Don’t sleep on Myrtle Beach.
The third-year Tour event playing across from the Truist this week offers the winner 300 FedExCup points and a two-year exemption, along with the last possible invite to the PGA Championship in Aronimink in less than 10 days time.
Brooks Koepka, the tournament favorite, can’t earn the points or the exemption but he can use the win to lift himself back to signature event playing fields. While Myrtle is plenty nice place to vacation, it is the alternate event going head-to-head with the Truist at Quail Hollow this week.
The latter has a $20-million purse at stake. Brooks 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 field, they’d likely going off at +8000. Nonetheless, these are two names to look at if you like longshots. Smotherman is seventh on Tour in shots gained approach this year and 14th in driving accuracy, while Ventura is riding in off a second place finish at the Zurich 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 to close to 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.
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 was cut here last year but finished T-13 in 2024 and is also carrying in a streak of three straight made cuts and a pair of bogey-free rounds in New Orleans two weeks ago.
No course history here for Rai but he is fifth in driving accuracy and 16th in greens in regulation.
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