3 picks our expert loves

Welcome to our PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting, and is a golf betting analyst for CBS Sportsline. You can follow him on X at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his early picks below for the PGA Championship, which gets underway on May 14 in Newtown Square, Penn.

“I intended to make this course my masterpiece, but not until today did I realize I built it better than I knew.”

Legendary golf course designer, Donald Ross, said that about Aronimink in 1948, the site of this year’s 108th PGA Championship, 20 years after opening the golf course. Legendary golf historian and master of design restoration, Gil Hanse, was brought to Newtown Square, Penn., along with his partner, Jim Wagner, in 2016 to work their magic and transform Aronimink back into major championship caliber as Ross originally intended.

More than 150 players, including 20 PGA club professionals, will make their way to the Philadelphia area next week for the second major championship of 2026. What a better place to hold one of golf’s crown jewel events than in the Birthplace of America in the year of the nation’s 250th birthday? Hot dogs, apple pie, and likely some fireworks if we can correctly land on the champion and this year’s recipient of the Wanamaker Trophy.

Stretching to nearly 7,400 yards, Aronimink will play to a par 70 for this year’s championship. The fairways have been made a bit wider by Hanse, who also did some tree removal, and added 100 sand bunkers to what is now a total of 174 that pepper this layout. The fairways feature quite a bit of slope, making for uneven lies when negotiating primarily long-iron approach shots into classic Ross-style greens, full of humps and bumps and shaved run-off areas.

The modern-day PGA Championship has been a bomber’s paradise. Brooks Koepka has won three in the last 10 years. Bryson DeChambeau has been runner-up in each of the last two. Driver-heavy courses like Quail Hollow, Valhalla, and Oak Hill have been the norm for this test in recent years. I believe however, that Aronimink may actually favor accuracy over distance off the tee. Total Driving (distance plus accuracy) is certainly a skill set that makes sense as I believe finding the proper positioning in the fairways trumps simply raw length. Long iron play from uneven lies, hitting greens not only in regulation, but also in the best particular areas of the greens, and incredible short-game skills, all figure into my initial profile on how to best solve Aronimink.

We saw this golf course a couple of times prior to the restoration when it hosted the AT&T National. The last time we saw it was after the remodel at the 2018 BMW Championship when Keegan Bradley beat Justin Rose in a playoff. As far as courses that figure to have some crossover characteristics, look no further than to other Ross designs we see regularly. Pinehurst No. 2 hosted the U.S. Open in 2014 and in 2024. Sedgefield Country Club is the annual host of the Wyndham Championship and Detroit Golf Club has been hosting the Rocket Mortgage Classic now for six seasons. Oak Hill hosted the PGA Championship in 2013 and in 2023, another Ross design, and then of course, East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta where for a couple of decades now, they have played the Tour Championship.

Early Bets

Xander Schauffele (18-1)

I have three plays currently in pocket. Schauffele being one of the shorter shots, trading as basically the fifth or six favorite on the board at this time. He, of course, is a former PGA Champion, winning at Valhalla in 2024. Schauffele is arguably the greatest Donald Ross specialist on Tour, having won at East Lake and finished runner-up three times. He was third at Aronimink in 2018, seventh at Pinehurst in 2024 and was 18th at Oak Hill in 2023. In Hole Proximity from 175-200 yards, he ranks 14th on Tour. He ranks 20th from 200 yards or more. Schauffele is third on Tour in Scrambling and is 42nd for Strokes Gained: Putting. Off the tee, he is 45th in Driving Distance and 65th in Driving Accuracy. The current form appears to be on point as well with consecutive finishes of 3-4-9-12 in his last four starts.

Russell Henley (56-1)

For so many years, Henley was just figured to not be long enough to compete on some of the game’s bigger courses. As he has ascended to a Top 10 player in the world in recent years, he’s won at Bay Hill and finished top 5 at Augusta National twice. He checks just about every box for me coming into Aronimink except for the iron play has been off a bit in 2026. But, he just finished third at the Masters a month ago. It is also worth noting, since 2019 when the PGA Championship moved to May on the calendar, every winner had finished top 10 at the Masters the month prior, except for Phil Mickelson in 2021. 2020 does not count because The Masters was played in November that year. As far as other Ross designs, Henley was seventh at Pinehurst in 2024, has four top 10 finishes including a runner-up at Sedgefield, a top 10 at Detroit Golf Club, and has finished second, third, and fourth at East Lake Golf Club.

Rickie Fowler (100-1)

One long shot before we leave and I’m sticking with the Donald Ross angle. Fowler was runner-up at Pinehurst in 2014, 19th at Oak Hill in 2013, has been runner-up twice at East Lake and won in a playoff at Detroit Golf Club in 2023. He also finished eighth here at Aronimink at the 2018 BMW Championship. The skill set in 2026 matches up as well as he ranks 11th on Tour in Scrambling, 20th in Strokes Gained: Putting, eighth in Hole Proximity from 175-200 yards, and is 28th in Total Driving.

I am going to continue to lean in on the accuracy angle more so than sheer power and as Hanse said about his remodel and this championship, it will come down to the short game. The ability to read these greens, the undulations, the scrambling, getting up and down for par. It is a Ross tradition for winners to be decided on and around the greens and I believe with Mother Nature’s cooperation, that is what we will end up with here in Philadelphia next week. Stay tuned as I will have my full card of outrights posted here on Tuesday.