The second major championship of the 2025 golf season is upon is, which means that it’s time for PGA TOUR and LIV Golf members to meet on the course once again. While the majority of the players in the 156-player PGA Championship field play on the PGA TOUR, there will be 15 representatives from the upstart circuit set to challenge Quail Hollow Golf Course in North Carolina.
Three of the LIV Golf players are former PGA Champions — three-time winner Brooks Koepka, two-time champ Phil Mickelson, and 2010 champ Martin Kaymer. When Koepka lifted the Wannamaker Trophy in 2023, it marked the first time that an active LIV Golf player triumphed in a major championship and proved a big boost to the circuit’s legitimacy on the global golf stage.
DraftKings Sportsbook is offering an LIV Golf special for this weekend’s tournament, with +350 odds for any of the 15 players to top the leaderboard come Sunday night.
Given that LIV Golf contestants comprise five of the 13 players with the shortest odds to win, it’s not a terrible bet. 2024 runner-up Bryson DeChambeau, who was also in the final pairing at The Masters Tournament before ultimately finishing in a tie for fifth, has the third-shortest odds at +950, and two-time major winner Jon Rahm (+1600) is right behind him. Joaquín Niemann (+3000) has been arguably the second-best golfer on any tour this season with three wins in seven LIV events, and Tyrrell Hatton (+4000) has a good history at Quail Hollow, having finished in a tie for third at the venue in 2023. Koepka, meanwhile, is also at +4000 despite having just two top-10 finishes on LIV so far this season. Kaymer (+150000) is the biggest long-shot, followed by John Catlin (+90000).
DeChambeau’s status as the favorite is certainly justified. Quail Hollow’s biggest defenses are its challenging green-side complexes — of every Shotlink-equipped course that has been played on the PGA TOUR since 2015, it has ranked as the ninth-hardest by Strokes Gained: Around the Green — and the fact that it plays to 7,626 yards as a Par 71. DeChambeau’s game is perfectly suited for the course; not only does he lead LIV Golf in driving distance, he’s also the circuit’s best scrambler and even ranks seventh in driving accuracy. When he was a PGA TOUR member, he finished in the top 10 at Quail Hollow twice and he also won his most recent LIV Golf start.
But I like Niemann’s value just a little bit more, given that he finished in solo-18th in his most recent appearance at the course in 2021, when he was just 22 years old. The Chilean ranks third on the circuit in driving distance and eighth in scrambling, exemplifying the combination of power and touch that has made him such a dangerous player. Cameron Smith (+11000) is a complete bargain, given that he ranks second on LIV Golf in scrambling and fourth in putting average and has finished in the top 10 in each of his last three LIV starts. If anything does the Aussie in, it’ll be the fact that he ranks second-to-last on LIV Golf in driving accuracy.
