Jon Rahm’s season-ending hot streak on the LIV Golf tour now moves to the outskirts of the Windy City, where he’s the odds favorite to win the individual finale and claim the league championship in the process.

The Spaniard opened with +450 odds to win at BetMGM for LIV Chicago, beginning Friday at Bolingbrook Golf Club an hour outside the city. After finishing first and second in his last two tournaments—the latter in a playoff loss to Brooks Koepka—Rahm has also seized the individual points lead from Joaquin Niemann, who had held the position since March. A victory in Bolingbrook would assure Rahm of the title in his first year on the LIV circuit. 

Rahm has finished top-10 in every LIV event he’s played this season, something no other golfer on the circuit can claim. Given that Rahm has placed third or better in three of his last four starts, Niemann will also likely need a victory to claim the individual tile—but his last victory came more than six months ago.

LIV Golf Chicago Betting Odds

Odds as of September 10 at BetMGM

LIV Golf Chicago Best Bets

Jon Rahm To Win (+450)

Nine of his last 12 LIV rounds have been 60s, and it’s hard to bet against a bulldog like Rahm with a championship on the line. Add in a T7 at the Open Championship and a T5 in Paris—where he blew a three-shot lead on the back nine on Sunday—and Rahm has been playing consistently good golf since midsummer, something that absolutely no one else on the shorts-and-shotgun-start set can claim. 

Joaquin Niemann Top-5 Finish (+170)

The Chilean can also claim the LIV title with a victory in Bolingbrook, but his recent results have been a little uneven—three top-10s bookended by a T32 and a T15. Niemann won two of the season’s first three events and hasn’t won since.

He did make a playoff in the UK event (where he fell to Rahm), but over the past month he just hasn’t been able to go as consistently low as some of his rivals at the top of the standings. Crazy as it sounds, 69s and 68s don’t cut it.

Cameron Smith Top-10 Finish (+110)

Remember this guy—won his major, cashed out, and basically disappeared? Well, the Australian with the glorious mullet is once again showing signs of the elite player he used to be. Smith has finished ninth or better in each of his last four LIV events, losing one in a playoff, and firing a second-round 63 last month at the Greenbrier. Does he care enough to win? Maybe not. But on a circuit where hardly anyone shows any real consistency, this mild hot streak is good enough.  

LIV Golf Chicago Betting Tips

By all accounts, Bolingbrook Golf Club is a wonderful facility that’s regularly ranked among the best public courses in Illinois. It looks like a steal for $90 a person on weekdays. But LIV clearly seemed in a pinch to find a Chicago-area venue for 2024, given that Bolingbrook wasn’t announced as the host site for the individual finale until April. And as lovely as it is, let’s just say this place doesn’t exactly have a track record of hosting the pros.

So expect LIV players to go low on a layout that’s more accustomed to hosting retirees and real estate agents. That doesn’t always bode well for Rahm, whose struggles to close the deal have perhaps been most evident on some of LIV’s less-challenging courses where everyone goes deep into the red.

Courses like Valderrama and Greenbrier, both former Ryder Cup hosts, allow him to more readily stand apart. But that first LIV victory in the UK in July clearly took some pressure off a guy who’d been screaming at drones two events earlier.

So if not Rahm, Niemann or Smith at Bolingbrook, who else? Tyrrell Hatton recorded a victory and two straight playoff losses before stumbling to a T25 at the Greenbrier. Louis Oosthuizen shot a Sunday 60 at the Greenbrier, and has been top-eight in three straight. Then there’s Koepka, who went bogey-free in two of his three rounds in West Virginia to join Niemann as the only players with multiple individual victories this season.