The second major of the year is upon us, as the 2023 PGA Championship takes place this week at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., for the first time since the 2013 running of the event.
Last year, Justin Thomas came from seven strokes back at the beginning of the final round to win the 104th PGA Championship that was held at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. The victory required a playoff win over Will Zalatoris, who will not be competing this season as he continues to recover from recent back surgery.
Thomas has not played his best golf so far this season, but he is coming off a strong week at the Wells Fargo Championship where he finished in a tie for 14th, so he’ll aim to come out strong this week.
Let’s dive right into the most recent odds to see who the favorites are, which LIV Golf members to keep an eye on, and to see if we can identify some sleeper picks to win.
Odds To Win The PGA Championship 2023
Outright win lines are current as of Wednesday, May 17, at 3:30 p.m. ET and courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook.
- Scottie Scheffler (+700)
- Jon Rahm (+750)
- Rory McIlroy (+1600)
- Patrick Cantlay (+1600)
- Xander Schauffele (+1800)
- Brooks Koepka (+2000)
- Tony Finau (+2200)
- Jason Day (+2800)
- Collin Morikawa (+2800)
- Matt Fitzpatrick (+3000)
- Dustin Johnson (+3000)
- Cameron Young (+3000)
- Cameron Smith (+3500)
- Viktor Hovland (+3500)
- Tyrrell Hatton (+3500)
- Sungjae Im (+3500)
- Justin Thomas (+3500)
- Max Homa (+4000)
- Jordan Spieth (+4500)
- Rickie Fowler (+5500)
- Hideki Matsuyama (+5500)
The rest of the field is at +6000 PGA odds or longer over at DraftKings.
PGA Championship Favorites
Jon Rahm (+750)
It is near impossible to leave the reigning Masters’ champion and current World No. 1 off a list of major title favorites, so here we are. Rahm has been on an absolute tear this season, winning four times so far, and one has to wonder if there is any reason why he wouldn’t be around on the weekend in contention for his third major title.
Scottie Scheffler (+700)
Similar to Rahm, Scheffler has won multiple times this season, with two victories so far. He and Rahm have been head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the PGA tour for the last 16 months and should never be counted out of any tournament.
Oak Hill should fit Scheffler’s game well, as it caters to longer hitters who are also elite ball-strikers.
Brooks Koepka (+2000)
Koepka is a fascinating name, as two months ago, most people wouldn’t have even considered him a contender. Then he won a LIV tournament and followed it up with almost winning the Masters as people all of the sudden remembered that he once won back-to-back PGA Championships.
Koepka is the type of player who relishes an opportunity to beat the odds, and we should definitely keep an eye out for his name on Sunday afternoon.
If I had to make a PGA pick of the day, Koepka’s odds feel like the best opportunity.
PGA Championship Field
The PGA Championship will always attract the most elite talent in the golf world as one of the four major tournaments. 2023 is no different, with every player in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Ranking accepting an invite except for Zalatoris, who as mentioned earlier is recovering from surgery.
There are 155 players in the field at this current moment with one spot up for grabs, reserved for the winner of the Byron Nelson.
Can LIV Golf players compete in the PGA Championship?
LIV Golf players can indeed play in the PGA Championship if they received an invite, and there were 18 LIV members invited to this year’s running, including Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Joaquín Niemann, Mito Pereira, Patrick Reed, Cameron Smith, and Harold Varner III.
Is Phil Mickelson playing in the PGA Championship?
Mickelson is indeed playing in the PGA Championship, returning after not playing in last year’s event due to the schism between himself and the PGA Tour attributed to his early involvement in LIV Golf.
Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at Kiawah, becoming the oldest player ever to win a major championship at the age of nearly 51 years old. He was 250/1 to win the tournament before it started, which is a near unheard-of odds number for a major winner to be.
PGA Championship Sleepers
Mito Pereira (+10000)
It has to have been a tough 12-month period for Pereira when thinking about the PGA Championship, given how close he came to not only his first win on the PGA Tour, but his first major as well last year. He fought hard for 71 holes, only to make a crucial double-bogey on the 18th hole on Sunday that knocked him out of the playoff between Thomas and Zalatoris.
Pereira is a skilled golfer though, and I expect that loss to motivate him thoroughly this week en route to him contending.
Aaron Wise (+10000)
Wise is not a golfer you would expect to see on a list like this, given he just took a month off of golf to focus on his mental health and also has not contended in a major quite yet.
However, Wise does have one result that I am paying attention to, and that is his 2022 runner-up finish at the Memorial Tournament, which is held yearly at Muirfield Village. This course is comparable to Oak Hill, so it could be that Wise will find himself in contention here.
Gary Woodland (+10000)
Woodland did not place highly at Oak Hill the last time the PGA Championship was hosted here, but nonetheless, he has some familiarity on this stage. We don’t see many former major winners down the odds board that often, so this is a good chance to take a flyer on a player who has been in solid form recently.
He placed tied for 14th at both the Masters and the Wells Fargo Championship, as well as tied for ninth at The Genesis Invitational, so keep an eye out for him.
