max-homa.jpg
Getty Images

The 2025 PGA Championship will be played at a familiar venue on the PGA Tour rotation as Quail Hollow Club hosts the second major of the season for the second time. Taking a year off from serving as the site of the Truist Championship, the course will serve as familiar stomping grounds for many of the golfers who hope to transverse it for 72 holes this week.

From a forecasting perspective, that brings a unique opportunity to dig into players' course history at Quail Hollow as a means of projecting who might have an advantage this week. The PGA Championship is often played at courses we only see as part of the major rotation once every 5-10 years, so course data is extremely limited, but with Quail Hollow being an annual stop on the PGA Tour, there is far more to look back on. 

Understandably, much of the focus has been on players at the top of the odds board, including Rory McIlroy, who has won four times at Quail Hollow, and Justin Thomas, who won the PGA Championship the last time it was the host site in 2017.

However, it's not just some of the favorites that come in with good vibes at this particular site and as we take a look further down the oddsboard to find some sleeper picks, we're looking largely at those players who both contended (or won) at Quail Hollow in the past and enter this week in solid form.

2025 PGA Championship sleeper picks

Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook

1
Yes, every single major Fleetwood gets brought up as a name to watch. There was no true plan to put him on this list, either, but at 45-1, there's some value to be had. He's coming in with good form after a T4 finish at the Truist and will have good vibes at Quail Hollow having finished no worse than T14 in his last three starts there. The ever=present question for Tommy is whether he can get the putter working when it matters most, but the ball-striking is looking awfully crisp and the flat stick was working pretty well in Philadelphia. If he can find a way to get that to travel, he could absolutely be in the mix on Sunday. Odds: 45-1
2
A past winner at Quail Hollow, Day won the Wells Fargo Championship in 2018 and has two other top 10s on site, including a T4 last year (albeit, well back of McIlroy's pace). Day has been solid this year, including a T8 at the Masters, and perhaps Quail Hollow will bring back that winning feeling that's been missing since his last win in 2023. The PGA Championship has, typically, been the major set up that has fit his game the best, and you should expect that to be the case at a course he knows and enjoys quite well. Odds: 70-1
3
With a T8 and a T4 in his last two starts at Quail Hollow, Im clearly has a good feel for playing golf in Charlotte. He is a boom-or-bust player, but his ceiling is higher than a lot of guys in this range and with a pretty solid course fit, I wouldn't be surprised to see him sniffing around the top of the leaderboard on the weekend. We had him on the sleepers list for Augusta National, and he rewarded us with a T5. Let's go back to the well this week. Odds: 80-1
4
Homa is a two-time winner of the Wells Fargo, and while only one of those came at Quail Hollow, he's got a great track record on the course. On top of his win there in 2019, he has back-to-back T8 finishes in 2023-24. We saw at the Masters how a return to a course he's had some success on can bring some of the positive vibes that have been missing from his game over the last year. Now, he gets to go back to a course he's not just played well on but won at, and at these odds, he is worth a sprinkle. Odds: 150-1
5
The only player on this list that isn't a Quail Hollow trend play is Novak. Instead, this is just a play on a hot golfer. Novak's lone win was in the team competition at the Zurich Classic, but he as runner-up in a playoff at the RBC Heritage and T3 at the Texas Open in his two starts before that. On top of those results, he has a 3rd and T13 at Torrey Pines this year and another T13 at Pebble Beach. He has a lot working against him having never played Quail Hollow (his lone Wells Fargo appearance was a missed cut in 2022 when it was played at TPC Potomac) and having just one major start (a missed cut in the 2022 U.S. Open). That said, there's worse looks at these odds than a guy who is playing some of the best golf of anyone anywhere right now. Odds: 180-1

Who will win the PGA Championship, and which longshots will stun the golfing world? Visit SportsLine now to see the projected leaderboard and best bets, all from the model that's nailed 14 golf majors, including the past four Masters, and is up over $9,000 since June 2020.