Truist Championship 2025: Expert PGA Predictions & Betting Preview

PGA Truist Championship 2025 Betting Preview

WagerTalk golf handicapper Nick Borrman offers his thoughts on the Truist Championship teeing off from The Philadelphia Cricket Club in Philadelphia, PA! Nick discusses the guys at the top of the odds board, a long shot to win and other expert picks surrounding the Truist Championship starting on May 8th!

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Truist Championship	Truist Championship
When:	May 8-11
Where:	The Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahickon Course) – Philadelphia, PA
Defending Champ:	Rory McIlroy
Current Favorite:	Scottie Scheffler (+280 at DraftKings)
TV:	CBS, Golf Channel

Truist Championship Odds Board

Top-10 Total Strokes Gained over the last six months (betting odds via FanDuel , DraftKings and others)

Truist Championship Betting Preview

This week is sort of like a major (aside from The Masters) in the essence that the course being played isn’t a regular stop, so course history is limited.

In fact, this track has never hosted a PGA Tour event before, so this is the first time around for most in the field.

Also worth noting is if anyone in the field has played Cricket before, this event will play differently as the course has been completely re-routed from the 1-18 sequencing the members play.

The PGA Tour Champions held an event here in 2016 and the winning score was over par at +1. Very similar to the 2013 US Open at Merion Golf Club, also in suburban Philadelphia where Justin Rose prevailed with a winning score of +1.

Also like that event, par was set at 70 for the 18 holes while Philly Cricket is listed to tip at just over 7,100 yards this week.

A.W. Tillinghast designed Philly Cricket more than 100 years ago and while you may not be familiar with his work, what matters is that he was one of the “Philadelphia School” of architecture consisting of himself, George Crump (Pine Valley Golf Club), and most famously, William Flynn, whose list of Clubs is much too long to credit, but includes places like Shinnecock Hills and The Country Club in Brookline, MA where Matt Fitzpatrick won the US Open a few years ago.

That entire group plastered together over 300 courses, 27 of which are in the Top-100 in the world. How that ties to Philly Cricket, is through Hugh Irvine Wilson, the architect at Merion, also a member of that Philadelphia School or architecture.

Those designers all shared similar characteristics in their courses and Merion is a great track to compare Cricket to.

Both courses are built in an area where ‘lengthening’ is not an option. The areas are fully developed all around them.

Yet despite not having the 7,500+ yardage that seems to be needed to keep Tour pros at bay, Merion played extremely difficult with tight fairways, brutal rough and most importantly, small, push-up greens that have run-offs in every direction.

Cricket is very similar with many of those run-off areas leading to bunkers which are littered all over the property, 118 in total.

The rough isn’t expected to be US Open length this week, but long enough to give players fits as they try to not only hit greens but hit certain spots on them. Aside from the push-up style, the greens feature plenty of undulation and tiers as well, making the actual landing targets much smaller.

So, despite the strength of field this week, don’t expect 31-under par like we saw last week, in fact, I would be surprised to see a winner past 15-under.

Like most Signature Events, the field is set at 72 and features no cut. Players not competing in Philadelphia this week while be teeing it up in Myrtle Beach giving us golf junkies twice as much excitement this weekend.

What does it all mean for making your wagers this week? Putting advantages or disadvantages are likely going to be leveled as everyone is unfamiliar with these surfaces.

While iron play will be paramount in hitting the proper spots on these greens. Drivers may not be pulled as often which should help keep the plodders in the mix, so while distance is always an advantage, it likely isn’t as important as playing Augusta National, for example.

Truist Championship Predictions

Russell Henley +3500 | Top-10 +280 | Top-20 +110

When you hear that ‘plodders’ can contend, if Russell Henley isn’t the first person that comes to mind, well you are crazy.

Henley is one of those boring golfers that continuously cashes checks by making cuts and quietly finishing Top-10 or Top-20. Oh, and he did win recently at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Aside from that win, Henley has missed the cut just twice in his last 34 events, and while this week has no cut, it proves his consistency.

One of those cuts came just two starts ago at the lengthy Augusta National. But as I mentioned, this week will play nothing like that.

Despite ranking 108^th in SG Off the Tee this season, Henley ranks 5^th in Total SG which can only happen if he is extremely strong everywhere else, which has been the case this year.

Russ ranks 15^th SG Approach and 17^th SG Around the Green for when he does miss, that’s a lethal combo. Oh, and he ranks 14^th SG Putting for both his birdie looks and par saves. It literally is distance as his only weakness and I’m fully confident that can be masked this week.

Sepp Straka +4500 | Top-10 +360 | Top-20 +140

I’ll go with another plodder as my longshot this week in Sepp Straka who we have previewed several times this season as he also continuously cashes Top-10s and Top-20s.

He too missed the cut at Augusta National, again length being the issue, and missed one other this season at The Genesis Invitational which was played at the extremely long Torrey Pines South Course.

Aside from those two starts, Straka has finished inside the Top-30 in his other 11 starts including nine Top-15 finishes, one of those a win at The American Express.
Straka has an even stronger iron game than Henley as he ranks 2^nd this season in SG Approach hitting over 72% of Greens in Regulation, which also ranks 2^nd.

His short game and putting aren’t quite as strong, but his driver is just a little longer than Henley. All that adds up to ranking 8^th in Total SG with a lethal 50-100 yard wedge game.

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