PGA Championship Golf Predictions and Betting Odds
The fourth and final major championship on the PGA Tour is the PGA Championship. The 100th staging of the event this year is from Bellerive Country Club outside St. Louis.
PGA Championship Background
We’ve mentioned a few schedule changes on our golf previews this year as the PGA Tour made quite a few alterations to the 2018-19 wraparound schedule. The biggest one was moving the PGA Championship from August and last on the schedule of Grand Slam events to May and second. In all honesty, the PGA Championship somewhat gets lost in its current spot. It should draw more attention in the month in between the Masters and U.S. Open.
As noted above, it’s the 100th PGA Championship, and this tournament back in the day was match play format. The last such was in 1957. It’s the second time Bellerive Country Club, in a suburb west of St. Louis, will host. In 1992, future World Golf Hall of Famer Nick Price won his first major here at 6-under 278. It’s hard to say what the winning score might be this time around because the course has undergone significant changes since then. It’s a par 70 measuring 7,317 yards. It did also host the 2008 BMW Championship in the FedEx Cup playoffs.
PGA Championship Odds
World No. 1 Dustin Johnson is pretty much favoured in every tournament he enters and that’s the case this week with DJ priced +660 on the golf odds board to win his second career major and first PGA Championship. Johnson won for the third time this season two weeks ago at the Canadian Open and has a best finish of fifth in this tournament back in 2010.
Rory McIlroy is +1200 to win a third PGA Championship – he did in 2012 & ’14. He comes off a sixth-place finish Sunday at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Justin Thomas won last year’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow in North Carolina for his first major and is +1400 to become the first player to repeat in the event since Tiger Woods in 2007. Thomas won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational on Sunday. Very rare to win back-to-back weeks on Tour – rarer to win the week before a major and then said major.
Woods plays the PGA Championship for the first time in three years and is +2300. That ’07 victory was his fourth and last PGA Championship victory. Tiger faded over the weekend at the WGC-Bridgestone to finish T31 in a tournament he has won eight times. Jordan Spieth is +2200 to win the lone major he hasn’t yet and complete the career Grand Slam. Only five players have accomplished that.
No Canadian has won the PGA Championship. Adam Hadwin is +26300 at Sports Interaction. He missed the cut last year and comes off an MC at the Canadian Open. Hadwin tees off Thursday at 7:45 a.m. ET.
PGA Championship Predictions
We like Johnson and McIlroy for Top 10s, but the winner is Aussie Jason Day at +2300. He has four Top 10s in the PGA Championship over his past five visits with a win in 2016.