Dahmen put on a show in Thursday’s opening round at the Wyndham Championship. The bucket hat wearing veteran carded a 9-under 61 at Sedgefield CC – trying his career-low on the PGA TOUR – putting Dahmen atop the leaderboard at the Wyndham Championship by one stroke. The 37-year-old only carded one bogey and he racked up 10 birdies, including three in a row to finish his day. Both his irons and flat stick were on fire, as Dahmen stuck 16-of-18 greens in regulation and he averaged only 1.44 putts per hole.
Notably, Dahmen carried +30000 pre-tournament odds to win the Wyndham Championship and less than 1% of outright pre-tournament bets were placed on him on DraftKings Sportsbook. Now, After his brilliant opening round Thursday, Dahmen carries the third-best odds to win the Wyndham Championship at +1400 on DraftKings Sportsbook. While this is an appealing price for the current leader, is betting on Dahmen to win this event worth considering?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. There has only been two wire-to-wire wins on the PGA TOUR in the last three seasons, most recently by world No.1 Scottie Scheffler at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson in May. As you can see, going to wire-to-wire is an extremely difficult feat and all signs point to Dahmen falling out of contention at the Wyndham Championship in the next few days.
This season, Dahmen has only made 9-of-20 solo cuts and he ranks 117th in total strokes gained. Dahmen has only finished inside the top-five once, which was a runner-up at the Corales Puntacana Championship in March. That week, Dahmen also led after the first round, but he ultimately came up short. Plus, this was against a very weak field of players. Dahmen faces a much stronger field at Sedgefield CC this week and he has never finished higher than T42nd in his six starts at the Donald Ross design.
Dahmen hasn’t won on the PGA TOUR in over four years and for the six times he has led after the first round, he has never completed the job. In fact, on three of those occasions, Dahmen finished T30th or worse.
