How quickly time flies. The second major of the season is already upon us.
This week at Aronimink Golf Club, 156 players will be fighting to get themselves into the top 70 and ties by the end of Friday evening.
If you want a deeper dive into my thoughts on the course, check out my Action Network Podcast that I recorded with Mike Calabrese and Kyle Murray. The three of us went deep in the weeds (or in this case, the rough) to break down Aronimink the best way we could.
Let's dive into my 2026 PGA Championship picks and PGA Tour best bets for this week's major.
2026 PGA Championship Picks, Best Bets
This week, I came through with three outright picks for the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club. Let's take a look at where the value lies.
PGA Championship Outright Winners
Cameron Young (+1700)
DraftKings has been extremely slow and weird with Cameron Young's price.
Most of the market has pushed Young into the 11-1 to 12-1 territory, but they seem to be holding steady and telling people to come get more action after all the liability they've taken on over the last five months.
I didn't necessarily enter the week planning to bet Young. I'm a big believer that attempting to catch a falling knife typically doesn't end well.
However, I'm not going to leave value off my card when my model believes he should be a golfer in the sub-+1500 range.
Young has a similar blueprint to his profile as Scottie Scheffler did in 2022 before his first major title at the Masters.
It might not be as high-end or bullish, but my model ranked him first in this field for Weighted Strokes Gained Total over his last 24 rounds and also for his 2026 current form.
The short-term data clearly match the five-month statistics. It helps even more that it aligns with my long-term model outlook over the much larger sample size I use.
Bryson DeChambeau (+2500)
I've given this answer multiple times throughout the week, but there's a certain "stink" that LIV players have after their individual failures at the Masters.
I could talk about the groupthink mentality in many ways, but for the sake of this article, bad performances at that event have turned names like DeChambeau and Jon Rahm into afterthoughts compared to where the industry viewed them just a month ago.
Look, the floor is low for DeChambeau. If the putter and irons don't cooperate, this could be a long week (or a short one).
However, outright bets are about upside, and I don't believe many players on any Tour possess the ceiling we get from DeChambeau's spike nature with his driver and putter combination.
My math ranked DeChambeau as the best projected driver in the field for Aronimink.
That doesn't necessarily stem from pure distance, even though it might seem that way. Instead, it highlights his ability to dominate similar courses, including very standard Donald Ross designs.
I wouldn't touch DeChambeau in any of the safety markets, but I'll take a swing for the fence on him at 25-1 to win a golf tournament — especially one where the blueprint for success is more open to interpretation than the public may lead you to believe.
That's usually how you can find value drift in your favor.
Sam Burns (+7000)
I'll forever be chasing the feeling of hitting Wyndham Clark at the 2023 U.S. Open in this article at 100-1. I'm not going to go that deep here, although my "Clark" attempt in this tournament will be Sam Burns.
If you've been following my work recently, you know that I've mostly been fading Burns. I haven't liked the course fits, and I feel pretty good about the outcomes of those fades.
However, many of the red flags in his iron profile that can turn into poor around-the-green play are mitigated on these gargantuan-style greens.
Burns’ putting acumen places him first in this field for both Weighted Putting and Expected 3-Putt avoidance.
If the approach play improves (my model ranks him 36th at Aronimink compared to his 56th-place baseline), there's upside for Burns to continue building on his close call at the Masters last month.
Ironically, that was the last time I played him.
PGA Championship Matchup Pick
Sam Burns Over Hideki Matsuyama
Odds: -110 · Caesars
The biggest knock in Burns' profile had always been his lack of a major championship pedigree.
Sixteen tournaments leading up to the 2024 U.S. Open yielded nothing inside the top 15, but we've seen massive shifts in his production since that moment.
Four top-20s over his last seven major starts, including a near-miss at the Masters, should present a feeling of optimism that the American has found something during the biggest events of the year.
Of course, my main reasoning doesn't hinge on a small sample size of data across seven events. However, it does help to propel a profile that placed Burns as a top-10 target on the slate.
Meanwhile, Hideki Matsuyama has struggled off the tee and with his putter. I'm hoping his iron play and around-the-green build that typically propels him sees a slight decrease as well.
That may be optimistic given that Matsuyama still ranks inside the top 10 for projected approach play at Aronimink, but it reflects my model being lower on Hideki than the market.
Plus, there's a high-end uptick for Burns that's popping at all turns of the sheet.
