Pat Mayo and BetSports Golf modeller Ryan Nunan dropped their full PGA Championship preview ahead of next week's major at Aronimink, and the headline finding was that the Pennsylvania Donald Ross, restored by Gil Hanse in 2015 and 2016, produces an unusually compact tier of contenders, with one notable promotion to the top group.
The BetSports Golf model has Scottie Scheffler at 97 points, with Cam Young and the world No. 1 separated by 0.02 of a point. Rory McIlroy and Matt Fitzpatrick complete what Mayo described as the "clear top four" before a noticeable gap.
"The tiers would kind of be Scotty, Cam, Rory, then Fitz on an island of himself in tier two," Mayo said. "Then you go down to Xander, Ludvig, Rickie Fowler, and then Russell Henley as that next tier."
What sets Aronimink apart, the pair argued, is that the par-70 layout of roughly 7,400 yards rewards long, accurate iron play more than raw distance, a description that mirrors what Aronimink head professional Jeff Kiddie said earlier this week about previous winners Justin Rose, Nick Watney and Keegan Bradley. The bunkers are not the Oakmont-style penal pits Mayo expected; the rough around them, however, will create awkward stances.
"It does have a little bit of, it's not Augusta off the tee, because it's not wide and there's penal rough," Nunan said. "Where guys are standing in bunkers hitting like a baseball-type shot with the ball above them, that is one of the elements here."
The class above the next gap reads as a logjam: Tyrrell Hatton, Adam Scott, Sungjae Im, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm, Maverick McNealy, Sam Burns, Jake Knapp described as "unlikely to play", Nicolai Hojgaard, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth, Joaquin Niemann, Davis Bridgemond and Alex Smalley. The recent-form metric, weighted at 15 percent of the model, is led by Hatton, Scheffler and McIlroy.
Mayo's longer pre-season research bore fruit on the futures board. He has three live bets on the championship that he placed before the season started, prices that have shrunk dramatically.
"I have Robert MacIntyre at 110-to-1, Matt Fitzpatrick at 80-to-1 and Justin Rose at 75-to-1," Mayo said. "Do I just bet on Scotty then? Maybe. When would Bobby Mac have been 110? That's such a good pickoff."
Fitzpatrick's level-up from major-champion-in-search-of-his-game to a tier-two-only-just-below-the-top-three player traces back to caddie continuity, Mayo argued. The Yorkshireman also won the DP World Tour Championship in November and has carried that momentum into 2026.
"For him to level up at this point in his career has been really cool to see," Mayo said. "There's just no weaknesses in the game."
Cam Young, who Mayo and Nunan picked in cluster after cluster as a value play earlier in the season, has now collected two PGA Tour wins from the model's correlated buys, including the wire-to-wire Cadillac Championship at Doral last week. His promotion to tier one is recent, but with Aronimink head pro Jeff Kiddie also identifying Young as his pick, citing his iron play and short-game stability with caddie Kyle Struby, the case for the 28-year-old is suddenly mainstream.
The top of the board winning has become the rule rather than the exception at recent PGA Championships, with Phil Mickelson's 2021 Kiawah victory the obvious outlier. Looking back, Mayo argued, even Mickelson had "sneaky good form" on the Champions Tour heading in. The implication for next week, with Scheffler healthy, McIlroy still riding the Augusta high and Fitzpatrick locking onto fairways at Quail Hollow, is that the trophy on Sunday is unlikely to come from a fly-by, and very likely to come from one of the four names already separated from the rest.
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*Originally published on [Golf News](https://golfnews.global/article/pga-championship-power-rankings-cam-young-tier-one-pat-mayo). Visit for full coverage.*
