5 First-Round Leader Picks For the PGA Championship

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It’s important to get off to a good start at a major championship.

This sounds like the kind of cliched ambiguity which can be spouted by anyone without any factual support, like telling a child it’s important to eat his vegetables without actually knowing if there’s any inherent nutritional value.

Ah, but much like finishing platefuls of carrots and broccoli can’t hurt, there’s substantive evidence that racing out to an opening-round lead at a major almost always portends a strong finish, too.

In the last 14 major championships, there have been 20 players who led or shared the lead at the conclusion of the first round.

Of these 20, only two won, but a whopping 19 wound up finishing inside the top-10 at week’s end. (The only one who didn’t? If you guessed Christo Lamprecht, who held part of a three-way share of the opening-round lead at the 2023 Open Championship only to finish in 74th place, you clearly watch too much golf.)

Of course, FRLs aren’t just important to the guys teeing it up.

For bettors, hitting an FRL can make a week profitable before ever getting to Friday – or it can increase a bankroll that leads to bigger and better winning wagers.

Before I get to my FRL plays for the week, a quick note about BetMGM’s PGA Championship First Round Leader No Sweat Token, which is exactly what it sounds like: BetMGM players will receive a No Sweat Token to apply to any FRL bet. To use the token, add a FRL bet to your bet slip and activate the token. If your bet loses, you will receive Bonus Bets.

Let’s get to the FRL plays for this week’s PGA Championship.

5 First-Round Leader Picks For the PGA Championship

Bryson DeChambeau (+2000)

While there will be plenty of Bryson backers in the outright market at +1100, I love the idea of investing in him for a single-round play at nine points higher. As I write this from the course on late-Monday afternoon, there’s been a lot of rain here over the past 24 hours and more is expected. This very well might be one of those weeks where the course evolves and changes over four days, but I can’t imagine it won’t play long and soft to start.

That plays into the hands of the long hitters and nobody is longer than DeChambeau. He not only owns top-six results in four of the last five majors, he posted a sub-70 starting score in each of those four, including the low Thursday total at the 2024 Masters (and before that, the 2023 PGA Championship). It would hardly be a surprise if Bryson goes low once again, as he’s posted some good ones at Quail Hollow in the past. 

Viktor Hovland (+5000)

I’m going to be brutally honest here: I have no idea what to think of Hovland on a week-to-week or even day-to-day basis, let alone shot-to-shot. Sometimes it looks really good, sometimes it looks really bad and sometimes it looks really good, but he still tries to convince you that it looks really bad. For whatever reason, this is the major which has suited Hovland’s game over the past few years, with a runner-up finish at Oak Hill and solo third at Valhalla. His R1 numbers aren’t anything spectacular this season, but we know he can throw up a low one at any moment.

Min Woo Lee (+6600)

As regular readers know, I prefer banking on volatility with my FRL plays. Give me a player with massive upside and a low floor over one who’s usually more consistent. I don’t know if Lee can avoid enough mistakes for 72 holes to keep him in serious contention, but I do know that he owns some serious firepower and can get red-hot without much notice. On a big ballpark which should favor those who can mash a long-iron, Lee could go low to kick things off.

Akshay Bhatia (+8000)

As a North Carolina native, Bhatia plays a lot of golf on this track in his downtime from PGA Tour events – and he usually plays it well. That feels like some nice symmetry with his recent Thursday performances, as he’s posted a half-dozen scores of 68 or better in his last 10 opening rounds. I like his ability to work the ball both ways around this course, as well.

Keith Mitchell (+8000)

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a situation where a player’s FRL odds didn’t correlate to his outright price. They’re often not the same – a favorite will have longer odds in the FRL market, while longshots will have shorter FRL odds – but the ordering is at least similar. Oddsmakers might have to consider adjusting this idea for Cashmere Keith, for whom a better nickname might be Thursday Scheffler.

He not only leads the PGA Tour in Round 1 scoring average with a sub-67 number, he’s cashed FRL tickets in three of his last five starts and was in second place at the other two. That isn’t sustainable – at least, I don’t think it is – but on a course where he’s had some success anyway, if you’re not sprinkling on Mitchell in the FRL market, you’re doing it wrong.