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Scheffler’s +501 Closing Price
August 19, 2026
Scottie Scheffler is known as one of the best golfers in the world right now, the most dominant player on the PGA TOUR over the past few seasons.
It’s worth remembering Monday’s blog about outright odds. That’s the price a sportsbook offers on someone to win an entire tournament, not just a single match. Because a golf field has over a hundred players playing at once, even the best players don’t get priced close to how a favorite gets priced in a two-team sport like tennis or football.
Keep that in mind, because Scheffler just won the FedEx St. Jude Championship by eight strokes. Not a close finish, not a photo finish, eight full strokes ahead of the field. His 21st PGA TOUR victory.
His price to win that tournament still closed at +501.
+501 in American odds means a $100 bet would have returned $501 in profit. That’s not a favorite’s price, that’s a price you’d expect on a clear underdog. So how does the best performance of the week still close at odds like that?
The answer has nothing to do with the market getting it wrong, and everything to do with how outright markets work in a sport like golf.
Converting +501 Into Something You Can Compare
American odds like +501 don’t mean much on their own if you’re used to reading decimal prices. Converting it makes the number easier to work with:
- For +501: (501÷100) + 1 = 6.01
- Probability: 1÷Decimal Odds → 1 ÷ 6.01 ≈ 16.6%
That’s what the market thought Scheffler’s real chance of winning was before the tournament started: roughly one in six.
Why a Deep Field Changes Everything?
A tournament like this doesn’t have two entrants, it has well over a hundred. Outright pricing has to account for every single player having some chance to win.
- Two-Team Matches: A strong favorite can close near 1.20 or shorter because there’s only one other outcome to price against.
- 100+ Player Fields: Even the best player in the world is still just one of many people capable of winning that week.
Spreading probability across that many possible outcomes keeps every price longer than it would be in a smaller field.
The takeaway: +501 wasn’t the market saying Scheffler was not going to do well. It was the market saying that in a tournament like this, not a single player including the best one gets much more than a 1-in-6 or 1-in-7 shot before the tournament starts.
Winning Big Doesn’t Mean the Price Was Wrong
An eight-stroke margin looks like total dominance in hindsight. But outright prices are set on what’s likely across the whole field before anything happens, not on how any one outcome eventually looks once it’s already happened.
This is the same lesson from our Outrights and Futures guide: the earlier you’re pricing a tournament, the more real uncertainty is baked into that price, and a wide-margin win afterward doesn’t retroactively make the pre-tournament price wrong. Scheffler playing to the level he did that week was one specific outcome out of many the market had to price for, and it happened to be the one that came in.
Why the Closing Price Still Matters?
The most reliable sportsbook out there, Pinnacle, posted a tweet asking what price did other bettors get, not just what Scheffler’s odds were. That’s the real point. If you backed Scheffler earlier in the week at a longer price than +501, and the market shortened him as the tournament went on. That’s Closing Line Value (CLV) working the way it’s meant to on an outright market the same way it works on a normal match.
The closing price is the benchmark. Getting a better number than where the market settled is the same evidence of a real edge whether the bet took hours to settle or an entire tournament week or month.
Where BetUnfair Fits Into This?
De-Vigged Odds and EV Comparison apply the same way to a golf outright market as they do to any single-match price:
- Strip the bookmaker’s margin.
- Compare the fair number against what different books are offering.
- See whether a price is actually worth taking.
BetUnfair’s Bet Tracker calculates Closing Line Value automatically too, on an outright market exactly like it does on a same-day bet.
FAQ
How do I convert American odds like +501 to decimal?
Divide the positive number by 100, then add 1. For +501, that’s (501÷100)+1=6.01.
Why did the tournament winner still have such long odds?
Golf tournaments have deep fields, often 100 or more players. Even the best player in the world is only one of many realistic winners, which keeps every price in the field longer than it would be in a two-outcome market.
Does a big margin of victory mean the pre-tournament price was wrong?
No. Outright prices reflect the range of realistic outcomes before the event starts. One outcome winning by a wide margin doesn’t mean that outcome was underpriced—it just means that specific result happened to occur.
Does Closing Line Value work the same way on outright markets?
Yes. Comparing the price you bet against the final closing price works the same whether the market settles in a few hours or across an entire tournament.
Try It Yourself
Start your free 5-day BetUnfair trial at betunfair.io and see how De-Vigged Odds, EV Comparison, and Closing Line Value apply just as directly to a tournament outright as they do to tonight’s match.
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