Sure, our FRACAS projection model has favorites at the 2026 PGA Championship. But for the year’s second men’s golf major, the win probabilities are slightly more open than usual.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different result.
But at this point, Rickie Fowler’s career arc has unfolded in such a way that picking him to win this week’s PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club in suburban Philadelphia may not be insane at all.
For the first time since Opta Analyst began running its FRACAS (Field Rating and Course-Adjusted Strokes Gained) model for the 2023 major season, Fowler is among the favorites this week. The model, course-specific and designed to evaluate and rank golfers by simulating tournament outcomes, gives Fowler a 4.2% win probability, which is fourth behind only 2025 PGA Championship winner and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler at 16.3%, Cameron Young at 10.8% and Jon Rahm at 7.2%.
Fowler has never won a major, and it’s been long assumed he’d have to settle for a win at the Players Championship in 2015 as the pinnacle of his career.
But could you make a case that this could be Fowler’s week without it being purely a fandom call, based on a nostalgic feeling about his commercials and all-orange outfits in the late 2000s and early 2010s?
Yes, you can.
And that is a fun place to be for a few days at the year’s second major. Following is how Fowler fits into the 108th PGA Championship predictions, with all of the FRACAS probabilities in our PGA Championship Predictions and player breakdown in our Golf Advanced Stats Zone.
Why So Little Belief in Rory?
The top of the win probability board will not surprise anybody, with Scheffler, Young and Rahm leading the way. If there’s a surprise here, it’s that Rory McIlroy – fresh off winning his second consecutive Masters – is languishing with the eighth-highest win probability at 2.68%.
For one thing, winning back-to-back majors is exceedingly difficult. Nobody has done it since Brooks Koepka in his heyday in 2018. For another, FRACAS does not believe Aronimink particularly favors McIlroy’s game, as the model projects the Northern Irishman will lose more than a tenth of a stroke per round to the field relative to his usual baseline because of the particular challenges the course presents.
Aronimink sets up in such a way that it flattens the difference between golfers. One of the skills it particularly rewards is proficiency on shorter par 3s, which tend to be low-variability holes and lend themselves to bunches of pars and birdies across the field.
Aronimink doesn’t have a par-3 hole expected to play longer than 229 yards during this tournament. That sort of layout cuts against McIlroy, an incredible ball striker whose wedges and shorter irons are far from his greatest strength. (Granted, when McIlroy wanted to take control of the Masters by birdieing the tiny 12th hole at Amen Corner, he did manage it.)
Still, FRACAS likes the chances that this PGA Championship will go somewhat like last year’s, when McIlroy (who’s won the event twice, including by eight strokes in 2012) walked onto a Quail Hollow course that he has torn up over the years and just didn’t quite put it together after the enormous undertaking that was winning his first green jacket.
Otherwise, It’s a Typical Top of the Field
Just like McIlroy, Scheffler, Young and Rahm know how to close out a tournament and, of course, could take this one without requiring much of an explanation from anyone, even if Rahm’s major performance has trended in a terrible direction in his years on the LIV Golf circuit.
Scheffler hasn’t been himself this year, but he’s still the obvious best player alive, and he’s getting closer to being his usual self. He finished second in his last three starts going back to the Masters, losing two of those trophies by a combined two shots off the winner, one of them in a playoff. Scheffler’s game has been no weaker than when he won 15 times over the past years, and it feels like there’s a great chance he wins one of the three majors left on the docket this season.
Young is the world’s ascendant star right now and just cleared Scheffler by six shots to win the Cadillac Championship. He’s claimed status as the second- or third-best player in the world and the indisputable “best player to have never won a major” mantle. Maybe it’s not a matter of time (ask Patrick Cantlay, or the guy we’ll talk about if you keep scrolling), but Young is right there.
Rahm sounds downright depressed about the state of his career, regularly giving press conference appearances in which he sounds regretful about his move to LIV. His major record has declined a bit since he moved to the Saudi tour at the end of 2023. But Rahm was right there with Scheffler on Sunday at last year’s PGA Championship, has remained in relatively good form on LIV, and probably isn’t done winning majors in his life either. At 31, the only reasons to write him off are rooted in narrative, not performance.
Fowler’s Best Chance in a Long Time
It’s been the better part of a decade since Fowler was consistently holding down a spot in or near the top 10 of the Official World Golf Ranking. It’s been three years since he put together a nice run at a major championship and led on the weekend at the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. Since then, he hasn’t done better than a tie for 14th in a major, and he didn’t qualify for the Masters this year.
But majors tend to be about form, and since March, Fowler has put together four top-10 finishes in his seven events, including each of his last three. A couple of those impressive weekends came against stiff fields at elevated PGA Tour events, the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March and the RBC Heritage in April.
Fowler has been one of the better players on the PGA Tour off the tee, on approach and putting. He’s benefited from hitting a bunch of fairways despite not being a particularly long hitter as he eases into his late 30s. (Fowler is now almost exactly tour-average in driving distance after generally maintaining a status as a long hitter in the early and middle parts of his career.)
In every major Fowler has played since 2023, his combined pre-tournament win probabilities, according to FRACAS, have added up to 5.05%. In other words, just a hair above how the model sees his chances this weekend.
Dark Horses in the PGA Championship Predictions?
It’s a reasonable question ahead of every major, and with only a low-single-digit number of exceptions over the last decade, the answer comes back to, “No, nobody who is not squarely on the pre-tournament radar is really going to win this thing.”
But the 2026 PGA Championship is a bit more interesting in this regard than its typical major peer these days, at least according to FRACAS. The model believes the 25 players with the best shot to win combine for nearly 76.46% of the tournament’s win probability. That’s a good bit lower than the 82.20% that the top-25 cohort had at Augusta this year as FRACAS saw it, and a better chance for the rest of the field than is typical. Normally, that top-25 win probability share falls somewhere in the 80s.
The slightly more-open posture this year is because of the flattening effect Aronimink has tended to have in championship competition over the years. Of course, it won’t play exactly the same as it did when it hosted the BMW Championship in 2018, its last PGA Tour event. But for a crude way of looking at that FedExCup Playoffs event: 14 players finished within five shots of the winner, Keegan Bradley, who beat Justin Rose at 20-under in a playoff.
FRACAS sees the course being good to Si Woo Kim, who has a 26.8% chance at a top-20 finish, and Akshay Bhatia (22.5%). The model sees both players getting roughly a 0.2-strokes gained bump per round compared to their typical caliber of play because of how their games should slot into this course – in particular, how they have fared on the PGA Tour’s shorter and more difficult par-4 holes.
There are almost no short but truly difficult par 4s on the PGA Tour these days. They can only make so many versions of the 10th hole at Riviera. Aronimink has quite a collection of par 4s that don’t require a Scheffler-, Young-, or McIlroy-like variety of preternatural ball-striking. It’s not quite anyone’s game, but it’s a little bit more egalitarian this week than the typical major championship test in 2026.
If there’s going to be a major winner who makes a casual fan ask “Who?” we’re likely to meet him this week.
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2026 PGA Championship Predictions: All the FRACAS Odds, Value Plays & Picks Opta Analyst.
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