PGA Championship Props & Best Bets 2023: Matchups, Cut & First-Round Leader Picks

Our PGA Championship props and best bets explore the matchup, cut, and first-round leader markets for the best value targets.

Esten McLaren

Last Updated: May 17, 2023 7:40 PM EDT • 6 minute read

With the second major of 2023 at hand, our PGA Championship props & best bets have you covered for your matchup, cut, and first-round leader picks. Picks based off the best odds from our best sports betting apps.

The PGA Championship has arrived at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, NY this week with the second major winner of the 2023 PGA Tour season to be crowned on Sunday afternoon. With more eyes than usual on golf again this week, our best sports betting sites have greatly expanded their PGA Championship odds offerings, and it can be a little overwhelming.

Our PGA Championship picks and predictions and sleepers and long-shot picks have you covered for outright winners. Below, our PGA Championship props and best bets target the finishing position, matchups, and cut markets, as well as our top first-round leader picks based on the PGA Championship tee times for Rounds 1 and 2.

PGA Championship best bets

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Finishing position picks 🥈

PGA Tour finishing positions allow bettors to wager on the predicted placement of a golfer at the end of a tournament. These markets offer various options for betting, including top 5, top 10, top 20, and top 40 finishes. These betting markets allow bettors to focus on the performance and ranking of individual golfers rather than predicting the outright winner of the tournament.

Top 5: Xander Schauffele (+360 via DraftKings) ⭐⭐⭐
Top 40: Tom Hoge (+250 via FanDuel) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Schauffele: Still without a major win on his resume, Schauffele ended a three-year winless drought with two individual victories last summer. He hasn't finished worse than T-15 in his last four major championship appearances and will look to improve on his T-10 result at the Masters while playing a course well-suited for his elite iron play. Schauffele's also fifth by the U.S. Open odds.

Hoge: A lackluster T-43 finish last week is an improvement on back-to-back missed cuts in early April. Ranked 30th in the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) we're getting excellent value in these +250 odds for a top-40 finish following Hoge's T-9 result in the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills.

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Matchup picks 🤼‍♂️

Matchup markets involve wagering on the performance of one golfer against another within a specific tournament. These markets offer head-to-head matchups between two golfers, and bettors can place bets on which golfer will have a better performance in terms of their finishing position or score in the tournament. These matchup betting markets allow bettors to focus on the performance of specific golfers relative to each other, regardless of their overall tournament standing or outcome.

Dustin Johnson (-102 via FanDuel) vs. Jason Day ⭐⭐⭐
Adam Svensson (-110 via DraftKings) vs. Brendon Todd ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Johnson: Johnson's coming off victory in the LIV Golf Invitational: Tulsa event while Day ended his lengthy PGA Tour winless drought with victory in the AT&T Byron Nelson. Though Johnson has struggled more in the PGA Championship than any other major for his career, he has played more consistent major golf than Day in recent years so I'm backing him in the battle of former world No. 1s.

Svensson: Todd has had the hotter putter of late but I'm trusting Svensson's superior distance off the tee and approach game. Svensson also enters the week at No. 58 in the OWGR to Todd's rank of 69th and should be given at least a slight edge in this tournament head-to-head.

To make/miss the cut picks ✂️

Cut markets are related to the "cut line" in a golf tournament. The cut line is the score that determines which golfers will continue playing in the tournament and which ones will be eliminated after 36 holes. The top 70 players and ties will advance to play the weekend at the 2023 PGA Championship.

To make the cut: Abraham Ancer (-118 via FanDuel) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
To miss the cut: Lucas Herbert (-108 via FanDuel) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ancer: One of the forgotten defectors to the LIV Golf Invitational Series, Ancer claimed victory in the Asian Tour's PIF Saudi International against a quality field that included PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Cameron Young in early February. Ancer also finished in the top 10 of each of the last two editions of the PGA Championship.

Herbert: Though Herbert is coming off a victory in the DP World Tour's ISPS Handa Championship, that was in late April. I'm not trusting his extended break from competitive golf coming into a major, especially after he missed the cut in two of 2022's four major championships, and the 2023 Players Championship.

Prop picks 💸

PGA Tour prop betting markets offer a wide range of unique and specific betting options beyond traditional outcomes or matchups. These markets allow bettors to wager on various aspects of a golfer's performance or specific events within a tournament.

Best LIV player: Talor Gooch (+1000 via BetMGM) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Top Asian: Tom Kim (+500 via FanDuel) ⭐⭐

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Gooch: In what has become one of my favorite 2023 PGA Championship picks, I'm quite confident in Gooch having the best finish among those returning from the LIV circuit. Though he doesn't have the major pedigree of Johnson, Brooks Koepka, or Phil Mickelson, he had a T-5 finish in the 2021 Players Championship and won back-to-back LIV events this spring.

Kim: I was rather impressed by Kim's final 54 holes of the AT&T Byron Nelson, in which he finished his second round one stroke above the cut line and shot a final round of 6-under par while gaining 0.50 strokes on approach per round for the tournament. The two-time PGA Tour champ is due for some positive regression on the putting surfaces, and I'm comfortable leaning on his approach and short games.

First-round leader picks ⛳

First-round leader betting markets allow bettors to wager on which golfer will have the lowest score after the completion of the first round (18 holes) of a tournament. These markets provide an opportunity to predict which golfer will start the tournament strong and take an early lead.

Viktor Hovland (+4000) ⭐
Keegan Bradley (+8000 via BetMGM) ⭐

Hovland: Hovland had a share of the first-round lead in the Masters before finishing in a tie for seventh. The logic in this first-round leader pick is that Hovland's elite iron play can keep him in major contention until the greens firm up for the weekend and he's forced to rely more heavily on his weaker short game. It doesn't hurt that Hovland is second on the PGA Tour in Round 1 scoring average this season and Neil Parker is backing him in his PGA Championship power rankings.

Bradley: One of my PGA Championship sleeper picks, Bradley has lower odds to lead the field after the first 18 holes. The St. John's University grad won the 2011 PGA Championship in the first major appearance of his pro career, and he tied for 19th at Oak Hill Country Club in 2013.

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Written by:
Esten McLaren

Esten is the Senior Publishing Editor for SportsbookReview.com. He has been in the sports betting industry since the legalization of mobile sports betting in New Jersey, and with SportsbookReview prior to the launch of sports betting in Ontario. Esten's previous stops include the USA TODAY network, including GolfWeek. He previously worked in the fantasy sports industry, with FNTSY Sports Network, theScore, and USA TODAY. Esten graduated from the College of Sports Media with a diploma in Radio and Television Sports Broadcasting after acquiring a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Guelph. He has appeared on FNTSY Sports Network, VSiN, and VSiN's Long Shots podcast, where he correctly called Will Zalatoris as the winner of the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship. Esten is a big proponent of the entertainment side of sports betting and loves to dip his toes into the novelty and alt-markets while chasing long shots with reduced wagers on golf outrights and futures markets. He's also been known to sprinkle some lunch money on touchdown-scorer parlays with two notable hits still funding his bankroll. Esten looks at sports betting much like golf and advises beginner bettors to compete against themselves rather than being concerned with what others may or may not be doing based on social media claims.