RADIO
Between Monday's Course Preview piece (found right here on RotoBaller), and last night's podcast (currently posted on our X page), we've given all of you every possible trend, key stat, and player take needed to make the most educated betting decisions possible this week at the Valhalla Golf Club. This Wednesday article will now serve as a final bow to wrap up a jam-packed week of PGA content at Flag Hunting. No fluff, no rants or superfluous soliloquies, just the entirety of our 2024 PGA Championship outright betting card.
The four names on this betting card are aimed at returning about 6.5 times our investment. Because of the inflated odds associated with the outright market, it becomes even more imperative to remain disciplined when setting your unit allocations from this article's picks. Golf outright betting is a notoriously fickle beast, and multiple month-long droughts are very much within the range of outcomes. However, at these prices, one single hit can pay off many weeks of poor decision-making.
In the two-year history at Flag Hunting, we've been fortunate enough to cash a total of 23 outright winners (a 20.5% hit rate) for a profit of nearly $15,000 (betting roughly $350 per week) and an aggregate ROI of 37.2%. The volatility of the sport means I can't promise you a winner in any given tournament. Still, suppose you're willing to bet methodically and stick with the process. In that case, the outright golf betting market has the potential to be one of the most profitable (and enjoyable) betting sweats in the business. But I suppose I'd better keep my word about the necessary rants, so with no further ado, here's every bet I've made for the 2024 PGA Championship!
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2024 PGA Championship Betting Card
Jon Rahm (20-1)
Jon Rahm empezó con un gran birdie su ronda final en Augusta National. #elmasters | #themasters pic.twitter.com/zqPr5ERfYc
— El Masters (@TheMasters_ES) April 14, 2024
Trust me, I wanted on the Rory bandwagon as much as anyone this week, but there’s no world where I can see him winning this tournament 3x as often as Jon Rahm: a player who has graduated from College as the Number One Amateur in the world, Reached and retained the No. 1 Ranking in the professional game for 52 weeks, and won two Majors in his own right all in the time since Rory last triumphed in a Major here in 2014.
A one (*cough* two *cough*), time winner at Muirfield Village, a winner at Olympia Fields, and a T4 at the 2019 PGA at Bellerive, Rahm checks all the boxes in terms of comp course history, and in his fit for this week’s test. Rahm has not yet broken through into the LIV Tour Winner's Circle, but he does rank number one on Tour in Total Driving, #1 in Birdie Average, #1 in my Long-Term Weighted Proximity Model, and hasn’t finished worse than 10th in seven LIV Tour starts (10th, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 5th, 8th, 3rd). These recent results look very much like the Jon Rahm we came to know for eight years on the PGA Tour, and this week, he will not be coming in with nearly the same attention (or scrutiny), that followed him over the course of his title defense at Augusta.
Some prices speak for themselves almost irregardless of the venue, and Jon Rahm at 20-1 — a man with a 7.2% win rate over his eight-year career on the PGA Tour, very much fits that criteria. I'm perfectly happy buying the dip on a player who, just a few months ago, was in consideration right alongside Scottie Scheffler as the best player on the planet.
Brooks Koepka (22-1)
With this birdie on 17 and a par on 18, Brooks Koepka shoots his second-straight 66. He holds the clubhouse lead at the @PGAChampionship.pic.twitter.com/ju1KScYudf
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) May 20, 2023
It's frankly pretty fascinating how quickly Brooks can turn the switch from one of the Masters' biggest disappointments into the player I'm perhaps most excited for this week at Valhalla. He's, of course, going for a mind-blowing sixth Major Title (and a fourth PGA Championship), and looking back through Koepka's track record in this particular event, it's easy to spot the similarities between Valhalla and the likes of Bellerive, Bethpage Black, and Oak Hill.
7,600 yards, narrow fairways, thick rough -- Brooks has proven as capable of anyone in the history of this sport when it comes to dissecting these modern-day PGA/US Open layouts, and with the recent life he showed in a two-shot victory at LIV Singapore, it's difficult to avoid the comparisons to this time last year. Koepka entered the 2023 PGA Championship on the back of two consecutive top-fives on LIV, and in each of his two previous PGA triumphs, Brooks has given us a definitive sign that the game was ramping up. He finished fourth at the Byron Nelson prior to his 2019 win at Bethpage and logged a fifth-place finish at Firestone ahead of his 2018 win at Bellerive.
Advanced metrics from the LIV Tour have been spotty and unreliable, to say the least, but for anyone who stayed up late on a Saturday night to watch Brooks capture his fourth title on his new Tour, you'd have seen Koepka at his resolute best. Metronomic off of the tee, conservative yet decisive on approach, and money on the greens when the chips were down. Brooks mentioned on multiple occasions about being "embarrassed" about his T45 finish around Augusta National last month. If last year taught us anything, it's that you should never step in front of a motivated Brooks Koepka on this stage.
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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
Ludvig Aberg (22-1)
NO QUIT IN THE SWEDE! 🇸🇪
Ludvig Åberg stays lockstep with Scheffler with a birdie of his own and extends his solo-second lead!
Anyone sweating Aberg Top 5 at +450?
👉 https://t.co/POitntj36M…#TheMasters
— Coolbet Canada 🇨🇦 (@CoolbetCanada) April 14, 2024
To think a month ago, on Sunday at Augusta National, I was lamenting my decision not to push the button on a Ludvig Aberg PGA Future in the 25-1 range. Turns out, all it took was a single withdrawal out of the Wells Fargo to land a comparable number in a dream spot.
Ludvig truly did defy all the odds over those four days at Augusta — besting the entirety of that all-star field by three shots, with the exception of a player who could well go down as one of the most dominant Masters’ performers of all time (a bold claim? Maybe. But Scottie has already accumulated 2 wins and no finish worse than 19th in five Augusta Appearances).
For his first Major Championship start on the biggest of stages, Aberg remained his usual poised, professional self. Even after a crucial error on 11 that likely cost him any chance of contending for the win, Ludvig birdied two of his next three to jump right back into the thick of the chase. It almost defies belief that just one year ago, he was preparing for the Regional Championship of the NCAA Tournament — an event which, of course, he won with rounds of 67, 68, 67.
One year later, not much has changed on the scorecard. Aberg just happens to be doing it on some of the biggest stages the sport has to offer. This week, on a much more even playing field in regards to course familiarity, his surgical style is a match made in heaven for Valhalla. 3rd on Tour in Total Driving, 5th from Tee-to-Green, 6th in Strokes Gained from 175+, and sneakily one of the better bentgrass putters in this field.
Bryson DeChambeau (65-1)
Bryson DeChambeau bounces back to five under par with a birdie on No. 14. #themasters pic.twitter.com/epUlutFG5K
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 13, 2024
Although I held a 100-1 ticket on Bryson last month at the Masters, my 65-1 future here at Valhalla was always the one I had circled as DeChambeau's most likely spot for a revival. Already a winner at Jack Nicklaus's Muirfield Village (2018) and at a similarly narrow, driver-heavy Major venue at Winged Foot (2020), Bryson couldn't set up more perfectly for the bomber's paradise on tap this week.
One thing I felt has gone under-reported since Bryson's move to LIV has been the sudden surge in driving accuracy we've seen since he switched to a Krank driver -- a brand much more synonymous with long-drive contests than the ranks of Tour professionals. DeChambeau has spoken glowingly over the last nine months about this new driver's reliability at swing speeds over 125 mph, and in each of his two LIV seasons since making the change, Bryson has gone from nearly dead-last in fairway percentage to right around the middle of the pack.
He gained a whopping 6.8 strokes off of the tee at last month's Masters (hitting 75% of his fairways in the process), and while he's unlikely to replicate those accuracy numbers this week around Valhalla, his sheer length will give him as decisive of an advantage as anyone in this field -- evidenced by a Strokes Gained: Off-the Tee rating of +7.5 last May at Oak Hill.
Bryson also rates out as one of the game's top entities on Approach shots from beyond 175 yards, and of the elite players, he's been one of the most reliable putters from inside 15 feet. Between Harding Park and Oak Hill, DeChambeau has sneakily finished inside the top five in two of his last three PGA Championship appearances, and he did most of his damage around Augusta National after overnight rains made the course much more receptive. The recent forecasts around Louisville suggest we could be in for very similar playing conditions at Valhalla, and I'd have no issue doubling down on my current position even as prices dip below 30-1.
Dustin Johnson (110-1)
Dustin Johnson hits his approach shot to within 8 feet and sinks the birdie putt. He’s now only 2 shots behind leaders Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Rose.#PGAChamp
pic.twitter.com/ncFy1Kp577— Pro Golf Nation (@progolfnation) May 19, 2023
My final bet of the week comes in a similar vein to the argument I made for Viktor Hovland at Quail Hollow last week: as Dustin Johnson comes into this PGA Championship with a spotty recent bill of form, but an eye-popping outright number and the perfect game for a golf course like Valhalla. The two-time Major Champion has never gotten a chance to hoist the Wannamaker, but his closest calls have routinely come on courses that compare very favorably to this week's test: finishing runner-up to Brooks Koepka at Bethpage Black in 2019 and recording two additional top tens on longer bentgrass courses in the region (Oak Hill and Whistling Straits in 2013 and 2015).
Notably, Dustin showed more than his fair share of life in last year's Major rotation, as he sat a shot back from Bryson DeChambeau's lead after one round in Rochester, and hung inside the top 10 for the entire week at the U.S. Open in Los Angeles. His combination of elite total driving, a right-to-left ball flight, and long-iron play has played great on Nicklaus courses through the years (five top 15 finishes in 12 starts at Muirfield Village), and unlike my case for Hovland last week, DJ isn't entirely reliant on long-term pedigree -- recording a win at LIV Las Vegas this past February and a T7 in his last start at LIV Singapore. Like Rahm, I think this number is largely being inflated by a horribly disappointing Masters performance, but until we get a more significant sample size pointing to the end of his days contending at Major Championships, I'll gladly take my shot on a 39-year-old Dustin Johnson at 110-1.
Best of luck, guys, and happy hunting!
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