Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Australian PGA Championship preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Australian PGA Championship

5pts win Min Woo Lee at 10/1 (General, 13.0 Betfair Exchange)

3pts win Marc Leishman at 16/1 (General, 20.0 Betfair Exchange)

1.5pts e.w. Alex Fitzpatrick at 40/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. David Micheluzzi at 66/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Yuto Katsuragawa at 75/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

Sky Bet odds | Paddy Power | Betfair Sportsbook | Free bets

Do you ever wonder, as I do, what the world of golf might look like if its hierarchy so happened to be defined by performances on golf courses of a different style to those we typically find on the PGA Tour and in two or three majors every single year?

If Australia, rather than the United States, was the modern home of the sport, and the skills required to succeed were more akin to those first established at the original home of the sport in Scotland, would everything be altogether different?

At the end of a long year in every sense, you'll have to excuse me for saying these thoughts out loud and offering nothing in the way of an answer. Maybe Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy really would still be the best, maybe they wouldn't. I really don't know.

What we do know is they'd have had to find different ways to achieve greatness and if by now you're wondering what all this is about, the point as relates to this week's golf is that the Australian PGA Championship asks questions we've not seen asked for most of the golfing year, or at least the same question – how do you get this ball into that hole – in different ways.

Royal Queensland is really nothing like Jumeirah Golf Estates or Yas Links or anything else we saw at the end of last season on the DP World Tour so as we begin this new one, less than a fortnight later, that sense of a fresh start runs through everything despite the swift turnaround.

Elvis Smylie earned his membership here last year, producing a dazzling display of putting, particularly under the gun in the final round as his long-game abandoned him. In winning, the young lefty succeeded Min Woo Lee, who had succeeded Cam Smith. Were you to create a World Cup of Chipping and enter this trio for Australia, I'd happily make them favourites without so much as considering the opposition.

They're not the only wedge maestros to have contended here at Royal Queensland, either. Ryo Hisatsune and Rikuyu Hoshino, Dave Micheluzzi and Jason Scrivener, and one or two more underline that this is a rare thing indeed: a tournament where you really do have to think about the chipping and pitching and bunker play as a matter of priority.

It should also be said, though, that this isn't quite Royal Melbourne; that Royal Queensland is less a test of strategy, offering many more opportunities to attack what are wide fairways off the tee. It held its own despite being softened by heavy rain which forced last year's renewal to be cut to 54 holes, but with another round the winning score would've got much closer to Lee's 20-under.

MIN WOO LEE's own attempt to match his exploits of 2023 was undermined by the loss of 18 holes and an unusually cool putter, but this really does look like a test that's made for him and redemption awaits.

• CLICK HERE to back Lee with Sky Bet

In many ways it's been an excellent year for the 27-year-old as he became a PGA Tour winner in the spring, but thereafter he struggled to compete at the highest level and couldn't make it beyond event one of the FedExCup Playoffs.

Thereafter, he got to work on his swing and in the gym and it was a bulkier version of Lee, one of those golfers people understandably describe as 'pound-for-pound one of the longest hitters', who reemerged to go 11-5-MC-10 from the BMW PGA in England to the Baycurrent Classic in Japan.

These results set him up brilliantly for a strong end to a breakout season and it's been particularly pleasing to see both his putting return to its devastating best, and some signs of improved approach work – he's spoken about just how and why that part of his game needed to get better and, at times in France and Japan, it did.

Imperious off the tee, he's been the single best driver in each of the last two renewals of the Australian PGA and nobody has been better around the greens, either, making Royal Queensland a simply perfect golf course for him. In four starts his form figures read 4-4-1-15 and I'd imagine he'd have stormed into the top 10 again granted another round of his defence.

The big question then is simply whether he's value at the prices and it's complicated, because in that aforementioned BMW PGA he was longer odds than Joaquin Niemann, Marco Penge, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Adam Scott. However, whereas his game has gone in one direction since, Niemann has been very poor, Scott has been modest, and Lee's home comforts give him an edge over the other two.

Around here, with his form much improved and a world ranking to protect, he should produce a big fortnight. And, while I wouldn't by any means temper enthusiasm for him capturing the Australian Open next week, we know full well he's deadly around Royal Queensland when on-song.

Home advantage is as potent in Australia as it is just about anywhere, a view underlined by last year's leaderboard which featured six home players in the top seven. A year earlier, seven of the 12 players who finished T7 or better were Australian, including three of the first four, and it was seven of 11 and four of the top six in 2022. Time and again they dominate despite the Australian circuit, which provides such a big chunk of the field, being a grade or two below the DP World Tour.

Indeed it takes a rare exception such as Smylie to overcome the class divide so my advice with the locals, the best of whom will have been contending regularly in smaller events, is to tread very carefully. I don't see another Smylie among them, nor another Cam Davis, the surprise winner of the 2017 Australian Open who has subsequently proved himself to be a borderline top-class golfer at his best.

But in DAVID MICHELUZZI we have someone who has proven capable of contending on the DP World Tour both at home and in Europe, so despite some form concerns I can't let him go unbacked at 50/1 and upwards.

• CLICK HERE to back Micheluzzi with Sky Bet

Micheluzzi has been much shorter for these strong Australian events in the past and the reason he isn't this time is that he's played poorly since finishing 10th in Scotland in August, missing more cuts than he's made and generally struggling to compete.

However, he took a great deal of pride in making the cut in Korea to keep his card and said there that his game had been feeling good, since which time he's been preparing for these final two events, surely buoyed by a sense of relief and satisfaction.

No, he's not playing as well as he was when fifth here last year but that took his course form figures to 9-6-18-5 and he's going to love being back somewhere familiar, playing the game the way he learned to play it. I'd expect to see his magic short-game back on display and that alone is enough to carry him into the mix, particularly with these wide fairways giving him some leeway off the tee.

I don't think it's a coincidence that 10th place in Scotland came under conditions which placed an emphasis on that short-game, on the art of scoring, and that too was out of the blue. This is a player who went from shooting 81-76 in the Netherlands to finishing 10th and second the following two weeks last year and there's definitely been more to work with in recent starts in Korea and Spain.

Again we're paying a bit of an Aussie premium but that's the deal. He wouldn't appeal much were we in the Middle East again or say in South Africa, where the DP World Tour heads next week. But we're at Royal Queensland, and around here he's at an immediate advantage.

So is Anthony Quayle and while he is one of those locals I'm largely keen to avoid, this is a player set to embark upon his rookie DP World Tour season, one with plenty of pedigree if you go back far enough. Quayle definitely suffered more than most for the timing of Covid, just as his career was taking off, but things are looking up now.

Having been third in this last year when completely out of sorts, it's undeniable that this is the best he's ever prepared for an Australian PGA and with sixth place here back in January 2022 as well, plus having been fifth at halfway in the renewal won by Smith that November, he has stacks of positive form at a course he knows as well as just about anyone having moved to Brisbane as a teenager.

Quayle contended for this title to a point on his first couple of attempts, too, both of those at Royal Pines, and while he's had limited chances in the Australian Open, the first of them saw him hang around near the lead until a poor final round resulted in 19th place.

At a best of 150/1 he was clearly of some interest, but hand on heart his general price is on the short side. The prospect of him winning remains extremely small and with most firms paying only five or six places, muscling in among the big names might just prove beyond him.

Quinton Croker is a young local who is a member at RQ and he's the sort you could imagine starting well, perhaps along with in-form Nathan Barbieri, but the only other relatively unheralded local I considered was Haydn Barron. He has DP World Tour experience from last year, has been 12th here and fourth in the Australian Open, and extended an excellent run of form with a closing 66 for fourth place last week.

Croker and Quayle both have early tee-times so perhaps they'll interest first-round leader punters, but remember in Australia they tend to send a marquee three-ball out first and that's the case again. Instead of one of these two outsiders setting the pace, hopefully it'll be Lee repeating what he did in 2022 from a showstopper group alongside Penge and Cameron Smith.

Course Fitz short-game specialist

I should note that Barron is 325/1 with the Flutter firms at the time of writing which will definitely attract interest, but let's see if we can dig out the pick of the overseas challengers with much stronger win prospects. Among them, Wenyi Ding and ALEX FITZPATRICK made most appeal and it's the latter I want to be on.

• CLICK HERE to back Fitzpatrick with Sky Bet

Ding is a player going places and after just missing out on the final two events of the DP World Tour season, he went back home to Macau and Hong Kong for a pair of top-sixes. The question is can he translate that to Australia and while he was fifth in the Open at Kingston Heath last year, I feel the price is a bit skinny. His chance looked equal if not better to my eye in Hong Kong last time, where we could take a bit of 66s.

I prefer to side with Fitzpatrick at bigger odds and he does have course form, having been 18th on his debut as a DP World Tour member two years ago, which he followed with his first top 10 with a card in hand in the following week's Australian Open.

Those are both very encouraging with this week in mind and so is his skill set. Alex's brother, Matt, says his work around the greens is top-class and those comments were rightly doing the rounds again after some dazzling bunker play helped Alex qualify for the Open at Hoylake the summer before last.

He played well there, again impressing with his confidence and creativity, and has now ranked 24th and seventh in strokes-gained around the green for his two seasons on the DP World Tour. Quite clearly, Matt knew what he was talking about.

Those skills could set him up for a successful fortnight and it comes soon after his best golf of the season, finishing ninth behind Penge in the Open de Espana, third behind Tommy Fleetwood in the India Championship, and then playing well in Korea before a closing 65 in Abu Dhabi.

Only a downturn in putting held him back in those final two starts but he's pounding fairways, hitting more greens than ever, and generally seems to be playing to a standard which marks him down as one of the most likely breakthrough youngsters on the DP World Tour for the season ahead.

And while some might prefer the big golf courses of the Middle East, the parkland ones of South Africa, the cooler conditions of Scandinavia or something else altogether, Fitzpatrick's game was made for playing in Australia. Hopefully he can show it now back from a year away.

Returning to the favourites, Scott is a fascinating one for the following fortnight. Remarkably, he is looking to complete an entire quarter of a century ending each year in the world's top 50 but at 64th now, at least one massive performance will be needed to achieve that goal. He can do it in one go if he wins this and has excellent form at both courses, but his putting woes have returned lately and he's not won in a very long time.

I'd love to see Scott do it but he's one where the place part keeps the price down. By that I mean he's as likely as almost anyone to play well, but rather than there being two or three more likely champions, I'd say there might be six or seven.

It's hard to know whether Cam Smith should be counted among them as he's missed the cut in all six events that featured one this year, including in Saudi Arabia last week. That course wasn't for him really whereas this one is, yet it's far harder to excuse a miserable Dunhill Links, rounds of 72-78 in the Open, or the other rounds of 78 that scuppered him at both Quail Hollow and Augusta.

Perhaps having his family with him, including his young son, for the first time on one of these trips back to his hometown will spark something, but in the here and now I have to conclude that all his LIV Golf peers are better placed to win and that includes Mexico duo Carlos Ortiz and Abraham Ancer. Both returned from a couple of months off last week and should improve for the run.

Of the pair, Ortiz's blend of power and around-the-green skill make him a better fit, but Ancer's form looks a little better and so is his record here in Australia. But I do think Royal Melbourne will be more to his liking so while the price is probably generous, ultimately the space here at Royal Queensland, combined with his sometimes iffy chipping, could be his undoing.

But whereas these are players with questions to answer of some kind, I'm not sure MARC LEISHMAN has any.

• CLICK HERE to back Leishman with Sky Bet

This time last year I had two: he hadn't won in some time, and he simply hadn't played enough golf. Leishman rocked up here after a couple of months off and still to his credit managed to finish third, but that lack of competitive sharpness can't have helped his cause.

Twelve months on and both issues have been addressed. Regarding sharpness, he's prepared properly for a massive fortnight, first by finishing third back home in Australia, then sixth in the Philippines, and 11th last week in Saudi Arabia. And while it was back in the spring, he's also picked up his first LIV title, his first of any kind since 2021, when winning at Doral.

Two years ago Leishman was third in this after six weeks off, staying on strongly when the bird had flown, and it was again his best work at the death in 2022 when, once more, six weeks away probably hurt him. Royal Queensland form figures of 12-3-3 are excellent, but they might've been so much better had he not turned up in Brisbane with a bit of rust to shed.

Having done that this time, Leishman looks a massive danger and he's been a regular winner down the years, enough to believe he can take his chance should it arrive. The one thing he hasn't done that remains realistic is win a major Australian event and with Rory McIlroy set to join the party next week, he may never again have a better chance than this.

Japanese Kat could spring surprise

Returning to the European challengers at bigger odds, Bernd Wiesberger's long-game has definitely clicked since he turned 40 in October, a milestone he followed with back-to-back top-20 finishes. He's always been sharp around the green and if he putts better on this first start playing under a career money exemption, he'll outperform odds of ranking from 80/1 to as big as 200s in places.

That's an almighty 'if' though so my final selection is YUTO KATSURAGAWA.

• CLICK HERE to back Katsuragawa with Sky Bet

Ryo Hisatsune was second in 2022, Rikuya Hoshino was second in 2023, and Katsuragawa could be the third Japanese player to find these conditions to his liking. Like those two he's sharp around the green, ranking 12th last season and comfortably above-average this, and together with this he's an excellent bunker player.

He's also in form, finishing fourth, ahead of Scott, in the Japan Open before adding another top-five in Korea, and while like Ding he now has to bring this with him overseas, he's played Down Under once and finished eighth alongside Hisatsune in the Australian Open, where Hoshino was second.

Notably, Katsuragawa had been badly out of sorts for most of that season and came in off regressive results of 27-37-45-51 in Japan, but in the intervening two years he's gradually improved until that fourth place on home soil saw him improve to finish inside the top 100 on the Race to Dubai. It was a big effort that got lost among other storylines (he was exempt through 2026 anyway) and sets him up for another step forward.

Inspired surely by seeing practice partner Keita Nakajima go on to earn his PGA Tour card, Katsuragawa could surprise a few at a nice price given the skills he's showed since last playing in this part of the world. He's a DP World Tour winner in his native Japan but conditions here will be no less suitable and the bang in-form 27-year-old is a potential threat to the favourites.

As with Micheluzzi and Fitzpatrick, bigger prices are available to five places, but given the strength of those favourites it probably makes sense to shop around for as many places as you can find.

Returning to them, this is a good renewal of the Australian PGA, with two of the best young players in Europe and the very best from South and Central America joining a strong home challenge. It's likely that the winner is found among them and this is one rare instance where I would advocate for a few small dual forecast bets involving Lee and Leishman, perhaps with the rock-solid Scott as well, at prices close to 100/1.

Unfortunately, several major firms appear to be treating this like a second-class golf tournament rather than the focus of the week, with limited or even no additional markets despite the start being less than 48 hours away. As far as I can see, only bet365 have those dual forecast options and in the circumstances I can't in good faith add them to the staking plan.

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Posted at 09:00 GMT on 25/11/25

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