US PGA Championship Longshots 2021

One of the many ways to first analyse a full field event is to rank all of the players by their Official World Golf Ranking and see if there are any anomalies compared to their odds and, although never an exact science, that simple exercise instantly highlights Billy Horschel.

At 18^th in the rankings, the 34 year-old isn’t a million miles off of his career high, which he achieved shortly after winning the BMW Championship in the 2014 PlayOffs before triumphing the following week at East Lake, and this highlights 2 points with Billy: he has the ability to beat a world-class field and he can undoubtedly maintain his form when he finds it.

Flanked either side of Horschel in the OWGR we find Matt Fitzpatrick and Abraham Ancer, both priced around half that of Billy and both PGA Tour maidens. Our man, on the other hand, has 6 PGA Tour titles to his name – one of which was a WGC, another as already mentioned the Tour Championship – and for me something simply doesn’t add up.

A best of 23^rd in the US PGA Championship over the years may the reason he’s not fancied, however 4^th at the US Open in 2013 suggests he can compete at a Major and, to be fair to the Florida man, he has made the weekend in each of his last 7 attempts at this title.

This season has seen Billy finish 2^nd at the WGC Workday Championship as well as winning the WGC Match Play Championship on a Pete Dye track. Add to that 2 career victories at TPC Louisiana – another Dye course – one of which was on his own in 2013 and the other alongside Scott Piercy in 2018, and we have another strong reason to suspect that he could go well here this week.

25^th on his last solo start at Harbour Town saw Horschel in 4^th place heading into the weekend so his form’s hardly collapsed, and if he can marry up a half-decent putting week to accompany his typically strong Total Driving game then I can see him rewarding each-way punters here this week. RESULT: T23

Another player with recent winning form on a Pete Dye track is Stewart Cink and he’s another that I can see threatening the first page of the leaderboard this week.

Having gone without a win for over a decade following his 2009 Open Championship triumph at Turnberry, many a punter would have been forgiven for writing off the Georgia native for anything other than a speculative first round leader punt every now and then, however he clearly had different ideas.

A 2-stroke victory over Harry Higgs at last autumn’s Safeway Open suggested that Stewart wasn’t quite ready to freewheel towards the Senior Tour, and at the age of 47 he captured the 7^th regular PGA Tour event of his career last month at Harbour Town and completed a personal hat-trick of titles on one of Dye’s regular Tour stop-offs.

Back into the world’s top 50, Stewart still has enough game to compete at the top level of golf and at 23^rd in the Driving Distance charts for the season and 1^st for GIR from 200+ yards, he has enough raw power still to contend on a stretching track like Kiawah Island.

That aforementioned Open Championship win is supplemented by career-best finishes of 3^rd in each of the other 3 Majors to suggest that his game can suit all variety of tests, plus he finished 4^th the last time he played a US PGA Championship back in 2018 at Bellerive. 12^th at Augusta prior to his most recent win also adds encouragement for each-way backers at the price on offer and he’s another that I can see outperforming his odds here. RESULT: T30

Finally a more speculative punt on Jazz Janewattananond completes my trio of outsiders.

The young Thai announced himself to the wider audience in this event back in 2019 when a 3^rd round 67 put him in a tie for 2^nd place at Bethpage Black behind runaway leader Brooks Koepka. He managed to hold things together until the 12^th hole on Sunday before dropping 7 shots coming home to finish in a tie for 14^th, however his performance up to that point was noteworthy at the very least.

3 wins on the Korean and Asian Tours since that back-9 meltdown have followed for the 25 year-old and he’s clearly still learning, however 7 wins in 118 global starts since the start of 2017 would suggest that he’s got the ability to convert far more frequently than many other professionals and we should forgive him the odd Sunday slip.

7^th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational heading into Sunday at the start of March was an interesting flash of form before yet another Sunday debacle, however 2^nd and 11^th on his last 2 starts on the European Tour have featured closing rounds of 64 and 66 to offer some hope that he’s working to overcome his final day demons.

That most recent effort last week at The Belfry was his first outing for 6 weeks and his Strokes Gained metrics were solid across the board with only 2 players beating his final round effort on Saturday. A leap of faith is required of course for him to contend and hold onto a position here at Kiawah Island on Sunday, however at the huge price on offer I’m happy to chance my arm. RESULT: MC