Scottie Scheffler is the consensus betting favorite to win this week’s PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but the largest reported wager on the tournament is on a 60-1 long shot named Tiger Woods.
Scheffler, fresh off his win at the Masters, is the favorite this week at 11-1 at Caesars Sportsbook. Jon Rahm is next at 12-1, followed by Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, who are each 14-1. The bulk of the money wagered, though, is on Woods, thanks to a massive wager on the 15-time major champion.
Caesars Sportsbook on Tuesday reported taking a $20,000 bet on Woods to win the tournament at 60-1 odds. The bet was made in cash, over the counter at Caesars Sportsbook at the Cosmopolitan hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip. If Woods wins, the bet would pay a net $1.2 million, one of the largest payouts on a golf wager ever.
A $20,000 golf bet is an outlier, especially on a 60-1 long shot. The next-largest bet Caesars had taken on the tournament as of Thursday morning was $5,000 on Rahm.
“Just amazing how much of a draw Tiger is,” Craig Mucklow, director of trading for Caesars Sportsbook, told ESPN. “We always have a liability on him regardless of his price. He is the prime-time draw of all time for the bettors and likewise for the [betting] industry. We want him in the field, just not the liability.”
BetMGM was in a similar position, with Woods posing the sportsbook’s largest liability to win the tournament.
“If Tiger were to win, it would be the biggest losing result in BetMGM history,” Jason Scott, vice president of trading for BetMGM, said in a company release.
Woods, 46, is long shot for a reason, though. He’s playing in just his second competitive tournament since suffering severe injuries in a car accident on Feb. 23, 2021. He made the cut at the Masters but shot consecutive 6-over 78s on the weekend and finished 47th.
Woods won the PGA Championship at Southern Hill in 2007. He is a -125 favorite to make the cut this week at Caesars Sportsbook.