The first two days of The Open Championship 2019 at Royal Portrush has been a delight for some and a nightmare for others. Shane Lowry and JB Holmes share the lead at -8 after Round 2, while home-crowd favorite Rory McIlroy misses the cut thanks to a first-round 79.

Among other nightmares are two golfers we mentioned in our 2019 Open Championship Golf Betting Picks article. Rafa Cabrera Bello and Marc Leishman were two of my favorite longshot golf bets, but you won’t see either of them swinging this weekend. Hopefully fading Tiger Woods in matchup bets helped make up for it.

If your golf bets missed the cut or are in bad shape, I deliver good news: there’s still plenty of golf betting to be had as we enter the weekend. Most online sports betting sites offer updated in-play odds for The Open Championship 2019 or you can bet on golf props at Monkey Knife Fight. Let’s look at  golf betting picks strategy for both.

Currently, Tommy Fleetwood and Brooks Koepka are +600 co-favorites to win the Claret Jug (use our BetStars promo code to get these odds). Fleetwood (-7) is just one stroke back while Koepka (-5) is two behind Holmes and Lowry. There’s little value on Lowry +750, and JB Holmes is +1600.

With volatile weather in the forecast, especially on Sunday, I prefer to take advantage of the volatility by scrolling down the leaderboard for in-play bets. After two rounds, the leaderboard is bunched with golfers at -3 and -4. It’d be no surprise if The Open 2019 winner is one of the 13 golfers currently four or five strokes back.

The Open 2019 Golf Props At Monkey Knife Fight

While we still wait for online sports betting sites to post Round 3 matchup bets, Monkey Knife Fight as already posted their prop games for the third round of The Open Championship 2019.

For those unfamiliar, Monkey Knife Fight is a unique take on daily fantasy that pits players against the house (rather than other players) in a series of prop bets. There are no lineups to build or salaries to manage. Simply pick a game, look at the available props, make your decision, and choose a bet amount.

You can play Monkey Knife Fight games like Over/Under, Par Patrol, Bunch of Birdies, Eagle Eye and Rapid Fire.

For example, will Justin Thomas have over or under 15.5 holes of par or better? Will Tommy Fleetwood shoot over or under 69.5 strokes in Round 3? If you get both correct, you’ll earn 2.22.x your buy-in (or you can add more picks to increase your payout).

Golf is my favorite sport to play at Monkey Knife Fight because you can use the weather to your advantage and correlate your plays based on how difficult or easy you think the course will play on a given day.

So far, the weather has been mild at Royal Portrush. With 17 players -4 or better, the benign conditions have yet to truly challenge players, but that’s likely to change.

Saturday looks much like Thursday and Friday in terms of precipitation, but the wind is expected to pick up and stay steady at 15 mph throughout the day. This could make fading the Over on some of Monkey Knife Fight’s golf props quite profitable. Additionally, the R&A might make pin locations more difficult to deter low scoring.

More on Over/Under at Monkey Knife Fight: Looking back at Thomas’ first two rounds, Thomas didn’t shoot par or better on 16 holes in either round. Sitting seven strokes back from the leader, Thomas might try to take advantage of Moving Day, but the aggressive play could lead to trouble. Remember, in this Monkey Knife Fight game, a birdie counts just the same as a par, so if you choose Under 15.5 pars or better, you aren’t necessarily penalized if Thomas has a lot of birdies. You’re just rooting for Thomas to bogey (or worse) at least three holes. Moreover, Thomas’ high ball flight isn’t optimal if there are significant wind gusts.

I have less conviction on fading Fleetwood after posting a 67 and a 68. I could see this one going either way. He is the co-favorite to win the tournament, after all.

In Rapid Fire, I’m taking the +0.5 on Brooks Koepka vs Justin Thomas. Koepka is the better golfer, his game is more suitable for these conditions and he tees off later in the day when the wind is likely to die down. Conversely, Thomas tees off earlier in the day and the beginning of his round could come during peak winds.

Round 4 is when the weather gets really nasty. On Sunday, there’s an 80-90 percent chance of rain throughout the day, winds could gust to over 40 mph and pin placements will be as tough as they’ve been all week. Pay attention to how Monkey Knife Fight adjusts their props, as there’s potentially a number of correlated plays to take advantage of.

(Top Photo Credit: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)