While the PGA Championship lacks the historical gravitas of the professional golf world’s other three major championships, it has provided some of the most entertaining finishes and storylines over the past few seasons.
The 2024 edition at Valhalla gave us a late Sunday showdown between eventual champion Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau, along with World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler’s Friday morning arrest. At Oak Hill in 2023, we saw Brooks Koepka hold off Scheffler and Viktor Hovland to win his third Wannamaker trophy. The 72nd hole at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills saw Mito Periera do the one thing he couldn’t do, leading to Justin Thomas’ second major win in a playoff against Will Zalatoris. And the 2021 stop at Kiawah Island was historic, with 50-year-old Phil Mickelson holding off Brooks Koepka, becoming the oldest major champion to date.
As we head to the Quail Hollow Club for the 107th PGA Championship, the storylines at the top of the board are impeccable.
RELATED: PGA Championship 2025: Power rankings for the entire field at Quail Hollow
The top-of-the-betting-board chalk—Rory McIlroy, Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, etc.—is all good this week, and it deserves your attention. But you’re not here for the top of the betting board. You know those stories. You know a few, if not all, of the names mentioned above will be in contention at some point this week.
I didn’t mention multi-time major champions like Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm, along with the inevitable Ludvig Aberg, who are all lurking right behind. And while most major championships are won by the game’s very best, we’re occasionally gifted Wyndham Clark at the U.S. Open, Brian Harman at the Open Championship, or the aforementioned 50-year-old version of Phil Mickelson at the PGA.
Since the Quail Hollow Club is an annual PGA Tour stop, we do have a sense of the recipe required to identify a longshot contender. We expect the course to play slightly more difficult than how it plays as the host of the Truist Championship, with thick rough and faster greens, but we’re not flying blind in our analysis.
We’re looking at a par-71 layout stretching beyond 7,600 yards from the tips. Per Betsperts Golf, we’ve seen the field use their driver off the tee at an 85.5 percent clip over the past five starts at Quail Hollow, nearly 20 percent higher than an average PGA Tour event (67.7 percent). At the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship, the last event played at Quail Hollow, four of the top five golfers in driving distance finished inside the top 10.
RELATED: PGA Championship picks 2025: 13 best bets for Quail Hollow
The distance demands of Quail Hollow don’t stop at the tee box. Over the same time frame, the average approach distance here is 183.1 yards, 16.8 yards above a Tour average event (167.3 yards). An average Tour event sees 47.3 percent of second shots from 175+ yards out, while at Quail Hollow, the five-year average is 60.6 percent.
Statistically, putting is the noisiest of all the strokes-gained metrics week in and week out, but it’s always been a vital piece of success at Quail Hollow Club. Over the past five iterations, Quail Hollow ranks as the sixth-toughest course on tour for gaining strokes through putting. Longer putts will be particularly challenging, as it is the second toughest course for putts longer than 15 feet. Additionally, the course has a high three-putt rate of 3.95 percent (PGA Tour average is 2.84 percent).
Now, there’s a strong likelihood that the winner comes from the top tier on the odds board, but that’s not why you’re here. Focusing on the key elements of carry distance, long iron approach play, and putting splits when it’s difficult to gain strokes on the greens, let’s highlight some of the golfers in the field who might surprise this week and perhaps find themselves on the first page of the leaderboard on Sunday afternoon.
This article was published in partnership with Betsperts Golf, one of the leading data-analyzing tools in the industry. The Rabbit Hole is a tool that allows users to utilize strokes-gained stats and any other metric from the PGA Tour for their own modeling purposes.
Golf Digest readers can get access to Betsperts’ leading data tool, the Rabbit Hole, for just $5 this week by using the promo code GDWEEKLY. Now’s a great time to use it—so you can win your PGA Championship pools with some advanced stats!
2025 PGA Championship Longshots Min Woo Lee (100-1) 
Emilee Chinn
Min Woo Lee is still struggling to be a consistent performer on the PGA Tour, but it’s difficult to argue that many golfers in this field, especially those priced at 100-1 or longer, can compete with Min Woo’s upside. Over the past two years, only Bryson DeChambeau averages more carry distance off the tee than the 26-year-old Aussie, and that was on full display back in March when he held off a late-charging Scottie Scheffler to win at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.
Over the past two seasons, Min Woo has played 66 rounds on fast greens. He has gained more than two strokes/putting in 23.08 percent of those rounds, which is the fifth-highest rate in this week’s field per Betsperts Golf (minimum 10 rounds).
This combination of elite distance off the tee and the ability to hole putts at an elite clip puts Min Woo Lee at the top of my longshot list this week, and he’s a bit more battle-tested after that Sunday afternoon in Houston back in March.
Listen to Golf Digest’s weekly betting podcast, “The Loop,” (above) where we interview the industry’s leading experts (and sometimes tour pros) to help you make your bets and pick your fantasy lineups. And be sure to subscribe to “The Loop” wherever you get your podcasts!
Wyndham Clark (110-1) 
Emilee Chinn
Wyndham Clark checks multiple boxes for me in this exercise. Not only has he recently won a major championship at 100-1+ odds, but Clark won here at Quail Hollow just a month before his 2023 U.S. Open victory at Los Angeles Country Club.
Clark also meets the carry distance and putting prerequisites I’m looking for. Clark ranks ninth in this week’s field in average carry distance over the past two years, and while he’s an above-average putter across the board, Clark has performed best on Poa Trivialis greens, which is what the players will see this week at Quail Hollow. I also used the Rabbit Hole at Betsperts Golf to look at which golfers have the highest Greens in Regulation rate (GIR%) on long golf courses when it’s been difficult to gain strokes on approach, and Clark ranks ninth in the field over the past two years.
While Clark has just one top-five finish this season, it’s interesting to me that it was at Memorial Park in Houston, a strong corollary course for Quail Hollow, highlighted above with Min Woo Lee.
Golf Digest readers can get access to Betsperts’ leading data tool, the Rabbit Hole, for just $5 this week by using the promo code GDWEEKLY. Now’s a great time to use it—so you can win your PGA Championship pools with some advanced stats!
Max Homa (200-1) 
Jared C. Tilton
It’s been a tough 12 months for Max Homa, but perhaps there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Homa spoke last week about a few setup and ball-position changes that he made with his driver prior to his start at Philly Cricket Club, and the results were encouraging. Homa finished seventh in SG/off the tee last week, gaining an average of 0.76 strokes per round, the second-most strokes he’s gained in his past 34 starts, which dates back to the 2024 Sentry.
We’re also at a spot where the vibes are immaculate for Team Homa. Quail Hollow is where he got his first PGA Tour win back in 2019, and he’s finished T-8 here in each of the past two seasons despite entering with less-than-stellar form. He’s flashed more consistency with his irons as well, gaining nearly a full stroke per round in back-to-back starts in April at Augusta National and Harbour Town.
Let’s not forget that the price here is 200-1. I’m not making a case for Homa to get this done at 50-1, where he was routinely going off at major championships just 12 months ago, but I know that the moment won’t be too big for him if he’s in contention on Sunday.
Golf Digest readers can get access to Betsperts’ leading data tool, the Rabbit Hole, for just $5 this week by using the promo code GDWEEKLY. Now’s a great time to use it—so you can win your PGA Championship pools with some advanced stats!
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com