The PGA Tour is preparing for another signature event this weekend when the PGA Tour’s top players will descend on the TPC Sawgrass for the Players Championship golf tournament. With the Tour continuing their Florida swing, it is time to talk about who might be victorious this weekend and claim victory.

With a full field event like this you will have the biggest names on the PGA Tour, and the World’s No. 1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, looking for his first victory of 2025. To be fair to Scheffler, he hasn’t had a full start to the season compared to other golfers. A cooking accident which had him undergo surgery on his hand sidelined him during the tour’s Hawaii stretch, and even the start of the west coast swing in California. To date Scheffler is still searching for his first win of the season.

Will he claim victory at Sawgrass and win the Players for the third straight year?

When it comes to making predictions/picks for golf, there is a method to my madness. The first step in the process is to take a look at the course, and past winners. Let’s see what the Players Championship has in store for fans this weekend:

The Players Championship

TPC Sawgrass (Stadium Course), Par 72, 7,352 yards

Past Winners

2024: Scottie Scheffler

2023: Scottie Scheffler

2022: Cam Smith

2021: Justin Thomas

From this point, we have to take a look at who the odds-on favorites are to win the tournament. Here are the Top 5 favorites to win, and these odds are courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook:

Top 5 Odds

• Scottie Scheffler (+400)
• Rory McIlroy (+1000)
• Colin Morikawa (+1400)
• Ludvig Aberg (+1600)
• Justin Thomas (+2200)

My Picks

Every time I produce picks, I break them down in the a variety of picks. You don’t have to make these plays, but this is where I’m leaning in this week’s contest. My favorite picks are players who are less than +2000 odds, with the long shot picks greater than +2000 odds. For this week’s event, here are my Favorite and Long Shot picks:

Favorite: Colin Morikawa (+1400)

Long Shot: Jason Day (+6000)

The next phase of my picks are players who are slated to finish within a certain area on the leaderboard. The Top 5, 10, 20 picks also include ties, so if a player finished T-20 and you had them as a Top 20 pick, you win. Here are my plays, and the odds, for this week’s signature event:

Top 5

Rory McIlroy (+230)

Justin Thomas (+400)

Top 10

Shane Lowry (+320)

Jason Day (+450)

Top 20

Sander Schauffele (+105)

Jordan Spieth (+210)

BONUS PICKS

Betting on golf is multi-faceted, and you can increase your odds on winning out outright winner bet with the Double and Triple bets. If one of the two players in the double wins, or one of the three in the triple, win, you win the bet. There are other specials plays, but we’ll save those for the big tournaments on the schedule. Here are my bonus plays for this week:

Double: Scottie Scheffler or Colin Morikawa (+300)

Triple: Scottie Scheffler or Collin Morikawa or Justin Thomas (+225)

Jeff Hartman is the host of the Fairways & Dreams podcast, and a complete breakdown of the above picks can be heard in the podcast player below: