the title having finished ninth in the Sony a decade ago, Swafford signalled his wellbeing with a 13th place at the Sony when winning here for the first time in 2017 and the 2018 winner, Rahm, had finished runner-up to Dustin Johnson in The Sentry. And he won that event in 2023 before winning here.
Given the Sony is the only full field event staged since November last year, those that didn't make it to Hawaii last week may well be a bit rusty and worth opposing.
Is There an Identikit Winner?
Rahm has been well fancied when he's won here recently but he's the only winner in the last 10 years to go off at less than 50/151.00 and this has been a great event for massive outsiders.
As already mentioned, Dunlap was a 1000.0999/1 chance two years ago, Swafford was matched at 350.0349/1 when the market first opened four years ago, and the two winners before Kim went off at 1000.0999/1 and 500.0499/1. And between 2008 and 2014, all seven winners went off at a triple-figure price!
Multiple event winners are fairly common so previous winners are well worth considering closely.
Arnold Palmer loved this event, and he won it five times between 1960 and 1973, the last two winners before Dunlap had both won the event previously, as many as ten men have won it more than once, and huge outsider, Landry, has very nearly won it twice.
Winner's Position and Exchange Price Pre-Round Four
2025 - Sepp Straka - led by four 1.674/6
2024 - Nick Dunlap - led by three 2.588/5
2023 - Jon Rahm - tied for the lead 1.645/8
2022 - Hudson Swafford T5th - trailing by three 25.024/1
2021 - Si Woo Kim tied for the lead 5.14/1
2020 - Andrew Landry tied for the lead 3.412/5
2019 - Adam Long solo 3rd - trailing by three 23.022/1
2018 - Jon Rahm T4th - trailing by two 4.03/1
2017 - Hudson Swafford T3rd - trailing by two 8.07/1
2016 - Jason Dufner led by two strokes 1.875/6
In-Play Tactics
Like most low scoring birdie-fests, being up with the place is usually the place to be in this event.
Since the tournament was reduced from five rounds to four in 2012, all bar one winner has been within four strokes of the lead after round one and six of the last 10 winners have been inside the front three places after the opening day. Starka sat tied eighth and three adrift after round one last year and Dunlap sat tied for fifth and two off the lead so they weren't far away either.
As many as five of the last 10 sat first or second after round one so a fast start is often key but it's not impossible to win after a slow start, as Swafford proved four years ago...
A lacklustre 70 on Thursday saw him sitting tied for 73rd (trailing by eight) and he could still be backed at odds in excess of 200.0199/1 at halfway when he trailed by five in a tie for 24th and although we hadn't seen a winner form off the pace for some time, Swafford wasn't the first...
Justin Leonard was eight back at halfway 19 years ago and a number of winners have been four, five, six and seven back with two rounds to go. David Duval in 1999, trailed by seven before he famously shot 59 to win by a stroke so you clearly can come from behind.
If you're looking to trade in-running, this is a great event in which to lay odds-on shots in-running.
Having led by four with 18 to play, Straka cruised to a two-stroke win 12 months ago but Sam Burns was matched at just 1.3130/100 when he led by two after 13 holes on Sunday in 2024 and in 14 of the last 19 renewals, we've seen at least one player trade at odds-on without winning. And in two of the last seven renewals there have been two players trade at odds-on before losing - Scottie Scheffler (1.9210/11) and Abraham Ancer (1.715/7) in 2020 and Phil Mickelson (1.695/7) and Adam Hadwin (1.081/12) in 2019.
It's also worth mentioning that three of the last eight winners, Landry, and Rahm (twice), both traded at very low odds before looking like they might get beat.
Rahm drifted all the way out to 3.02/1 in-running on Sunday in 2023, having been matched at as low as 1.192/11 during round three, and 1.152/13 after three holes in round four. Landry traded at as low as 1.031/33 when he shot six clear of the field with three birdies in-a-row after the turn in 2020 but the pick-ups were immediately followed by three straight drops, and Rahm, in 2018, was matched for more than 30k at 1.061/18 in regulation play and he hit a low of 1.051/20, before Landry birdied the 72nd hole to take the event to extra time.
Year after year players trade at odds-on and get beat or in the case of Landry and Rahm, come close to throwing it away, so despite last year's result, it's often a great tournament to trade on a Sunday.
In-form Gerard the sole selection
The favourite, Rory McIlroy, is hardening up at the head of the Dubai Desert Classic market but the world number one, Scottie Scheffler, continues to drift ahead of his first start of the year here and I'm not surprised.
As highlighted above, this has been a great event for outsiders and having at least one start in Hawaii has been key over the years.
We haven't seen Scottie since he finished a disappointing tied fourth at the Hero World Challenge at the start of December, when he was attempting to win the event for a third time in-a-row, so given 16 of the last 18 winners of this event have had at least one start in Hawaii before lining up here, it's understandable that he's been weak in the market.
I'm happy to look elsewhere and the one I like is the bang-in-form world number 30, Ryan Gerard, who travelled halfway around the world just before Christmas to muscle his way into the US Masters.
Needing to end 2025 inside the world's top 50, Gerard entered the final event of the year, the Mauritius Open on the DP World Tour, where he lost in a playoff when a fourth-place finish would have sufficed.
Clearly buoyed by the prospect of his first visit to Augusta, Gerard finished solo second last week at the Sony Open where he ranked 11th for both Greens In Regulation and Putting Average.
He's already a winner in his home state of California, having won the Barracuda Championship in July last year and the rapidly improving 26-year-old appears to be a very fair price at 75.074/1.
Back Ryan Gerard
This is Gerard's second appearance in the event following a tied 51st finish 12 months ago.