Don’t sleep on Myrtle Beach.
The third-year Tour event offers the winner 300 FedExCup points and a two-year exemption, along with the last possible invite to the PGA Championship in Aronimink next week.
Brooks Koepka, the tournament favorite, wasn’t able to compete at Quail Hollow but he’ll be hoping to use this opposite-field event to earn future signature starts.
The Truist Championship has a $20 million purse. Koepka and Co. will be playing for a fifth of that at Dunes Golf and Beach Club. Here’s how oddsmakers have it figured out so far.
ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic odds (as of Monday, courtesy of DraftKings)
Brooks Koepka (+1650)Davis Thompson (+1750)Rasmus Hojgaard (+2000)Marco Penge (+2250)Rico Hoey (+2800)Mac Meissner (+3000)Aaron Rai (+3100)Kevin Yu (+3200)Stephan Jaeger (+3400)Max Greyserman (+3400)Haotong Li (+3500)Casey Jarvis (+3600)Max McGreevy (+3600)Rasmus Neergaard-Peterson (+3600)Dunes Golf and Beach Club winner prediction
First thing you notice with the odds for the split event is that there’s just compressed value: The more you go down the board the numbers don’t inflate like a balloon, they stay flat to ground level.
For comparison, if you go 20 names down from Neergaard-Peterson (arbitrary editorial cutoff, for what it’s worth) you’ll find Austin Smotherman and Kris Ventura listed at +5500. In your standard PGA Tour field, they’d likely be going off at +8000. Nonetheless, these are two names to look at if you like longshots. Smotherman is seventh on Tour in strokes gained: approach this year and 14th in driving accuracy, while Ventura is riding in off a second-place finish at the Zurich team event two weeks ago.
The play for winner though off the above short list is Marco Penge who has flirted this year with form that looks capable of matching the Tour’s elite. It just hasn’t lasted 72 holes. At +2250, we’ll roll the dice to see if this is the weekend it does, with a lot of the big boys playing Quail Hollow or resting up for Aronimink.
Rory McIlroy is the favorite for the sixth signature event of the season. The reigning, two-time Masters winner has to watch out for Cameron Young, Matt Fitzpatrick and plenty others this week.
Myrtle Beach Classic first-round leader
Giving out two names here for the sake of generosity, one is listed above and the other is a proverbial longshot.
We’ll start with Stephan Jaegar at +4400 who has a pair of top-10 finishes this season and showed fine form in two Texas tournaments last month. He has no course history so logic is he’ll be overlooked even though he’s a top 35 player in putting, driving distance and scrambling this season.
Deeper down we’ll take a slice at Erik van Rooyen at +7600 who has made the cuts in three consecutive events after opening 0-for-8 to start the year. Additionally, he finished T-4 here two years ago.
Best bets for Myrtle Beach
Mac Meissner to finish T-20 including ties at +126 is the play of the week for Myrtle. Don’t hate Aaron Rai at the exact same number in the exact same field, though, either.
Messner missed the cut here last year but finished T-13 in 2024 and is also carrying a streak of three straight made cuts.
No course history here for Rai but he is fifth in driving accuracy and 16th in greens in regulation.
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