From a historic perspective, Aaron Rai’s win at Aronimink has a little bit of everything: First Englishman to hoist the Wanamaker since 1919, first time in a decade a non-American won the PGA Championship, and first time since the Masters started in 1934 that the year’s first two major winners are European players.
From a gambling perspective, there’s a little bit of history, too. Or a lot of it, depending on how you see numbers.
Rai went off before Thursday’s opening round as a 150-to-1 longshot to win the tournament. While his odds took different shape over the next four days as the 72-hole challenge saw an unprecedented amount congestion atop the major leaderboard.
So where does Rai rank from an oddsmakers perspective? Is he the biggest underdog to ever lift the Wanamaker? Or how about any major championship title for that matter?
Let’s take a look to see how he compares to seven other winners from this century who went on to win despite being given triple digit odds to do so by the bookies.
