The PGA Tour heads to Torrey Pines this week with a top class field assembled for the event that begins on Wednesday.

Alongside Matt Vincenzi’s outright preview of the Farmers Insurance Open, here are my ideas of the best side bets for the week ahead.

Max Homa – Top 5 finish/Top 10 finish +1400/+700

The 31-year-old Californian native is a good putter. He says so himself.

At PGA West last year Homa said:

“I think I’m a great putter. I kind of realized that around the PGA Championship last year. I had a couple weeks where it wasn’t great. I also putted it the best in Mexico and there was no ShotLink, so it’s not exactly helping my statistical average.”

What we do know is that Homa is an extremely tidy tee-to-green player that thrives when others struggle to keep it tidy. Picking the ball off the grass is of no hindrance around the rough of Torrey Pines, and whilst he missed all three successive cuts at the start of his career, finishes of ninth and 18th speak volumes as to his improvement from 2018.

In the last three years, the man from Burbank has won three times, twice in California, including the Genesis at Riviera, and risen from 130th in the world to a place well inside the top-40.

The wins aside, Homa has progressive form at Bay Hill (49/24/10), at the Memorial (37/MC/6) and consistency at the Travelers (9/18), and he comes here off the back of a midfield display at the Tournament of Champion, where his putting kept him in the event.

The Rickrungood.com golf site shows that he gained over four strokes with his putter on five different occasions in 2021, earning a top-10 finish in all of those events, including two victories. Should he repeat his tee-to-green effort of the last two runnings of this event, he should give himself every chance of another.

Marc Leishman – Top 10 finish +375

A very close thing between the Aussie and Tony Finau but whilst one firm can’t split them, 365 offer the more tempting price and thus get the play.

Apart from the win in 2020, Leishman’s form here in 14 starts comprises two runner-up medals, a brace of top-10s and two further top-20 finishes, whilst he has a healthy bank of form at many of the correlative courses, all classic in their make-up and requiring a touch of nous to conquer.

Returns of two top-five finishes and a couple of top-20s at Riviera read well given the grass comparisons, whilst there is a host of historical placed form that links Bay Hill (Leish has a win, second, third and seventh at Arnie’s place), Muirfield (two top-fives and a pair of top-15 finishes), and he also has a victory and placings at River Highlands, yet another course that requires a skilled overall game and an ability to play from rough.

Recent form is perfectly acceptable with a 10th in the season opener in Maui followed by a top-40 at Waialae, neither of those low-scoring events really suiting his style of play, but with the short game and flat stick being crucial here over the weekend, confidence on the poa anna greens will count for more than just latent ability, and this grinder can post another high finish on his resume.

Franceso Molinari – Top 20 +330

The 2018 Open champion is back, or at least I believe he is.

His well-publicised hiatus through 2020/2021 could have finished what was still a promising career, but he is now settled after a move to California in 2020, and the results are showing.

Sporadic, they may be, but the eight-time winner knows how to play courses that require guile and recorded his third top-15 in six starts here when finishing 13th last season, an effort that sandwiched an eighth at the American Express and a further top-10 at Riviera.

He lost his form soon after but returned one further top-15, significantly here at the U.S Open, before appearing fighting fit at the three-course American Express last week.

It may seem too convenient to expect yet another couple of top-10 finishes at exactly the same events, but why?

Just a year since ranking 3rd in tee-to-green around here, he warmed up for a repeat with a solid top-20 for approach and putting at the three-course rotation and could easily back up a bank of form that includes top-10n finishes at three of the courses mentioned above.