Women's World Cup: This team can beat the USA

Can anyone unseat the United States women? That's the betting question at the forefront of this year's World Cup, which began this morning in Australia. Baseball isn't going anywhere, it's time to apprise ourselves of the situation and see if there's a bet worth making in this tournament.

Women's World Cup bets and teams to watch

Yardbarker's own Alyssa Clang has done us the service of exploring much of the betting market around the Women's World Cup, and we'd be remiss to not call on her work here as a primer for our bets.

If you'd like to read her entire work, you can find that in the links below. We've gone ahead and picked out some of the more intriguing nuggets that resonated with us.

Betting previews:

• Can anyone beat the USA?
• Watch out for these bracket busters
• 4 smart early wagers
• Aussies, Brits among the challengers
• Netherlands lead dark horses

There's nowhere to start but the United States women, who have won back-to-back World Cups. The U.S. is +240 to win again, but there appears to be some concern looming for their chances at a three-peat. The USWNT is missing its captain Becky Sauerbrunn, its top scorer Mallory Swanson Pugh, and a rising young star in Catarina Macario. 

That, coupled with a few of the regulars no longer at top form, means we're looking at a lot of fresh faces in this year's tournament. That alone feels like reason enough to pass on them winning here, especially at the +240 price.

If not the U.S., then who?

How about the host country, Australia? The Aussies are co-hosting the World Cup with New Zealand, which means we can expect every match to be a home game, giving the squad an extra lift of energy and support throughout Group Stage and beyond.

The Australian national team has Sam Kerr, arguably the greatest women's soccer player in the world, known best for being the catalyst for winning the Premier League with Chelsea.

The Aussies already won their first match, early Thursday morning over Ireland. With a leg up and a clearer path to the Round of 16, we're in on Australia winning it all at +1000.

In the news ...

While you were sleeping, amateur takes Round One lead at The Open — At barely 9 a.m. ET, most of The Open field had already wrapped up their first 18 holes of the tournament, and at the time of writing, it's amateur Christo Lamprecht with the low round score of 66. Lamprecht is a rising senior at Georgia Tech and is currently +450 to maintain this pace and finish in the top 10. Tommy Fleetwood also shot a 66 (+650 to win), while Bryson Dechambeau (+4) is one of the more notable names to have a rough opening round.

Cowboys All-Pro guard Zack Martin threatens to skip training camp — Zack Martin wants to be paid. The Cowboys star guard has considered not reporting to training camp because he believes he is "woefully underpaid relative to the market." Martin is no doubt one of the best linemen in football, yet his contract ranks seventh among guards. Dallas has a lot of mouths to feed both now and before next offseason, with WR CeeDee Lamb and CB Trevon Diggs just a few of the names up for extensions. It'll be interesting to see how Dallas handles this, their offensive line depth is not a strength. Currently, the Cowboys' 2023 win total is set at 9.5.

Today's Bark Bets is written by Griffin Carroll