The wait is over and the season’s second major has finally arrived. The PGA Championship kicks off this Thursday at the gorgeous Ocean Course of the Kiawah Golf Resort in South Carolina. If you haven’t heard by now, at a whopping 7,876 yards in length, this is the longest course in history to ever host a major championship. Awesemo uses Alex Baker’s Unofficial World Golf Rankings to find strong values in DFS and the PGA betting markets each week, and below is Alex’s breakdown of the tool and three of the top PGA betting picks for this week’s PGA Championship.
Ranking players in golf is tricky because the fields change in difficulty every week, as do the courses. The biggest part of figuring out the best players is figuring out how to sift through all this noise and come up with a metric to best capture how good a golfer has performed over the past year. Much like the standard rankings in golf, we’ve come up with the Awesemo Unofficial World Golf Rankings so we can use them in our PGA DFS lineups or to find an edge on a betting line.
At Awesemo, the metric we’ve chosen is the number of strokes above or below how an average field in a PGA tournament performed. Next, how to weight these data points is essential, as people love to talk about short form versus long form. Only PGA tournaments are considered right now, and golfers need a minimum of 20 rounds played. Players are not rewarded by more or fewer rounds in the time period.
Awesemo’s Expert PGA Championship Betting Picks
Daniel Berger (+3000 PointsBet)
Berger is Awesemo’s No. 2 player in the world based on Unofficial World Golf Rankings, and he has the form to back up this claim. Last week at the AT&T Byron Nelson, Berger shot under par in all four rounds, ranking fourth in strokes gained tee to green, third in strokes gained off the tee and placing third. This marked his fifth top-10 in the new year, which is a run that includes a win at Pebble Beach back in February. While this week presents a much more difficult test, the Ocean Course and Pebble Beach are similar venues given that they both challenge the golfer’s ability to the handle the wind coming off the seaside coast.
In addition to his winning experience in windy conditions, Berger has made eight of his last 10 cuts at majors and has three finishes inside the top 13. The Ocean Course is the perfect venue for Berger to cement himself as one of the best players in the world with his first major title, and his current odds are far too long for his tremendous form.
Will Zalatoris (+5000 BetMGM)
After finishing sixth at the U.S. Open last year, Zalatoris never looked back. He has made 15 of 17 cuts since that magnificent showing at Winged Foot, with an impressive six top-10 finishes. One of those was his memorable Masters debut, where Zalatoris finished second to champion Hideki Matsuyama by only one shot.
Now Zalatoris heads to the Ocean Course in outstanding form for his PGA Championship debut. Last week at the Byron Nelson, nobody in the field stuck more greens or gained more strokes on approach than Zalatoris. Dye-designed tracks tend to always favor strong approach players, and if his irons remain hot, Zalatoris should find himself in contention this Sunday afternoon. After his performance last week, Zalatoris ranks 15th in the world according to Awesemo’s Unofficial World Golf Rankings, and he looks great as a PGA Championship betting pick this week.
Matchup: Hideki Matsuyama Over Joaquin Niemann (-120 BetRivers)
When using Awesemo’s Unofficial World Golf Rankings, Matsuyama ranks 19th in the world o Niemann is 26th. Both of them come into this week in encouraging form, with Matsuyama just securing the first major of his career at Augusta last month and Niemann making his last 17 cuts. Ultimately this pick comes down to major pedigree. Including the Masters victory, Matsuyama has six top-25 finishes in his past 10 major starts. For his career, he is 28-for-33 in made cuts at the major level, finishing in the top 25 a remarkable 20 times.
Niemann, on the other hand, has only made three cuts in eight major appearances, with only one top-25 on his resume. While Niemann should post some quality major finishes down the road, the demanding Ocean Course is not the spot for him to break out. Matsuyama is an easy choice in this matchup, and bettors should attack these odds fast before they start to move in Matsuyama’s favor.
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