PGA Championship Power Rankings

The year’s second major sees the world’s best players descend on Quail Hollow Club for the PGA Championship.

Quail Hollow is a regular PGA Tour stop, having hosted the Wells Fargo for most of the last 20 years, and was the site of the 2017 PGA Championship, won by Justin Thomas.

It’s a very long course, making driving distance extremely important this week, but with rolling terrain, firm, fast greens and its sheer length, putting surfaces will be missed on approach, testing players’ scrambling skills.

While the list of Quail Hollow winners is dominated by long hitters (Rory McIlroy x4, Wyndham Clark, Jason Day, JB Holmes, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods), some shorter hitters have had success there, too (Max Homa x2, Brian Harman, Rickie Fowler, Lucas Glover, Jim Furyk), suggesting there’s more than one way to get the job done.

The greens will be made up of Bermuda grass with a Poa trivialis overseed, as is often seen on Florida courses earlier in the year (see TPC Sawgrass, Innisbrook and South Carolina's Harbour Town to name three) and will run at a very pacey 13 on the Stimpmeter.

Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will go head-to-head again after Scheffler sat out last week’s Truist Championship, but who comes out on top of our PGA Championship Power Rankings? Find out below.

5 - Jon Rahm

The PGA Championship, somewhat like the US Masters, is a major for long hitters. Courses are usually extremely long and require distance off the tee. As such, you’d expect Jon Rahm to thrive there, but his PGA Championship finishes read T58-T4-MC-T13-T8-T48-T50-MC.

There’s been talk about LIV’s impact on golfers’ preparation for majors, and with the exception of Bryson DeChambeau, it does seem that some of the world’s best are coming in a little undercooked. Be it the format, the field, the schedule or a combination of the three, many of LIV’s players aren’t contending at majors like you’d expect.

That could change this week for Rahm, however.

Strokes Gained data is now available on the LIV tour and while Rahm’s approach play isn’t quite what it has been, he’s perhaps the second best driver of the ball in the world after DeChambeau. He’s not been winning recently, but is consistently posting high finishes, including a T14 at the US Masters after an opening 75.

Still winless on the LIV tour this season, Rahm has finished T2-6-T6-T5-T9-T14-4-T7. But for a couple of shots here and there, Rahm would have found himself back in the winners' circle.

His record at Quail Hollow (T58-MC) leaves a lot to be desired, but he hits the ball a mile and has a wonderful touch around the greens that should see him feature over the weekend.

4 - Bryson DeChambeau

Whoever you deem the longest hitter on the PGA Tour to be, Bryson DeChambeau is longer still.

One of the few LIV golfers to show his best at the majors since making the switch, DeChambeau’s gargantuan length means it’s hard to see him not being a threat this week.

The two-time US Open champion isn’t a one-trick pony, of course. The rest of his game is less consistent, although he does have a superb short game that will get him out of any trouble he encounters at Quail Hollow this week.

His first three finishes of MC-T33-4 at Quail Hollow might not count for much considering the transformation of his game, but the T9 in 2021 does.

DeChambeau isn’t quite as consistent as fellow LIV star Rahm, but has a higher ceiling, and coming off his win in Korea last time out, will be brimming with confidence.

3 - Justin Thomas

If there was any doubt after his RBC Heritage win, there shouldn’t be anymore: Justin Thomas is back.

Ending a three-year drought to win the RBC Heritage after a hugely disappointing US Masters, Thomas followed up with a runner-up finish at the Truist Championship.

There had been a frustrating inconsistency with Thomas, who shot 78 at the Players, following up with an outrageous 62 the following day, but he’s now gained strokes in 14 of his last 15 rounds, and 12 of them were at majors or Signature Events.

Of course, Thomas won his first major at Quail Hollow in 2017, and his second major also came at the PGA Championship in 2022.

Long off the tee with one of the best short games in the world and playing himself into form at the perfect time, the PGA Championship all seems set up for Thomas.

His worst finish in his last five starts at Quail Hollow is 26th, and you’d be surprised if he’s worse than that this week.

2 - Scottie Scheffler

A drop-off after a ridiculous 2024 for Scottie Scheffler was somewhat inevitable. A sign of how good he was last year is that the drop-off has felt significant, yet he was still posting good finishes. His worst three results of the season has been T25, T20, T11; one of those was a Signature Event and another was the Players.

Scheffler came roaring back last time out, however, equalling the PGA Tour’s aggregate 72-hole score, winning the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in just 253 strokes in what was statistically his best-ever performance.

Was that just a one-off in a weakened field or is Scheffler getting back to his best? It’s still too soon to say, but Scheffler remains remarkably consistent and is arguably still the world’s premier golfer.

One blotch on his card this week, though, is that he’s yet to appear at Quail Hollow, while most of his rivals have plenty of history there.

Scheffler’s record at the PGA Championship reads T4-T8-MC-T2-T8, but a major win that doesn’t come with some formal wear feels long overdue.

1 - Rory McIlroy

Although the pair are almost impossible to separate, Rory McIlroy takes the number one spot. There’s actually been less between Scheffler and McIlroy this season than the narrative suggests.

Excluding McIlroy’s effort alongside Shane Lowry at the Zurich Classic, he’s averaging 2.97 strokes gained on the field this season to Scheffler’s 2.91.

It still feels a little like Scheffler’s A-game is better than McIlroy’s, but McIlroy is finding his A-game a little more often at the moment.

Things didn’t quite click for McIlroy at last week’s Truist Championship, though he did still post four rounds in the 60s to finish T7.

There’s been so much talk of a freed-up McIlroy on the back of his Grand Slam win that it may well have gone full circle; it feels now like everyone suddenly expects the freed-up McIlroy to win a second-straight major, bringing with it a fresh expectation.

And at a course where he’s won four times before, why not?