Quail Hollow presents almost an identical test to last week’s Doral – there’s claims that’s good and claims that’s bad.

The good? Doral Blue Monster is a clear corollary course. Those who bring form, should keep form.

The bad? It should leave question marks at the top. X and Rory were not in attendance for the debut of the Trump Tour last week, while Cameron Young is so clearly in a form that should translate exactly to Quail Hollow.

Plus4: Quail Hollow course notes

• 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.
• 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. Interestingly, Quail Hollow hosted 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… 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.

Plus4 Picks: Truist Championship

Reminder: the player pool below is focused on DraftKings ownership, inclusive of leverage considerations and player upside.

Favorite Play:
Keegan Bradley – Keegan is quietly getting into form, and rates out very well at a course that most people will not suspect is a Keegan course.
Alex Smalley – Smalley played elite golf at Doral last week. He also played elite golf at the PGA here at Quail last year. When I said above that form should roll this week, I could have just mentioned Smalley. Very strong play with zero reason to believe a let down is coming.

Star Anchor:
Xander Schauffele – Pick your poison with X, Cam and Rory. All rate out well. I will take the shot that Xander at $10,000 flat is the best play, assuming the ownership projections smooth out a bit.

Gut Check:
Matt Wallace – Ready to go out on a limp that THIS is going to be the Matt Wallace week. He is the top of our course fit model, and should provide a great floor (in theory, it’s still Matt Wallace).

Min Woo Lee – Min Woo rates out positively across the skillsets and is commonly a better DFS play than his final positioning. I love Min Woo on courses that are skate parks – this is admittedly not that. If the positive 2026 irons stay positive, Min Woo should be a great value this.

Favorite Sub-$7,000:
Ryan Fox – Ryan Fox won this week, last year, albeit in the opposite field event. The Dunes does correlate, and Fox’s great ball-striking should ride into this week.

Taylor Pendrith – Pendrith is typically a guy who plays better at shorter tracks, but the corollary courses this point straight upwards

Plus4 Bets: Truist Championship

My odds shown below via the datagolf.com Custom Model tool

A few odd picks sheet for me. I don’t show value on the very top of the board, even though I suspect the winner to come from those top 3 guys.

Alex Smalley
Matt Wallace
Ryan Fox
Tommy NOT Top 20 (Kalshi)
Fitz NOT Top 20 (Kalshi)

Myrtle Beach

Mac Meissner
Trace Crowe

Plus4 Player Pool: Truist Championship

• Xander
• Smalley
• Min Woo
• Keegan
• Alex Fitzpatrick
• Ryan Fox
• Sepp Straka
• Pendrith
• Small bites of AScott, Corey Conners, Nicolai, and Sam Stevens

Evenly spread in non-X lineups.

• Cam Young
• Rory

As always, GL GL GL.