2026 PGA Championship Pool Picks: Favorites, Sleepers & Value Plays

Check out our top 2026 PGA Championship pool picks, including the top favorites, sleepers to consider, and other winning tips.

by Jason Lisk - May 13, 2026

Welcome to our PGA Championship Pool Picks Strategy article for 2026. In this article, we will update with news and info to consider when making your PGA Championship picks for your golf majors pools and other contests.

As we add new content this week, we will link it in this section:

• Strategies for Your PGA Championship “Pick X” Entries – Posted Wednesday, May 13
• Portfolio Advice and Building Your PGA Championship Entries – Posted Tuesday, May 12
• Potential PGA Championship Value Picks – Posted Tuesday, May 12
• Top 15 Favorites at 2026 PGA Championship – Posted Monday, May 11
• Best PGA Championship Performers (Last 5 Years) – Posted Monday, May 11
• PGA Championship Pool Strategy Articles and Videos – Posted Monday, May 11

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Playing in a PGA Championship Pool? Here’s Your Full Cheat Sheet

Find the best picks for your golf majors pool with PoolGenius.

Our tools analyze odds, public pick data, and course history to help you make sharper, more strategic picks.

Strategies for PGA Championship “Pick X” Pools

This section is for you if you play in a pool where you can pick golfers but are not restricted by putting them into tiers. This could include Majors pools, nominally designated as “One and Done” pools, which allow you to pick 3-5 (or more) golfers in each major.

We also have a strategy article for these types of pools, which you should review if you are in one. We are going to build on that by discussing some specific golfers for the 2026 PGA Championship.

For PGA Championship-Only Pools or When Golfers Can Be Reused

If you are making picks just for the PGA Championship, or your picks in this tournament do not impact how you can pick in the future, then this section is for your pool.

Follow the Rule of 24

The advice in our strategy article was to focus on the “Rule of 24” when making your picks. What we mean by that is to generally limit yourself to picks from among the Top 24 golfers in the field.

That means we will mostly limit our picks to golfers in the 2026 PGA Championship with win odds of +7000 or better. If you look at the Data Grid with all the golfers, we will consider golfers like Rickie Fowler, Sam Burns, and J.J. Spaun to represent the outer bounds of the golfers we will pick.

If you have to pick three golfers, you will choose one out of every eight golfers. If you have to pick five golfers, it will be roughly one out of every five golfers from among the Top 25.

Match Picks to Pool Size

Let pool size and payout structure dictate how unique you get and whether your picks are skewed toward the top contenders or mix in more of the guys in the 15-24 range in tournament odds.

Small Pools: If you are in a small pool, it’s fine to be a little heavier on picking from among the Top 12. If you are picking five golfers and are in a pool with only 50 entries, it is perfectly reasonable to have 3-4 of the Top 12 guys in odds on your entry.

Large Pools: If you are instead in a pool with 5,000 entries and only the top 1-2% cash, you may want to have 2-3 of the top 12 and have the rest of your picks be lower-popularity from the next tier.

Which Golfers Will Be Relative Fades or Values?

Among the Top 12, in a pool where you can reuse golfers, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy project as the clear most popular choices, combining to draw picks on roughly 70% of all entries (in a pool that requires six picks). That level of concentration creates real value opportunities elsewhere in the field.

When to Play Scheffler and McIlroy?

Scheffler and McIlroy will be highly popular. It may seem counterintuitive, but you should be more likely to play them at that high popularity the more picks you have to make.

Think of it this way:

In a pool where you have to come up with eight picks, your 8th-best pick must be better than Scheffler or McIlroy to reject using either of them. They don’t need to win or finish at the top to appear among all the winning entries, given the many picks required. If they finish in the top 15, they are still likely to be among the winning entries, which also include the PGA Championship winner and some other top finishers.

When to Fade Scheffler and McIlroy?

If your pool instead requires three picks, it’s easier to justify avoiding one or both. You are more likely to be able to hit a winning entry if they mildly disappoint, and you can hit the key trio of picks from the next group of golfers — like a Rahm, Young, and Aberg combination — that could include the winner without them.

Value Picks Outside the Top 6

If we go down the odds list, we get Tommy Fleetwood, who lurks just outside that group but also could be less popular. We also get names like Brooks Koepka and Viktor Hovland who could have moderate popularity but not be extremely chalky in this format. Koepka’s PGA Championship pedigree is unmatched, while Hovland is showing up as one of the lower-owned golfers relative to his odds. Jordan Spieth also shows up as a guy projected to be less popular, but with Top 20 odds around 25%.

In the larger pools, mixing in one of the guys in the range of Nicolai Hojgaard, Robert MacIntyre, J.J. Spaun or Rickie Fowler can provide big leverage; you need them to do well, but if they do, and some of the more popular picks you avoid falter, you can shoot up the standings quickly.

If You Cannot Reuse Golfers in Other Majors (Like One and Done)

If you are playing in this type of pool but can use a golfer only once, that can impact the popularity and value plays. Our primary advice here is to force yourself to balance out your picks. A lot of entries fire a higher percentage of the best golfers right out of the gate, providing value leverage if you can hold at least some of them.

We anticipate that Scheffler, McIlroy, Young, and DeChambeau, and Aberg will be among the most popular. You could also see some PGA Championship specialists like Koepka and Hovland rise in this format given their strong major history at this event.

Your mileage may vary, but if we divide out the top options, we might get something like:

Group A: Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Cameron Young

Group B: Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick

Group C: Tommy Fleetwood, Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas

Group D and beyond: Viktor Hovland, Rickie Fowler, J.J. Spaun, Sam Burns, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, and others with strong course or major fits

We would target using one and saving three from each of the first 3 groups (if your pool picks at least three) and then rounding it out with the best picks not in your top groups for the remaining picks, based on recent form and PGA Championship history. You’ll notice these groupings are slightly different than the Masters list (Cameron Young moved up, for example, based on his continued hot form), and you may have used a different combo of golfers. Balance across all tournaments played so far, so if you haven’t used a B golfer yet, you could double up if you want here.

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Portfolio Advice and Building Your PGA Championship Entries

We have specific tier-by-tier pick recommendation options in our Golf Majors & Masters Picks product, based on how conservative or contrarian you want to be.

We currently list four pick set options in the product:

• Conservative: The best relative win odds within each tier.
• Balanced: A blend of tier win odds and popularity, based on pool size and reflecting the top grades overall.
• Aggressive: Similar to “Balanced” but with more emphasis on lower popularity.
• Contrarian: The best win odds among the golfers who have below-average projected tier pick popularity.

You can also combine these categories to build entries. For example, building around some of the bigger favorites into your pool is a solid strategy, as long as you balance it.

For an analogy to another pool type, imagine making a popular NCAA tournament champion pick with relatively high win odds in a March Madness pool but adding in some unpopular value plays to the Final Four to differentiate your entry from the crowd.

So you could build an entry that balances some of the favorites in the “Conservative” pick set with some of the “Contrarian” or “Aggressive” picks in other tiers to create your unique entry. Our grades are designed to reflect pool size and payout structure, so you will naturally see some more contrarian/less popular plays rise in the largest pool sizes. You can still use these categories to build out entries.

Building Portfolios For Multiple Entries

If you play multiple entries, you can build them with differentiated key picks and shared picks in other tiers.

For instance, you could build multiple entries, including 1-2 of the “Conservative” picks with those from the other pick sets, and alternate which tier you use the more conservative favorites from.

If you’re playing multiple entries in a pool, we suggest being a little more diverse in your final tier, especially if it includes the entire rest of the field.

While you don’t need to get too crazy in how far down the list you go, you also don’t want to be heavily concentrated on one of the longer shots that could sink several of your entries with a bad performance.

Specific Tiers and Builds for the 2026 PGA Championship

While every contest may have a slightly different tier structure, most are similar, with the biggest contenders in the top tier and the tiers working down from there.

So, we thought we would discuss some potential strategies for building out tiers. For this exercise, we will use Splash Sports’ 8-tier structure for some of their contests, but much of the discussion should still apply to slightly different golfer tiers and a different total number of tiers.

Tier 1

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy project as the most popular picks and are the two lowest on the odds board in the top tier, and could make up over half of all picks in this group of golfers. Scheffler’s popularity, though isn’t prohibitive, and one method is to pick him and focus on uniqueness in other tiers.

Jon Rahm is the middle ground here, perhaps less popular given his recent majors performances, but third on the odds.

Cameron Young and Xander Schauffele are also interesting here as counters to the more popular top two.

Tiers 2 and 3

Tier 2 is somewhat flat for the PGA Championship, with popularity spread out.

Brooks Koepka has moved to 1st on Strokes Gained- Approach on the Tour this year. He’s spent the last month narrowly missing qualification for the Signature Events, but his game has been quietly getting to where he had been years ago. He’s an option.

Viktor Hovland does project as the least popular in Tier 2, making him intriguing on leverage grounds.

Because of Nicolai Hojgaard’s projected high popularity in Tier 3, other golfer show up as value option there.

This includes some veterans like Jordan Spieth, Robert MacIntyre, and Hideki Matsuyama, who have seen their popularity drop with recent form concerns. In larger pools, though, zigging when others zag on golfers can be a differentiator.

Tiers 4 and 5

Min Woo Lee is showing up as an extremely popular pick in Tier 4, making a move elsewhere something to consider.

Kurt Kitayama, Maverick McNealy, and Ben Griffin all offer above-average odds to finish Top 20 with below average popularity in this tier.

In Tier 5, popularity is way flatter. That puts the golfers with the relatively best odds to finish top of the group and go Top 20 as value plays, including Joaquin Niemann, David Puig, and Harris English.

Tier 6 and Beyond

Once you get to Tier 6 or higher (for pools with more tiers), these golfers’ odds of making the cut are under 60% (and in some cases well under 50%).

From a game theory perspective, you probably want to go with your best odds, with a big caveat. Avoiding the most popular picks here can have outsized value. This may depend on whether you are in a 6-Tier or 8-Tier pool. The only golfer we currently project with notably higher popularity is Alex Smalley (in Tier 6 in the 8-Tier format).

In the final “catch-all” tier, we would not go too far down the odds list in the search for complete uniqueness, but isolating on some of them and avoiding a couple of the most popular plays typically makes sense in this range.

Potential PGA Championship Value Picks

Here are some potential PGA Championship value picks that are showing up in early pick data. These are based on reviewing some of the more popular tier defaults for PGA pools, so depending on your pool’s tier structure and size, the golfers below may or may not show up as highly graded picks for your specific pool.

For example, if a golfer has the lowest win odds within a tier, he is not likely to be graded highly, even if he’s an unpopular pick. But if you throw that same golfer into a different tier, low pick popularity coupled with better odds of being the top performer in that new tier could make him a great pick.

For the most specific advice, set up your pool at Golf Majors & Masters Picks. With that caveat, here are some intriguing potential value picks:

1. Jon Rahm

Coming off another Masters performance where he started slowly, along with all the negative LIV news, Rahm is a far-distant third, and closer to lots of other golfers, in popularity in the top tier. That makes for a lower-owned golfer who can provide immediate differentiation against the top two most popular golfers in Scheffler and McIlroy.

2. Viktor Hovland

Hovland is looking like the least popular pick among golfers in his odds range, making for an intriguing value option in larger pools where hitting a key differentiator in a tier where some more popular picks falter can lead to outsized impact.

3. Kurt Kitayama and Ben Griffin

Kitayama and Griffin both provide above-average tier odds with moderate to below-average popularity in the middle tiers, making for some intriguing options to consider. Kitayama in particular has the approach play profile to succeed at the Aronimink course, which will require excellent iron play to get to the right parts of the big, undulating greens.

4. The Later LIV Guys (David Puig, Joaquin Niemann, Thomas Detry)

LIV is not real popular right now, and the news is mostly negative. Further, we do not see these guys as regularly. That is making for some slight value discounts on some of them in the later tiers in the PGA Championship, led by Puig and Niemann.

 

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PGA Championship Favorites: Top 15 Golfers by Odds

We have the PGA Championship betting odds and tournament win percentages now displayed in our Data Grid.

Here are the top 15 (and ties) in betting odds to win the 2026 PGA Championship:

1. Scottie Scheffler +345
2. Rory McIlroy +870
3. Jon Rahm +1325
4. Cameron Young +1550
5. Bryson DeChambeau +1750
6. Ludvig Aberg +1900
7. Xander Schauffele +1900
8. Matt Fitzpatrick +2150
9. Tommy Fleetwood +2500
10. Brooks Koepka +3400
11. Collin Morikawa +3600
12. Justin Rose +4400
13. Justin Thomas +4500
14. Russell Henley +4700
15. Patrick Cantlay +4900

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Best Golfers at The PGA Championship: Last Five Years

We have the Data Grid now available once you set up your PGA Championship pool under the “My Entries” link. The Data Grid will display betting odds information by Monday afternoon, and we will have pick popularity projections by Monday evening.

As of now, you can see the course history information and the entire PGA Championship field, as well as our rankings for them.

PGA Championship: Strokes Gained Leaders (Last 5 Years)

We have no course history at Aronimink Golf Club, as the last time the tour played here was for the 1962 PGA Championship.

But we do have PGA Championship results at other venues. Among golfers who have played at least twice in the last five years at the PGA Championship, here are the leaders in average Strokes Gained (Total Rounds from 2021-2025 in parentheses):

1. Bryson DeChambeau +3.24 (16)
2. Scottie Scheffler +3.16 (18)
3. Viktor Hovland +2.77 (20)
4. Xander Schauffele +2.62 (18)
5. Shane Lowry +2.45 (18)
6. Davis Riley +2.32 (10)
7. Rory McIlroy +2.22 (20)
8. Justin Rose +2.17 (18)
9. Matt Fitzpatrick +2.08 (16)
10. Brooks Koepka +2.06 (18)

A few things worth noting from this list:

• Bryson DeChambeau leads all players in average strokes gained at the PGA Championship over the last five years. He’s yet to win, but finished 2nd in each of the last two years.
• Scottie Scheffler, to no surprise, ranks near the top as well and won the PGA Championship for the first time a year ago when it was played at Quail Hollow.
• Xander Schauffele is the 2024 PGA Champion, using it as a launching point to winning two majors that season.
• Brooks Koepka won his third PGA Championship in 2023, joining only Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as three-time champs since the format went to stroke play in 1958.
• Rory McIlroy will try to become a three-time champion here as well, having last won in 2014. Only he and Viktor Hovland are on this list and have made the cut in each of the last five PGA Championships.

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PGA Championship Pool Strategy Articles Available

We have written a Majors pool strategy article on how to approach tier-based Majors pools, which require selecting golfers from different groupings. If you haven’t read it, you should review it, as some concepts will be discussed here.

We also have an article on strategies to consider when playing in “Pick X” type pools, where you do not have to select from within tiers, and the entire field is available, but you pick a pre-set number of total golfers, like Pick 5 or Pick 8 for the PGA Championship.