Bank of Utah Championship: PGA Best Bets, Predictions, Past Results, and Course Info

The PGA Tour heads back to Utah for the second iteration of the Bank of Utah Championship (last year named the Black Desert Championship).

Here's all you need to know for the week.

All golf odds come from FanDuel Sportsbook and may change after this article is published.

Bank of Utah Championship Info
Black Desert Resort Course Info

Data from GCSAA, PGA Tour, and data golf's course table unless otherwise noted.

• Par: 71
• Distance: 7,421 yards (long)
• Average Fairway Width: 49.4 yards (massive)
• Average Green Size: 7,000 square feet (large)
• Green Type: Bentgrass
• Stimpmeter: N/A
• Recent Winning Scores: -23
• Recent Cut Lines: -5

Black Desert Resort Course Key Stats

• Strokes Gained: Approach
• Strokes Gained: Off the Tee
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Proximity From 175 to 200 Yards

Despite the length and wide fairways at Black Desert Resort, missed fairways are too penalizing for us to sell out fully for distance this week based on what we learned last year.

datagolf listed Black Desert as the third-most penalizing course (of 43 last year) with regards to missing the fairway. Reload penalties will need to be avoided this week.

It's also tricky to putt here, based on last year's data, turning this one more into a ball-striking contest as a baseline. Golfers will always need to make putts to win a tournament, but the recipe this week skews more toward the long game.

Bank of Utah Championship Past Results

These are the golfers from this year's field who played here last year.

Bank of Utah Championship Best Bets

These picks stand out relative to their FanDuel Sportsbook golf betting odds at FanDuel Sportsbook. All stats cited below originate at datagolf and reference ranks relative to the field over the past 50 rounds unless otherwise noted.

Maverick McNealy

• Odds To Win Bank of Utah Championship (+1600)
• To Finish Top 10 (+175)

Over everyone's last 50 rounds among this field, Maverick McNealy ranks fourth in strokes gained: tee to green and seventh in strokes gained: putting, making him the only golfer in the field this week to rank top-10 in both of those stats over that sample size.

Not only that but also his strokes gained ceiling (based on his per-round standard deviation) of +4.0 is second-highest in the field in that split, just a smidge behind Alex Noren's ceiling (+4.1).

McNealy has finished top-13 in his last three events, and in the one that was not a playoff event, he was T13 at the Procore Championship.

The form makes him a standout at the top of the field for me this week.

Kurt Kitayama

• Odds To Win Bank of Utah Championship (+1900)
• To Finish Top 10 (+220)

Kurt Kitayama's putting tends to hold his ceiling in check, but this week with the course setup, that could be less of an issue than normal.

Kitayama's strokes gained: tee-to-green ceiling (+3.3) is second in the field (behind Rico Hoey's +3.5) and ahead of McNealy's (+3.2) over everyone's last 50 rounds.

Kitayama enters ranked second in ball-striking among those qualified, and he finished T25 here last year while ranking second in strokes gained: approach but 69th among 69 cut-makers in strokes gained: putting.

Matt Wallace

• Odds To Win Bank of Utah Championship (+3300)
• To Finish Top 10 (+360)
• To Finish Top 20 (+175)

Matt Wallace will need to up his game with the driver to make the most of his opportunity this week (he's 89th in the field in strokes gained: OTT the last 50 rounds).

However, he is top-35 in the other three strokes gained stats while top-10 in total strokes gained average in that span.

The 35-year-old finished T10 at the Baycurrent Classic two weeks ago and has gained strokes from approach in 8 of his last 11 measured starts.

He's also sixth in strokes gained ceiling the last 50 rounds.

Victor Perez

• Odds To Win Bank of Utah Championship (+5000)
• To Finish Top 10 (+550)
• To Finish Top 20 (+250)

Victor Perez could benefit from a setup that downplayed the importance of strokes gained: around the green last year.

Perez is 106th in ARG the last 50 rounds but top-50 in the other three stats, most notably 4th in approach in that split.

Perez most recently finished T11 at the Sanderson Farms in his last start and has gained strokes from approach in 8 of his last 11 while losing more than -0.08 per round in only one of those.

Mac Meissner

• Odds To Win Bank of Utah Championship (+5000)
• To Finish Top 10 (+550)
• To Finish Top 20 (+250)

Despite the +5000 odds, Mac Meissner is in pretty solid form (11th in combined ball-striking the last 36 rounds plus 50 rounds of short game -- when things tend to stabilize).

The 26-year-old has finished T14, 2nd, T47, T14, and T27 in his last five PGA Tour starts. He's gained SG:APP in his last four measured starts, and he played here a year ago, finishing T25.

He did that by finishing third in approach and ninth in strokes gained: tee to green for the week.

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