Best bets
3pts each-way Rory McIlroy @ 7/1
1pt each-way Max Homa @ 20/1
1pt each-way Cameron Young @ 28/1
1pt each-way Tommy Fleetwood @ 22/1
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Rory McIlroy returns to the scene of his first PGA Tour triumph in 2010 with a favourite’s chance of bagging his fourth victory at Quail Hollow in what will be Wells Fargo’s final sponsorship of one of the most popular weeks on the calendar.
The Wells Fargo Championship at Charlotte, North Carolina, is the sixth of eight designated Signature tournaments to offer a limited field of 70 a $20m purse with $3.6m to the winner and it’s a week when everybody gets paid as there’s no cut. Even the last man gets $41,000.
‘The joy was back in his game in New Orleans.’
Everybody who matters is in the elite field bar world No.1 Scottie Scheffler who is staying at home ready to welcome his second child into the world. And of course there’s no LIV contingent, Brooks Koepka having advertised his claims for a fourth PGA Championship next week by winning at Singapore on the breakaway tour on Sunday.
McIlroy can hardly believe his luck, a winner last time out when he almost carried partner Shane Lowry over the line in the Zurich pairs event in New Orleans and now facing two weeks on courses made for him, Quail Hollow where he won in 2010, 2015 (by seven fat shots) and 2021, then Valhalla where he picked up his last Major ten long years ago. If he doesn’t make hay now, he never will.
It doesn’t always work out for him at Quail Hollow – last year he flopped to 47th place – but the joy was back in his game in New Orleans and, small beer though that was, it could not have been more timely. Far from being frightened off by the 7/1 quote, for once I think it’s a very fair price with no Scheffler to beat.
There’s always the fear that Rory wants to keep his best stuff back for next week’s second Major but surely not in this instance on a course he loves and knows like the back of his hand.
McIlroy will find Quail Hollow tweaked a bit with new greens, tees and bunkering in preparation for hosting next year’s PGA Championship but it is essentially the same, a 7558-yard par 71 where hitting the ball straight and a long way is a priority, a traditional course that has been redesigned in stages by Tom Fazio.
Wyndham Clark went 19 under to win last year before going on to bag his first Major, the US Open. But it showed more teeth at the 2017 PGA Championship because Justin Thomas was only eight under when he walked away with the giant Wanamaker Trophy. That was at a very different time of year though.
The course was also used for the 2022 Presidents Cup when Max Homa played a blinder in going 4 and 0. That was not a major surprise as he had won the Wells Fargo at 200/1 three years earlier when we knew very little about him. It is a concern that he has rarely showed the form this year we know he is capable of until placing third at Augusta. Expect to see a bit of the old Homa magic this week on a course he loves.
‘Expect to see a bit of the old Homa magic this week.’
Clark has certainly been playing well enough to make a stout defence. An emphatic four-shot winner over Xander Schauffele last year, he’s a guy who knows how to get the job done. The gods might have been on his side when he was declared the winner at Pebble Beach in a tournament reduced to only two rounds because of weather chaos but there was no fluke about second places at the Players and Bay Hill. His third at Heritage was equally impressive on a cagey course that didn’t play to his strengths.
I can’t back Schauffele at 10/1 as he always seems to find at least one too good – he is winless since the Scottish Open in 2022 – but there’s no denying his incredible consistency.. He is playing superior golf to his best pal Patrick Cantlay and with Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa short of their best too, there’s every encouragement to look elsewhere.
We saw a golfer last week in Taylor Pendrith who looked like he was never going to win making his breakthrough in Texas (although he needed a helping hand from Ben Kohles to do it) and this might be the time another non-winner Cameron Young fulfils all the hype he has attracted in two short years from his tremendous record in Majors.
The first Wells Fargo he contested two years ago resulted in a T2 to Homa but that was the year Quail Hollow handed the tournament over to TPC Potomac while it was setting the place up for the Presidents Cup. He has played this year’s venue only once, not very successfully, but you can’t base judgment on such slim evidence and, following his second at Valspar and ninth at Augusta, this huge hitter is worth risking.
McIlroy apart, Europe are strongly represented by Tommy Fleetwood, Matt Fitzpatrick and Shane Lowry. Fleetwood was fifth to Clark last year and comes in after a great April, third place at the Masters following a top-ten at the Texas Open. He has solid place claims.
A stormy start is in prospect for Thursday but a dry weekend is forecast.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Nico Echevarria @ 66/1
1pt each-way Ryo Hisatsune @ 40/1
1pt each-way Erik Van Rooyen @ 25/1
1pt each-way Andrew Novak @ 33/1
0.5pt each-way Matt Wallace @ 33/1
There’s a new tournament and a new course for the lesser mortals not good enough to compete at Quail Hollow this week and with Fitzdares going 25/1 the field finding the winner was never going to be easy.
The Dunes course at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina is the venue, a parkland resort course with generous fairways and big greens designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr in 1948, so we’ll be getting plenty of low scores.
‘The Japanese are on a roll, winning here, there and everywhere.’
There’s plenty of DP World Tour interest with Bob MacIntyre, Ryan Fox, Thorbjorn Olesen, Victor Perez, Sami Valimaki and Matt Wallace taking part on this 7347-yard par 71 but only Wallace, with his top-four finish at the Byron Nelson on Sunday, appears to be at the top of his game.
This is a weaker field than last week so the 33/1 about the Londoner makes some appeal but preference is for American Andrew Novak, Colombian Nico Echevarria, Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune and South African Erik Van Rooyen.
Echevarria has already won one of these second-tier events, taking the Puerto Rico Open last year, and arrives in fine nick after finishing 14th in the Corales, fourth in the pairs event in New Orleans and 24th at the Nelson.
Novak posted three top-tens in a row in February/March and has remained solidly consistent. As a North Carolina native, he will enjoy plenty of support.
The Japanese are on a roll, winning here, there and everywhere, and it all started when Hisatsune won the French Open in September. Only 21, the best is yet to come and there was much to like about his 13th place at the Nelson at the weekend.
Van Rooyen can be spectacular as when shooting 27 under to win the World Wide Technology Championship in November. He almost won another one when T2 at the Cognizant in March and, on sheer ability, is one of the few class acts in this line-up.
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