2020 PGA Championship: PGA Tour Golf Betting Odds
The PGA Championship is supposed to be the second golf Grand Slam tournament of the year nowadays and was originally scheduled for May 14-17 at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. In this very unusual year, though, it will be the first of three major tournaments – the British Open was cancelled – and tees off on Thursday with the best field of the year. Justin Thomas is the favourite on the golf odds.
A total of 95 of the world’s Top 100 are set to play. Was to be 96 but Italy’s Francesco Molinari, a former British Open champion, withdrew late last week. England’s Lee Westwood, once No. 1 in the world, is not playing because of the coronavirus surge in the USA.
This will be the first-ever major championship to be held at a TPC property and the first PGA Championship to be staged in San Francisco. TPC Harding Park, which was established in 1925, also will be the fourth municipally-owned golf course to host the PGA Championship. The course last hosted a PGA Tour event in 2015, the WGC-Match Play. Top-ranked Rory McIlroy defeated Gary Woodland 4 & 2 in the final. The PGA Championship also was initially a match-play event but that changed starting in 1958.
Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen (Hagen in match-play era) have each won this tournament a record five times, with the Golden Bear also finishing runner-up four times.
2020 PGA Championship Odds
The two-time tournament defending champion is Brooks Koepka (+1000 to win). He finished at 8-under 272 last year at the very tough Bethpage Black in New York, also a municipal course, beating out Dustin Johnson by two. The year before, Koepka finished 16-under 264 at Bellerive outside St. Louis to beat Tiger Woods by two. Consider two strokes on the winning margin prop as it has happened three years in a row. No player in the stroke-play era has won the PGA Championship three years in a row.
Thomas is the +900 favourite off winning the WGC-St. Jude Invitational on Sunday to reach No. 1 in the world rankings for the second time in his career. It was Thomas’ third win of the season. At 27, he became the third-youngest player since 1960 to reach 13 career PGA Tour wins, trailing only Tiger and Nicklaus.
Tiger (+2300) would tie Nicklaus and Hagen with his fifth PGA Championship win; Tiger last won in 2007 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and missed the cut in 2019. Woods has played just once since the restart and was T40 two weeks ago the Memorial in Ohio. Woods did win the 2005 WGC-American Express Invitational at Harding Park in a playoff over John Daly. At the 2009 Presidents Cup at the course, Woods was 5-0. Tiger’s next win would also be No. 83 overall on the PGA Tour, breaking a tie with Sam Snead for most. Major championships are also considered part of the European Tour.
McIlroy (+1000) and Bryson DeChambeau (+1100) round out the favourites. McIlroy, a two-time PGA Championship winner, was T47 last week, while DeChambeau was T30.
No Canadian has won this tournament or even finished second. Adam Hadwin was T29 last year at 5 over, Corey Conners T64 at 11 over. Hadwin comes off a 72nd-place finish at the St. Jude and is +14800. Conners was T30 on Sunday and is also +14800, but Conners is the slight +185 favourite to finish as top Canadian with Hadwin at +195, Hughes +295 (+17800 to win) and Nick Taylor +450 (+37000 to win).
PGA Championship Predictions
Take Thomas and McIlroy for Top 10s, but the winner at +1900 is Xander Schauffele. He comes off a T6 at the St. Jude and is overdue to win a major.