2022 PGA Championship Odds: 5 Players Trending Upward Entering Southern Hills

We are less than one week away from the year’s second men’s major championship, as the world’s best players will descend upon Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., for the first PGA Championship at this venue since 2007.

That week, Tiger Woods entered as the pre-tournament favorite (surprise, surprise) at +300 and wound up cashing those outright tickets (surprise, surprise), grabbing the lead with a second-round 63 and never relinquishing it.

Nobody is nearly that much of a fave for this one – in fact, no player is shorter than 10/1 – and it shouldn’t come as a shock if this is a tourney whose lead changes hands a bunch of times next weekend.

As we start preparing for the festivities, let’s take a look at five players, from the top of the odds board to way down it, who are trending in the right direction heading into this one.

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Scottie Scheffler (+1200)

All Scheffler has done so far this year is win four titles, ascend to the No. 1 ranking in the world and claim a green jacket — and yet, it’s still not enough to make him the PGA Championship favorite, as Jon Rahm owns that honor in most books. (Rahm isn’t exactly trending poorly, either, with a victory in his most recent start.)

Scheffler will have one final opportunity to prove to oddsmakers and the public alike that he deserves the lowest number here, as he’ll play one last tune-up at this week’s AT&T Byron Nelson. Nobody has captured the first two legs of the Grand Slam since Jordan Spieth in 2015, but if there’s reason to believe it can happen this time around, this might be it: At one time, Scheffler listed his favorite course in the world as — you guessed it — Southern Hills.

Rory McIlroy (+1400)

I hate the idea of a “backdoor” top-five finish — and hate the usual criticism of such results even more. The insinuation is that a certain player is out of the mix, then plays well on the weekend to rise on the leaderboard when it matters less. But I’ll always maintain that it beats a so-called “front-door” top-five, which I assume is what we’d call it when a player is seriously contending, then falls back when it matters the most.

Anyway, Rory has obviously held this backdoor label for years, and his two most recent starts — a runner-up at the Masters and T5 at the Wells Fargo — haven’t done much to shed it. The reality is, though, that McIlroy is very close to turning his one poor round each week into just a palatable one in order to start winning tourneys again. It’s entirely conceivable that this could happen next week.

Jordan Spieth (+2200)

There aren’t many occasions when an elite-level player would consider the PGA Championship as the toughest of the four majors to win, but that’s the case for Spieth, at least over the past several years, when every time he shows up here, it’s like McIlroy at the Masters or Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open — he has an opportunity to become just the sixth player to ever capture the career Grand Slam.

Spieth is coming off a victory just a few weeks ago at the RBC Heritage, though he admittedly didn’t play his best golf. That might be a sign he’s not quite ready to win another major — or it might be a sign that with a few tweaks in the right direction, his B-plus game can turn into the A-game he’ll need to win this one.

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Robert MacIntyre (+10000)

Since my first three players to watch here weren’t exactly shockers, I’m going to skip past a few dozen players and delve down into the triple-digits for the next one.

While the 25-year-old MacIntyre hasn’t exactly been knocking on the door lately, he has finished between ninth and 36th in each of his last seven worldwide starts. He’s also shown an early propensity for not being intimidated by major championships in his young career, making the cut in all eight appearances so far.

We should expect him to be a more popular play for The Open later this summer — and for good reason — but I don’t mind taking a shot at this number.

Stewart Cink (+25000)

If a 50-year-old can win last year’s edition of the PGA Championship, then why can’t a guy who will turn 49 on the day of next week’s third round? OK, so Cink isn’t exactly Phil Mickelson, but he does have some history at Southern Hills, having missed a short par putt on the final hole that ultimately would’ve gotten him into a playoff at the 2001 U.S. Open.

Cink is hitting the ball longer than ever off the tee and with top-10s in two of his last four starts, he’s at least worth a ticket for a similar result, even if you don’t want to chase that 250-1 outright number.

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