Trends on the PGA TOUR Can Guide Your Bets for the PGA Championship

Where did Wyndham Clark come from? Watching the close of the Wells Fargo Championship many viewers may have been asking themselves that same question. Victories on the PGA TOUR do not just “happen.” Winners work hard and they show incremental gains in the months and weeks leading up to a win. We are all focused on the favorites, but the reality is when a player like Clark breaks through, he has been leaving us clues for some time.

Wyndham Clark has gained an average of 7+ strokes against the field in his last five starts. Leading into the Wells Fargo, he had finished in the top 40 nine straight times. Take that level of consistency, Clark’s current form and he was primed for a win. Not every player can win on TOUR, so what pushed Wyndham over the edge? The golf course plays a significant role in the equation.

We need a perfect synergy between course traits and talent to predict outright winners. I have been previewing Oak Hill’s East Course for four weeks. Those details are known. The question is prior to the 105th PGA Championship, who is making moves on the leaderboard week after week like Wyndham. I spent last week at Quail Hollow watching the world’s best. Here’s who I have my eye on with just a week to go before the season’s second Major Championship.

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• In six designated starts this season, Tyrell Hatton has four top 20 finishes. Add in a runner-up finish at THE PLAYERS Championship and he’s someone we must watch at Oak Hill. His current odds to win the PGA are +6500 on FanDuel (+5000 DraftKings). Hatton’s gaining an average of six strokes against the field in his last five starts. He plays big, tough golf courses very well. He finished fourth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and third this weekend at Wells Fargo. 

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• I have mentioned Tommy Fleetwood’s name before on these PGA Championship previews. Fleetwood is hitting the ball like Hatton and Clark. Still in search of his first TOUR win, Tommy has won six times on the DP World Tour, the most recent just this past November. FanDuel has him posted at +7500 (+6500 DraftKings). When ball striking counts, Fleetwood flashes to the top of the leaderboard. Fifth this past weekend and don’t forget his third place at the Valspar Championship; another difficult test. 
  
• Rickie Fowler just jumped back inside the top 50 in the OWGR with his fourteenth-place finish at Wells Fargo yesterday. Gaining nearly seven strokes against the field over his last five starts, Fowler has major championship moxie. The boards aren’t quite sure how to handle him listing him at +8000 on DraftKings (+6500 Caesars).  Rickie has four straight top 15 finishes. That’s a powerful trend and one that is more telling than Clark’s.

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• Keegan Bradley is sixth in the season long FedEx Cup standings. All signs point toward a ball striker like Bradley to contend at Oak Hill. Keegan always exhibits his northeast roots when majors are played in that corner of the country. He finished seventh last year in Boston for the US Open. Caesars lists him at +9000, where DraftKings, a Boston based company, has Bradley at +6500. The 2011 PGA Champion, Keegan finished second at the Farmers Insurance Open on a Torrey Pines test that will certainly be a great comparison course to Oak Hill.

I listed the variance (high to low) on odds for a reason. When each of the books are close on a player’s futures odds, that signals they have confidence in how that player will finish. When you see the range of these four fabulous ball strikers it catches your attention. You have seven days left to take advantage of the PGA futures board. The odds won’t offer the same opportunities in a week. Just like Wyndham, it is time to seize the moment.

Keith Stewart, PGA covers the PGA TOUR and LPGA from a betting perspective. Published by Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, and PGA TOUR, Keith is also the founder of a golf betting media company called Read The Line. 

The Professional Golfers’ Association of America (“PGA”) is not an online gambling operator, and PGAChampionship.com is not a gambling site of any kind. Odds are provided for information and entertainment purposes only. Odds were sourced from FanDuel, DraftKings and Caesars and last updated 12 a.m. EST May 8, 2023. PGA makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of information given.