Bank of Utah Championship 2026

The Bank of Utah Championship is the Fall Series at its most wide open. A 130-man field at Black Desert Resort, one previous edition under this name, a defending champion who was a rookie 12 months ago, and a board where our model and the betting market disagree more sharply than at any event we have priced this season. That disagreement is the story of the week, and it cuts both ways.

What it takes to win at Black Desert

Tom Weiskopf's course in Ivins is par 71, cut through black lava rock, with creeping bentgrass fairways and greens and Kentucky bluegrass rough. It looks punishing and plays anything but. Our projection for this week is 22 under par with the cut around 4 under, and the one prior edition backs that up: the top 10 in 2025 averaged 16.6 under.

The demand profile is unusual and it is where the selections start. Across the venue's history our model attributes 37.9 per cent of the separation between players to putting and 30.3 per cent to driving, with approach play at 26.2 per cent and around-the-green work almost irrelevant at 5.7 per cent. The 2025 top 10 bears that out: they averaged plus 1.02 strokes gained putting and plus 0.82 off the tee, for plus 2.70 in total, while hitting 86.2 per cent of fairways and 79.4 per cent of greens.

Read that together and it describes a specific kind of week. Nobody is scrambling their way round Black Desert, because the desert takes the ball rather than leaving a chip. You have to drive it in play, hit greens, and hole putts. If strokes gained is new to you, that guide explains what the numbers on this page are measuring.

The model and the market are a long way apart

Before the picks, the caveat that shaped them. Our model's top five players sum to 50.5 per cent to win this week. The market's top five, with the bookmaker's margin taken out, sum to 17.3 per cent. The model is close to three times more concentrated at the top of the board than the people taking the bets are.

In a strong field that gap would be a buying signal. In a Fall Series event with 130 players and thin course history it is mostly a warning: the model is confident because the data is sparse, not because the outcome is. Every model-to-market edge on this board is inflated by the same distortion, so we have ranked these four on model position and decided them on evidence rather than picking whatever the edge column put at the top.

The form picture is clearer. Over this field's last 16 rounds, of the 122 players with a full window, the leaders are Ben James at plus 2.05 per round, Kevin Yu at plus 1.78, Ben Kohles at plus 1.72, defending champion Michael Brennan at plus 1.71, Davis Thompson at plus 1.39 and Jackson Koivun at plus 1.36. Three of those six are on this card. You can see the full list on our PGA Tour form guide, and the model's own ranking on the Bank of Utah projections.

Jackson Koivun, 12/1, 1.5pt each-way

Koivun is the model's number one of 130 at 14.3 per cent to win, and the place profile behind it is the best in the field by a wide margin: 67.1 per cent for a top 10 and 87.9 per cent to make the cut. He also has the strongest course-fit score in the field for this venue's historic demand. He won the 3M Open inside his last five starts and was 5th at the Biltmore three weeks ago, and he is 6th of 122 on 16-round strokes gained at plus 1.36, holding at plus 0.91 with his best week removed.

Two things to hold against it. He has never played Black Desert, so the course-history factor is running on nothing. And at 12/1 a place returns 5.10pts against the 8 this card commits, so he needs to win, or to be joined by a second result, before the week pays. That is the price of an anchor, and it is a deliberate trade rather than an oversight.

Kevin Yu, 33/1, 1pt each-way

Yu is the strongest combination of form and price on either of our cards this week. He is 2nd of 122 in this field over his last 16 rounds at plus 1.78 per round, the highest of our four, and it survives the best-week-removed test at plus 1.39. The model has him second of 130 at 10.96 per cent to win and 59.3 per cent for a top 10, against a market pricing him a 33/1 shot.

He finished 15th here last year and was 4th at the Wyndham inside his last five starts. There is no obvious hole in the case beyond the absence of a win this season, and at 33/1 a place clears most of the week on its own.

Davis Thompson, 35/1, 0.75pt each-way

Thompson is 5th of 122 in this field over his last 16 rounds at plus 1.39 per round, and plus 0.93 with his best week removed. That is a real ball-striking case rather than one hot week: he was 7th at the 3M Open and 8th at the Rocket Classic inside his last five starts.

This page should be straight about what it is buying, because the model is not convinced. It ranks him 11th at 1.65 per cent to win, which is fractionally below the market's own de-vigged 1.88 per cent, and he is the only pick across both our cards this week that the model rates worse than the book does. He missed the cut here in 2025 and has three missed cuts in his last seven starts, the most recent of them at the Biltmore. The form is genuine and the consistency is not, which is exactly why he is staked at 0.75pt rather than level with Yu.

Ben Kohles, 50/1, 0.75pt each-way

The longest price on the card and the least speculative pick on it. The model has Kohles 7th of 130 at 5.42 per cent to win and 38.8 per cent for a top 10, against a market giving him 1.32 per cent. He is 3rd of 122 on 16-round form and the best of our four on the best-week-removed test at plus 1.45 per round.

Behind that he has eight consecutive made cuts, including 3rd at the John Deere Classic, and both of his visits to Black Desert have improved: 46th in 2024, 20th in 2025. He is filed as this card's longshot because he is the longest price we are taking, not because the evidence behind him is thin. At 50/1 a place returns 8.25pts and pays for the week by itself.

The case we looked at and passed on was Rico Hoey, also 50/1, who was 2nd here last year and 21st the year before, the best course record of anyone in this bracket. Form decided it: Hoey is 31st of 122 over the last 16 rounds against Kohles in 3rd, and two of Hoey's last five finishes are outside 60th.

The card

• Jackson Koivun - 12/1 - 1.5pt each-way
• Kevin Yu - 33/1 - 1pt each-way
• Davis Thompson - 35/1 - 0.75pt each-way
• Ben Kohles - 50/1 - 0.75pt each-way (longshot)

All four are each-way at bet365, 1/5 odds, 8 places, with dead-heat rules on shared places. Each-way is two bets of the same size, so this card commits 8pts in total. Our guide to each-way golf betting sets out why 8 places changes which prices are worth taking.

These are bet365's prices, not the best on the market. Ladbrokes and Coral are shorter on all four, and one book had Kohles at 60/1, but bet365's 1/5 and 8 places are the terms we settle to, so 50/1 is the number this card will be judged on. Full course numbers are on the Black Desert Resort course page, and the event itself is on the Bank of Utah Championship hub.