Let me ask you something: Are you ready for the fourth-most prestigious tournament of golf’s annual four majors? Do you have that kind of juice? Because we know, with the NBA playoffs, MLB, and post–NFL draft rumors, your mind is already an overstuffed attic of sports stimuli. It’s tough to fit much more in. And yet you should try. Because while the PGA Championship may not carry the gravitas of the other majors, it tends to be one hell of an entertaining event. If the Masters is the smug and austere grandfather, and the U.S. Open is the uptight, weirdly insecure first cousin, and the Open Championship is some delightfully impenetrable British baron, then the PGA Championship is the cool uncle who hipped you to the term “doobie” before it was necessarily age appropriate.
And nearly every year, someone intriguing wins the Wanamaker Trophy. Check out the list of winners dating back to 2017: Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas, Phil Mickelson, Collin Morikawa, Brooks Koepka, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas. I mean—weird, right? That’s a lot of Brooks Koepka! Anyway, you get the gist: Love them or hate them, they’re all compelling figures. The PGA Championship is a populist-leaning rolling cavalcade of stars. And minus our usual stalwart playing partner Matt Dollinger (who’s been subsumed with NBA responsibilities), Megan Schuster and I have asked and answered all the crucial questions you need before things tee off on Thursday. Buckle up—Valhalla awaits! —Elizabeth Nelson
What can we expect from Valhalla Golf Club?
Nelson: In keeping with the low-key prestige of the tournament it’s hosting, Valhalla is neither a particularly old nor particularly fetishized track, located somewhere out in the comfortable woodsy suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. A Jack Nicklaus design that opened in 1986, Valhalla has been dismissed by certain purists as a garish relic of its tackily amped-up age that may not present a proper major championship test. Nevertheless, it was the theater for a classic PGA Championship shoot-out between Tiger Woods and Bob May in 2000, as well as an American victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup and Rory McIlroy’s last major championship triumph back in 2014 (10 years!), so there is some meaningful history here. Regardless of your position on what qualifies as a major-worthy venue, Valhalla will provide a fun challenge.
A par-71 course that will play at a formidable 7,609 yards, Valhalla features four par 3s, three par 5s, and tempting risk/reward propositions like the par-4 13th, whose 351-yard length will induce daredevils to try to land their tee shot on an island green. The potential for high scores lurks at the 495-yard, par-4 sixth, where the tributary hazard Floyd’s Fork will force players to lay up or cover the 340 yards needed to avoid catastrophe. Neither is a very appetizing proposition. I love a par-5 finish, and we’ll get that at Valhalla too, where the 18th will play at a reachable 570 yards and keep even players who are two or three strokes back very much in the mix as they make their way down the homestretch. Kentucky loves a horse race, and Valhalla is designed to provide one.
Can Brooks Koepka repeat (again)?
Megan Schuster: I’m ashamed to admit that, for a time, I became a Brooks Koepka doubter. It lasted about a year—during his disastrous 2022 season, in which his best major finishes were two 55s at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open—and it was a sharp turn from my stance the five years previous that there was no one I would rather watch on a golf course. But as silly as my doubts looked in 2023, when Koepka rounded back into form and won his fifth career major, I wasn’t the only person who held them:
That loss of confidence—and a big, fat, nine-figure check—was enough to lure Brooks away from the PGA Tour in 2022 and over to the Saudi Arabia–funded LIV Golf. And at the time, it seemed like the era of Major Championship Dominator Brooks may have been over.
Then, Brooks finished T2 at the 2023 Masters. And then, he won the 2023 PGA by two strokes. And while he hasn’t done well at a major since (his best was a T17 at last year’s U.S. Open), the PGA is pretty officially Brooks’s house. He’s won the tournament three times—in 2018, 2019, and 2023—and it doesn’t matter what form he has going in: He plays best in big spots, and majors are certainly his forte. He isn’t the favorite this week—his +1600 odds trail Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Xander Schauffele. But doubt Brooks at your own risk. “I just enjoy the big stage, when the spotlight is on and when things are more difficult,” Koepka told USA Today recently. “As they say in other sports, I am someone who wants the ball with a few seconds to go.”
Is Scottie Scheffler the biggest favorite going into a major since prime Tiger?
Schuster: In short, yes. Heading into this PGA Championship, Scheffler has the shortest odds to win (+400) of any golfer entering a major since Tiger Woods at the PGA in 2013. But this isn’t really new for Scottie. He had similar odds going into the Masters earlier this year (+450), and he converted on that chance, winning the tournament by four strokes and earning his second green jacket. He’s the no. 1 golfer in the world and has held that crown since last year’s PGA Championship. He’s coming off a stretch of four wins in five tournaments—and in the one he didn’t win, he finished a paltry T2. He’s got Big Dad Energy now, as he and his wife, Meredith, celebrated the birth of their first child last week. And as long as his putter is functional, there doesn’t seem to be any hope for the rest of the field.
Does that last sentence sound familiar?
It’s impossible to directly compare anyone to Tiger Woods. There will likely never be another force as dominant, as awe-inducing, or as transformational in pro golf. Woods not only matched wins records, invented the Tiger Slam, and forced institutions like Augusta National to bend to his game; he also brought the sport and the entire PGA Tour to previously unseen heights. That’s not something you can replicate just by winning or playing well. The NBA is experiencing a similar discourse right now with the Anthony Edwards–Michael Jordan phenomenon. But it’s one thing to be an electric player and dominate the field around you; it’s another to put a sport on your back and change the face of it forever.
So yes, Scottie is the biggest pre-major favorite since Tiger. And deservedly so—it’s hard to imagine someone beating him, let alone him playing sub-A-plus golf. But while the sport still frantically looks for its heir apparent to Tiger, it’s good to remember that simply winning wasn’t all that made Tiger Woods.
Is a Scandinavian invasion happening in professional golf?
Nelson: I’m not any kind of mesmerist or conjurer, but it’s fairly obvious what will happen this week. Valhalla, in Norse mythology, is the magical hall belonging to the god Odin. And two different Scandinavian players appear set to heavily contend this weekend. Connect the dots, people: Viktor Hovland is a 26-year-old from Norway who’s noted for his elite ball striking and penchant for birdie bonanzas, and he finished second to Koepka by a razor-thin two strokes at the PGA last year; Ludvig Aberg is a 24-year-old Swede with a symphonic game and winning temperament whose recent hot streak includes a swashbuckling runner-up finish at last month’s Masters. Also, because our people roll deep (I’m Norwegian), we have the Danish Hojgaard twins, Rasmus and Nicolai. I don’t know what their chances are this week, but you can see my point: The northerners are coming.
What’s going on with Rory McIlroy?
Nelson: Why do I worry about him? He seems fine. He’s the world no. 2 coming off a runaway win at Quail Hollow last week, and he seems primed to find success at the same course that last yielded him a major win. If I were betting, I’d probably bet on him: poetic destiny, a decade later. His return to glory, his comeback album.
But this is why I worry: He’s such a rational person, and men’s golf is so irrational, and he keeps passing through its various stages—prodigy, debutante, master of all but the Masters, conscience of the game. Men’s golf has seemed to be collapsing all around us for a few years running, and during that time McIlroy has unfailingly been its Atlas, shouldering an immense but shuddering burden on his admittedly formidable shoulders.
For instance: In the wake of the proposed LIV–PGA–DP World Tour merger, there has been something called the PGA Policy Board that he was initially a part of and then resigned from and then was provisionally brought back to and then dismissed from again in some faction politics. For the record, no one knows what the PGA Policy Board does exactly, except issue press releases and argue internally. Just two days ago, in a further rearranging of the deck chairs, power broker Jimmy Dunne—the man who negotiated the original framework for the merger—resigned his position on the board, citing “no meaningful progress.” It has devolved into the world’s most tedious reality show. Rory wanted to help and found himself essentially drowned in deep-seated bureaucracy.
I know he has the game to shake it off and win this week, but all this bilious silliness has to be a distraction. Maybe it’s only a few strokes here and there, but that can be all that matters at a major. This is why Brooks Koepka wins.
Should we expect anything from the LIV invitation guys?
Schuster: LIV has been befuddling the majors for a couple of years now. The tour doesn’t qualify for world golf rankings points—because of its 54-hole format, smaller field sizes, and lack of promotion and relegation—and so the big four events don’t have a clear-cut avenue to admitting its players. Traditionally, the majors offer exemptions to golfers who’ve won the event before or finished close to the top in past majors, but most of the rest of the field is filled out using the OWGR. So many LIV players have been excluded.
That’s been a source of frustration for LIV guys, especially the outspoken Talor Gooch, who seems to believe he should be playing in every major event even though his best-ever finish was a T14 at the 2022 Masters. But now the PGA Championship has stepped in, offering seven LIV golfers special invitations to this week’s tournament, in addition to the nine LIV players who were already exempt. Gooch, Joaquin Niemann, Patrick Reed, Dean Burmester, Lucas Herbert, Adrian Meronk, and David Puig all made the cut, and all will be at Valhalla.
So of that group, are any a threat to win? Niemann has the best, and probably only, chance: His +3500 odds put him ahead of the likes of Wyndham Clark, Tommy Fleetwood, and Cameron Smith, and he finished in the top 25 at this year’s Masters. The next-closest guys are Gooch at +11000 and Burmester at +15000. No one looks like an especially great bet—or really comes close to the already exempt LIV competitors. But these guys will certainly be trying to prove they deserve their spots—and that they should have spots in future majors.
What should we expect from Jon Rahm?
Nelson: Rahmbo had a weird Masters defense in April. The LIV defector seemed both contrite and hesitant as he made his first major appearance since accepting something on the order of half a billion dollars from the Saudi breakaway group in 2023. Ever acted awkward at a party you didn’t really feel invited to? The essence of that was exemplified through every moment of his T45 finish. Don’t use that failure of nerve as an excuse to discount the long-bombing Spaniard’s chances this week, though. Valhalla is not Augusta, and depending on the conditions, Rahm’s über-length and unique finesse around the greens could yield a dividend of low numbers. Were he to prevail, that would represent the second year running that a LIV renegade had raised the Wanamaker Trophy. Were that to take place, it would become increasingly difficult to dismiss the disruptor tour, even as Rahm himself dismisses its three-day tournament format. Dude’s way more than a dark horse this week, and it’ll be fascinating if he wins. Of all the major stars to scorn the PGA Tour, he seems the most uneasy with it all. Could he ultimately prove to be a unifier?
Who will win?
Schuster: Brooks Koepka. This decision came down to Brooks or Scottie for me. Schauffele is tempting because the PGA sets up well for his game, but I don’t like to be a bandwagoner and his odds are creeping ever downward. I refuse to touch Rory with a 10-foot pole given the PGA Tour mess that’s swirling around him right now. So Brooks and Scottie were my primary options. I have to believe Scottie will fall off his pace at some point, right? Maybe?? So I’m going with Brooks here to repeat—and to once again show me up for ever doubting him.
Nelson: Ludvig Aberg. Gimme Aberg on a Sunday heater. Raise a toast and skol!
