PGA Championship Golf Odds and Betting Picks

If it seems like this week’s PGA Championship, the fourth and final major of the golf season, is really early this year, it’s because it is. Because golf is returning to the Summer Olympics, which open next week in Rio de Janeiro, the PGA Championship was moved up a few weeks. It’s the first time it will be held before the month of August since 1971. World No. 2 Dustin Johnson is the +800 favourite on Sports Interaction’s golf odds.

Baltusrol: A True Championship Course

The 2016 PGA Championship is held at private Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey, not too far from New York City. The Lower Course holds the event and is a par 70 measuring 7,428 yards. It’s the second time the course has hosted the PGA Championship; in 2005, Phil Mickelson won the tournament at 4-under 276. A total of seven U.S. Opens also have been held there, last in 1993 when Lee Janzen won. One of the final entrants in the field was Jhonattan Vegas, who won last week’s Canadian Open in Oakville, Ontario, by a shot at Glen Abbey thanks to birdies on his final three holes Sunday. Vegas is a +13900 long shot this week on golf odds.

Johnson finished in a tie for second last week, a shot behind Vegas. The American now has six straight Top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour, including a victory at the U.S. Open, his first major title. Johnson has finished in the Top 10 in four of the six PGA Championships he’s played and six of the last seven major championships he has entered overall. He will be playing the first two days with England’s Danny Willett, the reigning Masters champion, and Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, the 2016 British Open winner. The first three majors of the season have produced first-time major winners.

Odds Good for World #1 Jason Day

The defending champion of the PGA Championship is world No. 1 Jason Day of Australia and he’s +900 in golf betting this week along with Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy. Day was dominant at year ago at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, finishing at 20 under. That was a record score under par at any major, since matched by Stenson at the British Open two weeks ago. The last player to repeat at the PGA Championship was Tiger Woods in 2007. He remains sidelined following back surgery and apparently won’t play at all this season.
McIlroy won the 2012 PGA Championship in South Carolina and the 2014 event in Kentucky. McIlroy is winless on the PGA Tour this season but does have a victory in Europe.

American Jordan Spieth and Stenson are each +1400. Spieth was second to Day last year, three shots back, as he was attempting to become just the third man in the modern era to win three majors in a calendar year. Spieth contended at the Masters back in April with tie for second but didn’t at either the U.S. Open (T37) or British Open (T30). Stenson’s final-round performance at the British Open was the stuff of legend as he shot a 63, tying the lowest round ever by an eventual winner in a major championship.
Mickelson, who played tremendously at the British Open but finished second, three shots behind Stenson, is +1700 to win at Baltusrol again.

No Canadian player has ever won the PGA Championship and that won’t change this week as none qualified for the tournament. But it’s a stellar field otherwise — usually the best of the year — with all but three of the world’s Top 100 scheduled to tee it up.

PGA Championship Prediction

I do like McIlroy and Johnson each for a Top 10. Will the first-time major winner streak continue? I picked Spain’s Sergio Garcia to win his first major at the British Open and he was a solid T5, but I’m not taking him again. My choice is American J.B. Holmes at a great price at +6400. He played really well at this year’s Masters (T4) and British Open (third). Holmes was 24th in this tournament last year.