BettingPros PGA Show: 2026 PGA Championship Picks & Predictions

Welcome to the BettingPros PGA Podcast. I’m Pat Fitzmaurice here with Bo McBrayer. The second major of 2026 is upon us.

We’ll dive into our betting preview of the PGA Championship down below, but first a quick shoutout to the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow, where Mr. McBrayer continued to line his pockets by picking his sixth outright winner of the season: Kristoffer Reitan of Norway at 100-1 odds.

2026 PGA Championship Preview

The PGA Championship will be played at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles west of Philadelphia.

Aronimink has hosted only one major previously. Gary Player won the PGA Championship there back in 1962 with a score of two under par. I suspect the winning score is going to be considerably lower this time around.

Aronimink is going to play as a par 70 measuring 7,394 yards. It isn’t that long of a course by major championship standards. None of the six par 4s on the front nine are longer than 457 yards. The two longest par 4s on the back side are the 546-yard 15th and the 490-yard 18th.

The par 3s are all 216 yards or longer, except for the relatively short 171-yard 5th hole. The two par 5s are 605 and 555 yards, so both are gettable.

Aronimink has enormous bentgrass greens. They average 8,300 square feet. Players are going to be hitting greens in regulation at a higher clip than you would normally see at a PGA Championship. But the greens themselves are going to be really challenging to putt on.

Aronimink was designed by Donald Ross, so these greens have all sorts of character, typical of a Donald Ross course: big undulations and ridges that make two-putting from long distance tricky. Putting at Aronimink is going to be a major challenge.

The course in general has lots of contours, not just on the greens. As with Augusta, players are going to hit a lot of their approach shots from uneven lies. Fairways aren’t super narrow, but they’re pinched off in some spots.

It’ll be interesting to see how long they let the rough grow out. If the PGA Championship were still played in late summer, we’d see Aronimink at its toughest: firm and fast. But in the spring, with all the rain the Northeast has gotten, the rough might be a key line of defense for Aronimink.

I’m not expecting brutal U.S. Open-type rough. This isn’t a USGA setup, but maybe they’ll let it grow out a bit. Aronimink does have a lot of bunkers – 174 of them to be exact. Gil Hanse did a restoration of the course 10 years ago and more than doubled the number of bunkers.

There’s not a lot of water, but water does come into play on three holes. One of them is the 8th, a long downhill par 3 over water. It’s listed at 216 yards, but the distance could vary quite a bit depending on where they put the hole and the tee boxes.

Another is hole 10, a 472-yard par 4 that has a pond front-left of the green.

PGA Tour Recent History at Aronimink

Aronimink has hosted three PGA Tour events since 2010. The AT&T National was played there in 2010 and 2011, and it hosted the BMW Championship in 2018.

Justin Rose won the 2010 AT&T National with a score of 10 under par. That was one shot better than Ryan Moore. Nick Watney won the 2011 AT&T National at 11 under par, two shots better than K.J. Choi. And Keegan Bradley won the rain-soaked 2018 BMW Championship, finishing 20 under par and beating Justin Rose in a playoff.

Justin Rose has been in contention here a couple of times. Scottie Scheffler is the defending PGA Champion. He ran away with it last year at Quail Hollow, finishing at 11 under par. The closest anyone got to him was six under.

The forecast for the PGA Championship this week calls for cool temperatures Thursday and Friday in the upper 60s with chances of showers both days. Winds should be light Thursday, slightly breezier Friday, and then things warm up a little bit on the weekend with temperatures in the low 80s, minimal rain chances, and light winds.

Bo McBrayer on Aronimink Golf Club

Aronimink is not as difficult as a lot of people think it’s going to be. The PGA Championship is usually the least challenging setup among the majors. Of course, the Open Championship depends a lot on weather. The PGA basically depends on the course. The rotation varies pretty widely between difficult courses and easier courses.

I think Aronimink is on the easier side, and there’s not much they can do to this course to make it major-level difficult. I believe the winning score is still going to be between 16 and 20 under par, which is about what you’d see from a moderately difficult regular Tour event.

That’s because it’s average length. There’s only so much they can grow the rough out. I don’t think it’s going to stop most of these guys from using the bomb-and-gouge technique. That’s going to be a big thing here.

It’s not going to be as dependent on driving distance as the last two events have been, but it will be an advantage to have length here. The reason being, it’s a second-shot golf course, and a lot of these approaches are going to be clustered between 150 and 200 yards.

Kind of like last week, if you’re a longer hitter like Kristoffer Reitan – this week is going to be more about that short and mid-iron approach game into these very challenging fast bentgrass greens. That’s where most of this tournament is going to be decided.

It might turn into a glorified major championship putting contest. It’s going to come down to who can manage these fast bentgrass greens with tons of slope.

I don’t see much of a challenge off the tee for anyone in this event – just a slight edge to those guys who poke it down there a little bit longer.

As far as the bunkers go, there are a lot of them. A lot of small bunkers are there to create uneven lies, so scrambling and bogey avoidance are going to be on the table.

This is going to be the first major in a while where I’m actually looking a little harder at birdie-or-better percentage. I want to see guys who can stand up to the major championship pressure and make birdies, because I believe they’re going to be out there for the taking.

So, second shot and putting will be key. And if you’re not good on second shots, you better be one heck of a scrambler because there are going to be a lot of bunkers and a lot of uneven lies.

Bogey avoidance and three-putt avoidance are still very much in play – especially three-putt avoidance with the size and difficulty of these greens. I’m focused on both of them. But in terms of weighting, bogey avoidance matters much less than it normally would in major championship preparation. Three-putt avoidance, though, is paramount.