PGA Championship Betting Preview: Finding A Winner At Southern Hills
I’ve always said that trends are made to be broken, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to look at when it comes to the major championships in golf. I put together a trends article for the Masters earlier this year and Scottie Scheffler made it down to the final four. Unfortunately, the last trend that I picked ended up being the reason why he didn’t come out on top in the article.
We now look forward to the year’s second major – the PGA Championship. The event rotates courses each year and will be held at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The last time we saw the Champions Course on the PGA Tour was back in 2007 when Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship here. Since then, the course has had a significant overhaul – they have added yardage to the scorecard, they have removed a number of trees, and they have widened the fairways.
Given the fact that this is a course that we haven’t seen for 15 years, there’s no point in looking at past trends of PGA Championship winners. The course is certainly more predictive than the name of the event when trying to pick a winner. Since we don’t have any trends to work with, I decided to come up with a different strategy for this article. Based on the course setup, I have picked out a number of statistics that I feel will be critical for success this week. We will go through the statistics one-by-one and slowly eliminate golfers until we get down to a few choices that check all of the boxes.
Let’s find ourselves a winner!
Criteria #1: Top 35 in Strokes Gained Off the Tee
A good place to start is with strokes gained off the tee. This course is a Par 70 that measures nearly 7,400 yards. With long holes, wide fairways, and rough that isn’t expected to be penal, good drivers of the ball should have a significant advantage when it comes to setting up their approach shots. I had to pick a cut-off point for these statistics, so I decided to go with the top 35 in this field for each stat category in the year 2022.
The best golfers in the world are generally the best off the tee, so we didn’t lose a ton of big names. However, this takes out Scottie Scheffler, Sam Burns, Hideki Matsuyama, and Cameron Smith.
Criteria #2: Top 35 in Strokes Gained Approach
Iron play is critical each and every week on the PGA Tour, but it tends to be even more important in the majors and on difficult golf courses. When everyone is hitting greens like we saw last week, it becomes more of a putting contest. I do not expect that to be the case this week. For starters, the greens are very small (5,200 square feet on average) for a course of this length. Additionally, the greens are surrounded by deep bunkers and steep run-off areas. If you miss greens, you could find yourself with 30+ yard chip shots or with very difficult bunker shots.
Surprisingly, there are only 16 golfers that are in the top 35 in this field in both strokes gained on approach and strokes gained off the tee. In this round, we lose big names such as Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, and Louis Oosthuizen.
Criteria #3: Top 35 in Bogey Avoidance
There’s no way to tell how difficult the course is going to play, but everyone is expecting it to be on the tougher side of things. There are only two par fives on the course and they both measure over 630 yards. With limited scoring opportunities and with small greens, I am personally expecting the winning score to be in the 8-to-12 under par range. Due to that, I expect bogey avoidance (being able to limit mistakes) to play a bigger role than birdie-making this week.
In this round of cuts, we lost seven golfers – Viktor Hovland, Max Homa, Joaqiun Niemann, Luke List, Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, and Sebastian Munoz. Our list of potential winners is now down to nine golfers.
Criteria #4: Top 35 in Strokes Gained Around the Green
You could certainly make the case that this statistic overlaps with bogey avoidance, but there are two ways to avoid bogeys. You can get the job done with your ball striking by hitting a lot of greens or you can get the job done by being a good scrambler. The latter is expected to play a very big role this week. Golfers will be hitting a lot of mid and long irons into small greens that are surrounded by bunkers and shaved run-off areas. Naturally, everyone’s short game is going to get tested at some point this week.
In this round of cuts, we lost Shane Lowry, Will Zalatoris, Jon Rahm, Mito Pereira, and Corey Conners. We are officially down to our final four golfers…
Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele, and Keegan Bradley (?!?).
Criteria #5: Top 10 in at least one major the last three years
You are probably thinking that I added this last part in order to get rid of Bradley, but that’s not the case. I picked the criteria before I started crossing players off my list of potential winners. With that said, I’m certainly glad that he didn’t make the final cut. While he does have a major win under his belt, his best finish in his last 17 majors is T17. He might be a good option for DFS or as a top 20 bet, but a win this week would be as surprising as the Suns Game 7 performance last weekend.
The Final Three: Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, and Xander Schauffele
I was hoping the criteria would narrow down the list to one or two golfers, but we can work with three. I’ll make a case for each golfer and point you in the direction of where you can find the best golf odds.
Justin Thomas +1600 (BetMGM)
The biggest issues for Thomas last season were off the tee and on the greens. He was one of the best in the world on approach and around the greens, but he struggled to find fairways and he struggled with his flatstick. He has turned both of those weaknesses around this year, as he is regularly gaining strokes off the tee and is currently an above-average putter in 2022. He won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in 2017 and comes into this week in great form – he’s finished T8 or better in seven of his last 10 stroke play events. He has all of the skills needed to win this week, but needs to find a way to avoid the blowup hole or two that has taken him out of contention in majors the last couple of years.
Find these odds at BetMGM, and get a free $1000 bet with our BetMGM promo code!
Jordan Spieth +2000 (BetMGM)
All signs point to Spieth this week. After his bizarre missed cut at the Masters, he bounced back the very next week with a win at the RBC Heritage. He followed that up by nearly winning the AT&T Byron Nelson last week. He finished one stroke shy of K.H. Lee, who has now won that event in back-to-back years. Spieth is looking for the career grand slam, which would be quite an accomplishment at only 28 years old. His statistics are very encouraging, as he wasn’t a great driver of the ball when he was at his peak. It was always his irons and his short game that led him to victories. All of a sudden, he is driving the ball great. The irons have been solid and the around the green game has been magnificent. If he can put together a good week on the greens, he could easily pick up another major.
Xander Schauffele +2800 (DraftKings)
I have long been a fan of X, so it pains me everytime he finishes second or third in one of these big events. It also pains me whenever he adds another strange win to his resume. He has won the Olympics, he has won the Tour Championship, he has won the Tournament of Champions, he has won a WGC event, and he has won a team event. He’s only had one win in a full field event, which is strange given how often he finds himself in contention. I love the way he battled back at the AT&T Byron Nelson last week. He fought hard to make the cut on the number and then shot 65 and 61 on the weekend to vault all the way up to fifth place. He doesn’t have a weakness in his game and he has the fourth best record at majors over the last six years. These odds are available at DraftKings Sportsbook.