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The year’s 2nd major is here: the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. We see Quail Hollow year in and year out, which gives us a great sample of the skills needed to succeed.
The stories going into this week will be about the big guns…
- OWGR #1 Scottie coming into a major off a massive win, after some people may have been thinking that extra gear was gone. Statistically the 2nd-most-dominant player of the millennium, he still has zero majors away from the Sacred Sod in Augusta.
- #2 Rory off a Masters victory at a course where he has 4 career wins, including his 1st stateside win. You can’t win ’em all if you don’t win the first 2!
- #5 Justin Thomas coming in off a win at the RBC Heritage to defend his 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
- #(irrelevant) Bryson DeChambeau off a win in Korea with a majors fun that goes 6th, 2nd, 1st, cut, 5th at a course that fits his bomber profile.
But this field is HUGE, and a number of guys have the prowess to challenge those above and win. 154 players, top 70 and tie cut-line, the best of all three tours.
It is dubbed “the hardest field in golf”, and it shows. 70 of Datagolf’s top 74 worldwide players will tee it up this week. We have a lot of guys to sift through to trim down our field. Luckily, ~25 guys are here as either older past champions or as a PGA Professional. Outside of Michael Block aka BLOCKIE aka “RAW” aka “as skilled as Rory minus 75 yards of carry distance,” I’m sure they are fantastic people, but they are dead weight for our analysis. Let’s dig in!
Plus4: Recap
Sugar Shane Lowry was not sweet to us, crumbling on the back 9 to finish 2nd. I don’t believe there’s a golfer who putts worse under pressure (okay, maybe Dahmen). It will be very hard for him to win until he can control that flat stick when the stakes ratchet up… it is the pillar that falls when he needs it most.
Funny stuff: I actually had a good double chance ticket with the combo of Lowry and JT. I feel like DK should reward me for having an “either win” bet with both guys who finished 2nd! At least throw some of those DK coins my way.
We take the Shane Lowry T5/T10 and cash it begrudgingly. Given my player pool had the top 3 finishers and a tie for 4th, I must say we comped the course well. Sadly, I didn’t string those top 4 finishers together in a lineup that could win anything notable. Where we failed was not having enough of those guys in the teens (except Rickie, shoutout)… a good week, and onward.
Plus4: Quail Hollow Club
Winners of the Wells Fargo Championship, hosted at Quail Hollow every year right at this time, in the field this week:
- Rory – ’24, ’21,’ 15, and ’10
- Wyndham Clark – ’23
- Homa – ’19
- Day – ’18
- Rickie – ’12
- Glover – ’11
As it relates to stats we will focus on:
- Driver play: You should get exhausted hearing this. No other course the PGA TOUR routinely plays rewards strong and punishes poor driver play like Quail Hollow. It is instrumental that you gain strokes off the tee to have any chance of climbing up the leaderboard. Distance is preferred over accuracy, especially with fairways being tough to hit for everybody in the field.
- Approach play over 200 yards: I project 50% of approaches to come from over 200 yards, the highest we’ve seen all year, and about 20% coming from under 150 yards. That’s a comically high number. If you can’t score with long irons in your hands, you have zero chance here. I also believe the length, long approaches, and difficulty putting provide a combination that will only fuel some big blow-ups. You lose your game for a few hours and you are toast out here – add on that holes 16, 17, and 18 (the green mile) are already the toughest finishing stretch on TOUR… and that’s before they set up in major championship conditions!
- Difficult putting: Quail defends itself well through its length, but these putting surfaces are a big test for pros year in and year out. It commonly ranks in the top 10 in terms of the difficulty of putts from 5 to 15 feet. This makes missing greens especially penal, as getting up and down in major championship rough on extremely difficult greens isn’t sustainable. Interestingly, Quail Hollow will host the 2025 PGA Championship with a different type of greens than in 2017 without undergoing a renovation.
- Poa annua putting?: When the PGA was in August, Quail Hollow featured Bermuda greens as the Bermudagrass awakens in the summer and grows through the rye… this time around, in May, the Bermuda is still mostly dormant, so we get ryegrass greens that are pretty atypical for TOUR surfaces. The ryegrass that has been featured at all of the Wells Fargo Championship events here tends to play more like a West Coast Poa. This will help explain some of the corollary course and will be a data point used in my player selection. Poa greens – both the West Coast variant seen at Riviera and in the Pebble Beach trio and the northeast version of The Country Club and TPC River Highlands – always give players fits and lead to fewer putts made. The stats back this up. A nice article in GCM discussed the greens: Quail Hollow Club hosts the PGA Championship – GCMOnline.com.
Plus4: Quail Hollow corollary courses
New here? Visit our Plus4 approach page to learn about our process.
The corollary courses here are admittedly weird – it’s almost as if Quail Hollow doesn’t provide great comp courses. Some Northeast courses, some coastal courses, but courses that all tend to demand great off-the-tee play (similar to last week). The DP World courses will be heavily used for those players and the LIV guys, but my strategy this week will lean on off-the-tee skill, Quail Hollow course history, and the limited course comps we do have.
- MUIRFIELD VILLAGE – big boy golf.
- DORAL – big boy golf and LONG.
- PORT ROYAL GOLF COURSE
- SPYGLASS HILL GOLF COURSE – similar greens and also a long-iron heavy course.
- MONTEREY PENINSULA
- HAMILTON GOLF & CC
- TPC POTOMAC AT AVENEL FARM – strong off-the-play demanded.
- GLEN ABBEY
- CONGAREE
DP World TOUR courses
- EMIRATES – Emirates is a place where Rory and Viktor have won and a place that rewards great drivers of the golf ball.
- RINKVEN INTERNATIONAL
- HONG KONG (which hosted LIV)
- REAL VALDERRAMA (which hosted LIV)
- DLF G&CC (which hosted LIV)
- K CLUB
- GENZON
Major venues
- OCEAN COURSE AT KIAWAH ISLAND
- SOUTHERN HILLS
- VALHALLA
- WHISTLING STRAITS
- WINGED FOOT
- AUGUSTA NATIONAL
Check out our ‘Plus4 Swing Thoughts:
Plus4: ‘Players to Watch’ at the 2025 PGA Championship
Ranked by projected skill
- Scottie Scheffler: It goes without saying. His best skill is his irons, but in a ball-striking contest, it starts with Scottie. The driver is statistically not far from Rory’s. Overall, I have a slight edge for Scottie over Rory, but it’s not by much. A winner at Muirfield and getting better on these PGA setups.
- Rory McIlroy: He’s won here 4 times, and the monkey is off his back after winning the green jacket. Also, a long-iron machine and a top-2 driver of the ball on Earth. Say less.
- Bryson DeChambeau: The better driver than Rory? It’s Bryson. The long irons scare me, but he’s so long that they really AREN’T long irons anyway. If he drives the ball like he can, he should be in the 50-150 approach range where he’s serviceable with the irons.
After those top 3 guys, I have a pretty steep gap to the Collin, Rahm, X tier. - Xander Schauffele: We have seen guys who play especially well at PGAs – Brooks to name the obvious one. This is the type of set-up that Xander has thrived on historically – difficult, rough-line, long. And at Quail Hollow? Only back-to-back runner-ups. Xander, last year’s PGA Champion, still can’t piece it all together, but when he does, the betting numbers will chop in half.
- Viktor Hovland: A winner at Emirates, a winner at Muirfield, and a winner on tough tracks such as this. The putter was dreadful in Philly – if that flips, he tends to do his best work at places like this that, as he is mentally fighting with himself, the rest of the field is in a bloody battle with the course. 3rd at the 2021 Wells Fargo in his breakout year.
- Joaquin Niemann: If he is ever going to post a top 15 finish in a major – which he’s yet to do – it should be here. 4 wins in his last 10 starts and the #1 player on LIV. Why here? Niemann, despite being a buck fifty sopping wet, is 4th-best OTT in this field and loves poa greens. It has to happen eventually… but tread lightly.
- Patrick Reed: Reed has been good here at Quail Hollow (6th, 28th, 8th), was great at Augusta, a winner in Hong Kong, routinely top 10 at Emirates, and 7th at Trump Doral. He even has a runner-up at Port Royal in Bermuda (why was he even in Bermuda in 2022?) to boot. The driver is not great, even relatively, but the courses he plays well at are all of the ones we are looking at.
- Dean Burmester: Dean is here off a top 15 last year, of which was a special invitation from the PGA of America. Without a top 15 here, he is out of major exemptions. Dean is behind only Bryson, Rory, and Niklas Norgaard in terms of driving distance in this field. He has a good, grinder game fit for this place and can get hot rolling the rock.
- Tom McKibbin: The 22 year-old Northern Irishman, he quickly ascended to a top 70 player in the world prior to this year. Tom’s biggest weapon? He’s a top 10 driver of the golf ball in the WORLD. He tumbled into obscurity joining LIV at the start of the year, turning down an already-earned TOUR Card. Of almost any course these guys play, we know Quail Hollow rewards excellent driver play most. The very recent form is bad, but that was in LIV events in consecutive weeks at Chapultapec, a weird setting at extreme altitude, and in Korea on a course that was very weird and unpleasant to watch. Prior to that? McKibbin posted 4 top 7 finishes (2 EURO, 2 LIV) in 8 events in 2025. He’s 300/1… and in 2 years he could be 50/1 or lower given the elite skill he has with the big stick.
What is this? The LIV open? Nice. - Taylor Pendrith: 3 weeks straight, Taylor has let me down. The irons were bad at Philly Cricket, but that’s a much shorter test. The irons were great in Dallas, but the putter failed. The driver remains solid… and that’s the weapon we focus on. He was 10th at the 2024 Wells Fargo and should fit these types of tracks… the jury is out.
- Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen: According to DataGolf, this Rasmus is the better of the Danish Ramsuses (see Rasmus Hojgaard). The recent form? 4th, 10th, 22nd, 2nd, 2nd… that’s elite lead-up. ‘Mus N-P is top 30 in this field in both off-the-tee and approach. Only 15 players can say that, and you know all of their names… this time next week you may know Rasmus’ too.
- Thorbjorn Olesen: All he does is tease me. Thorb rates out, from a course perspective, so well. The form is majors is dreadful. If he is up in the top 20, I won’t be shocked… if he actually contends, then I’d be baffled.
Keita Nakajima: Not yet 25, Keita leads a rising crop of Japanese golfers. He peaked in 2023 inside the top 75, regressed last year, and in the last 6 months has re-found a new form… the arrow should only go up from here. Like most Japanese golfers, he has a very balanced game. 2 runner-ups in his last 4 events at the DP World Tour.Keita removed from pool.
My full player pool will be out on Tuesday.
This was written and I was too excited to keep it from y’all. I’m liable to change my mind on some of the guys above! As always, GL GL GL.
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