Jin Young Ko Favored To Claim U.S. Open Championship

A record-setting $10 million purse is up for grabs this week as the LPGA ladies tee off in North Carolina for the U.S. Open.

As the second major tournament of the year, this will be a monumental event for multiple key names. Only one will become, victor, however, and oddsmakers have an eye on World No. 1 Jin Young Ko.

Jin Young Ko favored in U.S. Open

This legendary event takes place at a North Carolina golf course, the Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club. This year, three networks will split live coverage of the event. That starts Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT on Peacock. Broadcast NBC and the USA network will also carry coverage at times through Sunday.

This is a course that I, myself, think of with particular fondness, as I spent multiple summers attending FCA Junior Golf Camps there. However, the course itself — with its narrow fairways, large bunkers, roaming greens and especially lengthy yardage — can be anything but kind.

If favored competitor Ko is able to capitalize on those factors, oddsmakers may very well be correct in their predictions.

She started the year off with a win at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in March and finished runner-up at the Palos Verdes Championship at the end of April.

She’s expected to come out of Round 1 with a win and carry that success all the way through to the finale. BetMGM gives puts her at the top of the pile, giving her +1600 odds of leading the tournament after the first day and +800 odds of winning altogether.

2022 U.S. Open contenders & underdogs

This season’s LPGA events have been anything but predictable so far, crowning a different victor at every tournament.

Eun Hee Ji is hot off a match-play win at last week’s Bank of Hope. Her odds in the upcoming tournament, however, don’t predict a repeat. BetMGM gives her hearty +6600 odds of a win.

World No. 2 Nelly Korda returns to the tee box for her first time since February. She took some much-needed time off to address a blood clot. Now, she’s back in action, and oddsmakers expect her to have no issue competing with the best of them. BetMGM gives her the fifth-best chance of leading after Round 1 with +2800 odds and +2000 odds of being the winner at the end of the week.

World No. 4 Minjee Lee is coming off a victory at last month’s Founder’s Cup. BetMGM gives her +2200 odds of being the leader after Round 1 and +1400 odds of an overall tournament victory.

Last year’s victor, No. 15 Yuka Saso carries +2800 odds of walking away with a consecutive victory at this coveted event. She took home the trophy in 2021, making history as the first Filipino golfer to win a major. Since then, she’s struggled to find her consistency with top-10 finishes.

Underdog to eye: Rose Zhang

If there’s one underdog to keep an eye on at this year’s U.S. Open, it’s amateur Rose Zhang. The 19-year-old completed her freshman year at Stanford last week with an NCAA individual championship title win. She also became the first college athlete to announce a NIL agreement with Adidas — a deal that will go into effect at this very tournament.

BetMGM gives Zhang a whopping +15000 odds of winning the tournament. Those odds may sound especially lengthy, but that’s where the potential advantage comes in.

If you placed a single $1 bet on this promising star, you’d walk away with an extra $150 if she ended up winning.

2022 U.S. Open betting odds

BetMGM’s odds for the tournament’s Leader after Round 1 situate Jin Young Ko ahead of the rest of this 156-player field:

Tournament Winner odds for the field’s top competitors are as follows: