This week, the PGA TOUR heads to Charlotte, NC, for the PGA Championship, the second major of the season, which will be played at Quail Hollow CC. Quail Hollow last hosted this event in 2017 (when the event was still played in August) and it is a long, expansive Par 71 that stretches well over 7,600 yards.
The course has big Bermuda greens and long winding fairways that are guarded by trees, thick rough and some water.
I wrote a little about the course (see below) in this week’s PGA Cheat Sheet for the PGA Championship on DK Network.
“From a profile perspective, this venue has tended to favor good drivers of the ball (and longer hitters), who can get the ball up high with their long irons, and that theme has been even more evident since the renovations. Of the past eight winners at Quail Hollow, none have ranked worse than 36th in Driving Distance for the week—Thomas ranked first in Driving Distance at the 2017 PGA Championship, as did last year’s winner of the Wells Fargo (played at Quail), Rory McIlroy. Winners have tended to gain nearly as many strokes off the tee as they do on approach, with good, long-to-mid iron play being another key factor.
To go along with driving distance, players with good height on their approaches and irons (Apex Height) have been able to conquer this expansive course better than most. McIlroy is almost always inside the top 20 in Apex Height, while other past winners at Quail Hollow like Rickie Fowler, Wyndham Clark, and even James Hahn from back in 2016, have also excelled in this stat.”
The PGA Championship setups have typically been fantastic places to target big hitters of the ball, and this week’s course seems like it will emphasize distance once again. Quail is a massive property, and players with high ball flights and good carry distances off the tee will have bigger advantages, especially with the course seeing a lot of rain this week.
DraftKings Pick6 has full tournament totals up for this week, so I’ll again be focusing on FULL TOURNAMENT totals, specifically finishing positions (“Better Than” or “Worse Than”).
Joaquin Niemann Better Than 21.5 Finishing Position
Niemann has always struggled with the firmer sloping greens at Augusta National, but he’s done well at other classic PGA setups like Muirfield and Riviera, which profile closely to this week’s test at Quail Hollow. He doesn’t have the higher ball flight of an Aberg or McIlroy, but he does have solid power off the tee, and his long iron accuracy has the ability to mitigate any carry disadvantage with the softer greens.
A soft Quail Hollow also feels like a spot where Niemann could finally erupt for a decent week. He just won down in Mexico on LIV, which is played on softer greens, and he has played Quail multiple times with some decent success. For Pick6 lineups, his finishing total is above 20, but he’s clearly outplayed a lot of the players underneath him who have much smaller totals for this event.
Niemann’s poor history in majors is clearly giving us a nice discount to capitalize on this week, and I like doing just that when starting out PGA Pick6 lineups this week.
Keith Mitchell Better Than 40.5 Finishing Position
Mitchell finished T-3 at this venue in 2021 and has been steadily gaining on the greens of late. If the putter spikes this week, he might stay in contention longer than people realize. He’s also a very consistent and long driver of the ball who profiles well for these longer PGA setups.
While his best finish at a PGA Championship remains a T-34 from back in 2022, his form coming into this year’s event is superb. He’s finished Top-20 in three straight starts (including T-7 last week) and made the cut now in nine of his last 10 PGA events. Given the course history and lead-in, a top-40 finish seems like a very reasonable result for the American, and that’s all we’d need out of him this week to cash in a Better Than on his 40.5 total.
Jon Rahm Worse Than 15.5 Finishing Position
While fellow LIV member Joaquin Niemann seems undervalued in the Pick6 marketplace, Jon Rahm seems to be getting a little too much credit for past major success. The Spaniard has posted a bunch of top-10 finishes on LIV this season but faded at the Masters with a T-14 on a week where he lost strokes on approach.
Rahm is still playing high-level golf, but it’s hard to like him for a long test like Quail Hollow, a course he seldom played on the PGA when he was a member. He was T-58 at this venue the last time it hosted the PGA Championship and missed the cut on his only other visit to the course in 2021. He’s also fared quite poorly at this major, for whatever reason, the past three seasons, posting an MC in 2024 and T-58 and T-40 finishes in 2023 and 2022.
With lots of early week rain and the course likely to play long and tough, it’s hard to see this being the place where Rahm snaps out of his funk. Ultimately, with his finishing total being well below 20.0 this week, he’s a player I’d rather fade than be bullish on for Pick6 purposes.
Cam Young More Than 36.5 Holes Played
There are a lot of players available to choose from in the “Holes Players category,” where we essentially just need our golfer to make the cut on Friday (Top 70 and ties this week) to cash the More Than. A lot of the elite players have lower multipliers (lower payouts) attached to them in this market (if taking the More Than), but looking down the board, there are still some good names available with solid payouts.
Cameron Young has his moments (that’s a nice way of saying he’s inconsistent by the way), but he has plenty of power off the tee and sets up well for a long and wet Quail Hollow. He does have two missed cuts in his last five starts, but Young also finished T-7 last week in Philadelphia and has excelled at these PGA setups in the past, landing a T-3 at Southern Hills back in 2022. The nice thing about being bullish on Young in this market is that we don’t have to take a payout discount, and, after Friday, we don’t need to sweat anymore blowup rounds.
Just given how he played last week, I’m OK taking the More Than on him this week and chancing him for a made cut at what should be a superb setup for someone of his skillset.
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