PGA Championship Longshots 2026

A shorter track than usual for a PGA Championship and the promise of firming conditions over the weekend may open the door to a different type of winner this week. Certainly when we’ve seen the likes of Oak Hill in 2013 and Harding Park in 2020 play host to this Major at shorter venues, we’ve had different types of winner in the shape of Jason Dufner and Collin Morikawa, so seeing Brian Harman seriously contend this week wouldn’t be a total shock.

Brian, as we know, is a Major Champion having lapped the field at the 2023 Open Championship, so he certainly has the pedigree to contend at golf’s biggest events. 2^nd at the 2017 US Open, 12^th at the 2021 Masters and 13^th at the 2017 PGA Championship show an all-round aptitude for Major golf, and he might just find a way to navigate around Aronimink this week and accumulate a competitive score.

2026 has been largely disappointing for the 39 year-old to this point, hence the reason we’re getting such a healthy price about him winning here this week. 11^th at TPC Sawgrass in another very strong field is Brian’s best finish of the year so far where he was 4^th heading into Sunday, however if we scratch the surface of some of his other results there’s room for optimism. 25^th at the RBC Heritage last month featured a Saturday 63 which catapulted him into 3^rd place heading into the final round, plus he was 6^th at Doral heading into the weekend before falling out of contention.

For me, Harman’s the sort who could surprise this week and fill an each-way paying place.

With all the noise around the future of LIV Golf at present, I’m steering clear of the players at the top of the market who might have more on their minds than the outcome of this week’s tournament. Further down the list though I’ll make an exception for Thomas Detry who’s impressed on that circuit having joined at the start of 2026.

Having got the long-awaited monkey finally off of his back with an imperious 7-stroke victory at last year’s Phoenix Open, the expectation was that his career may explode from that point in time – but that simply didn’t happen. A little bit of form at the Genesis Championship and Nedbank Challenge at the back end of the year signalled the start of a turnaround in fortunes once again though, and since then he’s impressed on LIV, recording five top-7 finishes from seven starts including last week in Virginia where he topped the Total Driving stats.

4^th at the 2024 PGA Championship is the 33 year-old’s best Major finish, and given the state of his game in recent times a repeat performance isn’t out of the question by any means.

Finally, listeners to the GBS podcast may recall that I backed Lucas Glover last week at Quail Hollow off the back of an improved 14^th place finish at Doral the week before, with the hope that he’d back up his strong long game performance in Florida with a sparky week on the greens. A tie for 37^th was the result which helps nobody from a betting perspective, however there was indeed a spark with the putter – enough to see the 46 year-old rank 6^th for SG Putting – and that’s enough encouragement for me to place a small wager on him again this week.

7^th for SG Approach and 12^th for SG Tee to Green at Doral was much more in line with Glover’s normal modus operandi, however when he gets even a little bit of confidence with the putter he can still be dangerous, as was evidenced by back-to-back wins in the summer of 2023 at the Wyndham Championship and St Jude Championship when a hot putting fortnight collided with his typically strong long game.

The 2009 US Open champion has a PGA Championship best finish of 5^th which came later that same year, and his one and only look at Aronimink in 2010 produced a tie for 25^th having failed to break the top 40 on his previous three outings that year. Interestingly he got on nicely with the greens here, ranking 7^th for putting average on the week, with only his short game preventing him from finishing in a far loftier position.3^rd for Total Driving and 1^st for Ball Striking that week suggests to me that the course suits and he could just sneak into a paying place here at a long, long price.