We stay on the West Coast for an iconic tour stop as we head off to Riviera Golf Club, where a stacked field will battle it out.

The Genesis Invitational is always a highlight of the year, and alongside Matt Vincenzi’s regular main preview, we delve into the side or prop bets for this week.

Hideki Matsuyama without Patrick Cantlay/Dustin Johnson/Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy +1600 and Hideki Matsuyama Top 10 +240

I must admit, I don’t get Deki’s price at all this week.

Regular placers here have shown a penchant for classic, Major-class tracks and the Japanese superstar certainly comes with that label.

Winner of two WGC events shows enough class but adding two victories at Scottsdale, a win at Muirfield and that Augusta victory gives more credence to his claims.

Ending 2021 with an easy win in his home country when under pressure to perform at the Zozo, he then started the new season with a 13th amongst an all-winner field in Hawaii.

Warmed up, the 29-year-old came on from the opener to beat Russell Henley in a play-off at the Sony Open before a pedestrian start at Torrey saw him finish 30th in an event he has never really thrived in despite not doing anything particularly awful.

A slight injury worry was the rumour over the last few weeks, but he rewarded the safer top-10 backers with an 8th at last week’s Phoenix Open, during much of which he threatened to finish much closer to the play-off protagonists.

Still, Deki has been striking the ball very well for so long now I almost presume that he will show up well in the tee-to-green stats. Indeed, he has ranked top-15 for that skill-set for all his four starts this year and comes to a track at which he ranked in first place for tee-to-green in 2020, and 6th, 4th and 7th for his previous three visits.

The price for him ‘without the top four’ is not that far short of the odds I make him with them included in the field.

He is top class, and he is the basis of most of the wagers this week.

Sungjae Im Top 10 +410 

Two weekends off for the South Korean around here, but that cannot be his true form and only means we get a better price for the outright and, therefore, the specials.

Take a look at current form.

Since the Tour Championship, the 23-year-old has played eight events, won the Shriners, had three top-10s, one 11th and a 19th place finish, with the latest leaderboard finish just five days ago in Pheonix.

Sungjae has ranked in the top 10 off-the-tee in all of his last six completed events and top-11 for tee-to-green at the same, leading the latter at the American Express just two starts ago. Ranking top-10 for greens hit can’t do any harm, especially significant at Torrey Pines just a fortnight ago.

Joint runner-up at the ‘Covid’ Masters, back that up with top-10 finishes at Copperhead, Scottsdale and his latest event, and he appears to be under-rated by the oddsmakers.

Max Homa Top 20 +220  

Whilst Riviera has seen repeat winners, it has also seen three recent enough back-to-back winners.

Given the strength in depth of the current crop, it’s hard to see the affable 31-year-old doing the same, but his overall style of play suggests this is bang up his street, and he can add a top-20 finish to recent finishes of first and fifth.

Normally reliable at Torrey, that rare missed-cut could be slightly off-putting, but he sandwiched that with a pair of top-15 finishes, the latter coming just days ago.

Stats-wise, the defending champion gained his best off-the-tee figure since winning the Fortinet whilst also gaining his best tee-to-green number since the same event back in September.

Correlation with his finishes at the Valspar, Memorial and past figures at Scottsdale work well here whilst worth a note is that he seems to use a decent finish a week prior as a springboard – 2020 saw a 14th at Pebble Beach lead to a top-five, whilst a seventh at the same event led to his best victory yet.

Luke List Top 20 +260

Golf is full of players that strike the ball like a dream. Sadly, they cannot all do the job on large greens and events that require multiple birdies.

However, they do come to the fore when the premium is not on putting, but good tee-to-green play and where par is good.

Come in Luke List.

Twice a winner at Pete Dye related courses at a lower level, his two top-10 finishes at Bay Hill and at the Honda strongly suggests a player that repeats form and at classic tracks that can get to be a grind.

It wasn’t an enormous surprise to see him finally break his PGA duck at a course such as Torrey Pines, where his accurate tee-to-green meant a less pressured four days with the flat stick.

Now a winner on tour, follow the Seattle golfer when conditions suit, as they do this week.

He is a far better golfer than when sixth at the PGA in 2019, although the performance there is even more evidence that his premium conditions are a long course requiring quality ball-striking and green-finding.

Of a similar age and possessing a skill-set akin to Jason Kokrak, he could easily repeat the feat of three wins in a year now that the first one removes the ‘monkey’ off his back.

It’s easy to forgive the mid-table finish in Arizona last week due to a possible hangover from the victory, but he had his irons dialled in, raking 13th in strokes-gained-approach.

Get Luke on your list.