TRUIST: Another week, another Signature Event on the PGA Tour, complete with a $20 million purse and a star-studded field. Of course, one particular star will be missing this week, as World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler has decided to take some time off in preparation for the PGA Championship, and with Scottie out and Rory McIlroy skipping last week’s Cadillac Championship for similar reasons, it’s worth asking whether these “Signature Events” are still having their intended effect. Is the Tour spending too much time throwing money at the Haves, who now have so much of it that they don’t need to bother with showing up for a $20 million no-cut cash giveaway, while making the Have-Nots fight over relative scraps in tournaments that the Tour itself has now deemed “lesser than”? With the LIV situation now seemingly disintegrating, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of the structural changes in professional golf, and the current situation certainly leaves plenty of room for improvement.
Though Scheffler and Collin Morikawa will be absent, the rest of the top 10 in the world rankings will be teeing it up this week, including the red-hot Cam Young, fresh off his runaway victory at Doral, and the aforementioned McIlroy, whose tremendous record at Quail Hollow makes him the clear favorite this week (currently trading around 7.2 on the BETDAQ exchange). Speaking of Quail Hollow, it’s a course that has seen its profile rise considerably over the past 25 years, from being considered one of the Charlotte area’s hidden gems to now being the site of multiple majors and a regular PGA Tour stop.
Originally designed by George Cobb in the 1960s, Quail Hollow was extensively renovated by Tom Fazio around the turn of the century and now presents a tremendous tee to green test stretching out over 7,550 yards of lush, tree-lined fairways and firm, fast greens that are generally among the purest putting surfaces the players will see all year. The last three holes, colloquially known as the Green Mile, constitute what is perhaps the toughest finishing stretch on Tour: a 223-yard par-3 with a peninsula-style green sandwiched between two long, difficult par-4s. The 18th in particular is a memorable and dramatic finishing hole, with a creek that cuts just off the left edge of the fairway and a patch of trees to the right that makes bailing out all but impossible. Like many holes at Quail Hollow, it requires fearlessness off the tee and precision with the irons. This is a course that will test a player’s entire bag, which is why it has hosted a pair of PGA Championships, including the 2025 edition, won by Scheffler, and a Presidents Cup, with more events of that nature surely coming down the pipe. It will make for a good watch this week, and we’ll get a worthy champion. Possibly one of these three gentlemen:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACKĀ (odds in parenthesis)
Matt FitzpatrickĀ (19.5)-Ā Anyone who makes even a halfhearted attempt at handicapping this field will come out with Fitzpatrick as one of the top names… I mean, the guy is on a career run that includes three wins and a runner-up across his last five starts, including a memorable victory last time out with his brother Alex in the Zurich team event, plus a win in his last individual stroke-play start, the RBC Heritage. I realize McIlroy sits atop the markets right now, but the two hottest players in the world as we sit here today are Fitzpatrick and Cam Young, and Young has never finished better than 34th in three previous starts at Quail Hollow, while Fitzpatrick was in serious contention for a major here last year, fading with a 1-over 72 on Sunday but still finishing T8. With a week’s rest behind him, it seems to me that Fitzpatrick should be regarded as the player most likely to succeed this week– the safest bet. Watch his current price steadily shorten as he hovers around the first page of the leaderboard all week.
Justin ThomasĀ (60.0)-Ā Though he’s still yet to regain the form that propelled him to 15 PGA Tour wins and a pair of majors from 2015-2022, Thomas is definitely out of the doldrums now and playing good golf again, and though his drought-ending win at last year’s RBC Heritage hasn’t (yet) caused the dam to burst in the way I’m sure he hoped it would, he’s logged some nice results in recent months, like a T8 at The Players and a T23 at last week’s Cadillac Championship. And he’s someone who’s always a threat at Quail Hollow, with top-25 finishes in 5 of his past 7 appearances at this tournament, including a victory in 2017. He’s got the game to win here, and he knows it: I’m happy to take a shot on JT at a price like 60.0.
Ryan GerardĀ (100.0)-Ā Despite developing a reputation as a course that produces big-name champions, we have seen some longshots tame Quail Hollow and hoist the trophy over the years, players like James Hahn, who came out of nowhere in 2016 as a 1,000/1 ‘dog, or even Brian Harman, who had a triple-digit price next to his name when he won here in 2017, as did Max Homa in 2019, the first of his two Truist victories. All that’s to say it certainly isn’t impossible for Gerard to shock the world with a win this week, and those who have been paying attention to the 26-year-old’s trajectory may not be too shocked at all to see him at the top of the leaderboard come Sunday. His lone PGA Tour victory thus far came at last year’s Barracuda Championship, but he nearly got the job done again at the season-opening Sony Open back in January, finishing runner-up, and then he followed that up with another runner-up finish the very next week at the American Express. He’s been playing solid golf lately, too, making his last 4 cuts and finishing T30 at last week’s Cadillac Championship, where he shot par or better all four rounds at the difficult Blue Monster. Critically, he should have confidence in his ability to navigate Quail Hollow after finishing T8 at the PGA Championship last year, when he saw the course at its toughest. Gerard has been striking the ball very well, ranking 10th on Tour in strokes gained on approach, precision with the irons is one of the necessary ingredients for success this week. This guy is worth your attention at the current price.
