The third major of the 2025 season has arrived with the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club: host of the U.S. Open in 2016, and an elusive beast of a course. Oakmont does not get regular Tour stops, but we’re in for an exciting week of carnage and frustrated professional golfers. Let’s dive into the numbers for this week’s tournament with Bet The Number, the premier golf analytics platform.

The Course Blueprint 🗺️ 

Oakmont is a brute, playing as a par 70 at 7,372 yards with only two par 5s. The Pittsburgh area has received a ton of rain over the last week, and the forecast is changing in real time for the week ahead. The course is long and a bit soft right now, but if weekend rain holds off we can expect some of the fastest surfaces in the game this weekend.

There are 3 main factors to call out heading into this event: Rain, Rough & Greens.

• Rain: It’s important to note that in 2016 here it was softer, yielding a -4 winner; however, 5 over won in 2007 with no rain. We could see some lower scores Thursday if the course doesn’t dry up a ton over these next 2 days. We could even see someone posting a 64 in the first round (Do NOT expect this every round or a low Thursday score to stay intact).

• Rough: This might come as a shocker, but the rough is HEALTHY. They cut the rough on Monday morning and still our feedback on the grounds is that it’s very long and thick. It has not been overplayed on social media, it really is gnarly. Guys that are missing fairways will often have no choice but to pitch out and rely on their wedges to save pars.

• Greens: Oakmont has huge greens, but they are some of the slopiest and fastest greens played anywhere on Tour. They are Poa greens but don’t get incredibly bumpy, they’re mowed so closely that they won’t behave like traditional west coast Poa. You can treat them like they’re more of a bent/poa surface. Putting will be ~5% harder per footage this week. Lag putting will be tested with a lot of 5-10 foot par putts needed to drop in order to be at the top.

Oakmont has a lot of hard golf holes. You have to earn your birdies on the par 5’s with three great shots, and some players will be hitting driver into the Par-3 8th. There’s two short Par 4’s (the 2nd & 17th) that will definitely yield more birdies, especially when pins are more gettable. But as you’d expect in a U.S. Open, ball striking will be king and scrambling will be paramount.

Let’s take a look at some of the key stats that tend to differentiate winners at Oakmont.

Key Stats

• 175-250 yard Approach Shots (Fairway): Long approach shots from the fairway at Oakmont will give guys a chance at birdies. These 175+ yd approaches will be the biggest separators.

  • Who does this favor? Some of the top names from this distance include LIV golfers Phil and Niemann next to PGA guys like Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler. Some flyers that excel from this range include Korn Ferry Tour number 2 Johnny Keefer who qualified from surviving a 7 man playoff in Dallas. Some other notables in the upper quartile: Shane Lowry and Hideki Matsuyama.

• Wedge Play: Wedge shots from 100-140 yards will be critical for the guys missing fairways, punching out and having to get up and down for pars.

  • Who does this favor? Some of the top names here include Sepp Straka, Collin Morikawa, Akshay Bhatia, Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay. Johnny Keefer also pops here, something to keep an eye on in his first ever U.S. Open.

• Scrambling: Players are going to miss some greens - it’s a U.S. Open. The scrambling here is really tough. The scrambling rate in 2016 was above 50% on only 4 holes. Deep bunkers and thick rough surround the course. There are very few runoff areas where only fairway surrounds the greens.

  • Who does this favor? You can obviously expect to see Scottie at the top here, paired with Hideki, Bryson, Lowry & Rory. Pairing this stat with bogey avoidance is something we talk about below.

• Lag Putting: Like we mentioned above, these greens are long and very sloped. You can expect to see a lot of 5-10 footers for par that will decide if you’re anywhere near the top. So keep an eye out for the guys who dial in their speed early.

  • Who does this favor? The best putters making their 5-10’ putts on Bent/Poa greens include a lot of LIV names: Patrick Reed, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka. Some notably low-ranking players in this stat category? Tony Finau, Adam Scott and Gary Woodland.

The BTN U.S. Open Model

Let’s take a look at each strokes gained category as we dive into the BTN PGA Championship 2025 model:

• OTT: It’s a long course that still has several less than driver tee shots. Driving accuracy is king out here, you have to avoid the rough as much as possible. We are weighting OTT per round vs. the field into our model at 20% in addition to Driving Accuracy factored in at 10% for a combined 30% weighting towards OTT.

• APP: As mentioned in the key stats, the players that perform well from 175-250 on approaches from the fairway will set themselves apart from this field with birdie looks, and players performing well from 100-140 yards will be saving pars. You obviously have to hit the fairways to score, and ball striking will be critical out here to crown the champion. We valued 175-250 APP per attempt vs. baseline at 15% along with the 100-140 yd APP per attempt vs. baseline at 15% for a combined 30% weighting towards APP.

• ATG: Scrambling around these greens is going to be rough. We’ve got this as a 10% weight in the model this week, only focusing on the player’s last 12 rounds. We did also add in the Scrambling stat at an additional 5% weight to emphasize how important getting up and down is out here. Mark that for a combined 15% weighting towards ATG.

• Putting: As mentioned in key stats, putting is hard at Oakmont. We think that it will play ~5% harder PER FOOT out here. We have both our putting stats filtered down to Bent/Poa & Bent greens to reflect how they’ll play out here. We paired SG Putting per round vs. field at 10% with an extra 5% dialed in on Putting per attempt vs. baseline in that 5-10’ range for a combined 15% weighting towards Putting.

• Bogey Avoidance: Anytime you can avoid bogeys in a U.S. Open, you’re gaining strokes. We have this stat weighted at 10% in our model at the moment. The grinders will prevail.

This week’s BTN Model favorite is (🥁 drumroll please…) once again Scottie Scheffler, scoring a perfect 10. The top of the leaderboard is ripe with talent, with defending champion Bryson also scoring a perfect 10. Colin Morikawa, Rory, Sepp and many others are lurking behind. This would be a good time to remind the audience that there isn’t enough modeling in the world that can predict how a player is going to react after their first double bogey of the U.S. Open. Use that mental model, monitor body language, pair it with the BTN Model pre-tournament AND live stats, and you might be able to lock in some live plays throughout the tournament.

Matchup of the Week (5-6-1) 🤼‍♂️ 

Thorbjorn Olesen (-110) ✅ over Adam Scott (-110) on DraftKings

All signs point toward Thorbjorn Olesen with an edge over Adam Scott this week. Olesen is in much better form across all SG categories except around the green where he’s still gaining strokes. He’s scoring better and hitting more fairways and greens. Over in the BTN Model, we can see he’s more accurate off the tee, gaining strokes from the two important approach buckets of 175-250 and 100-140, putting well, and has strong bogey avoidance. Adam Scott, on the other hand, is only showing green on strokes gained around the green. He hasn’t been very accurate with the driver and is struggling in both approach buckets highlighted in this week’s BTN Model. He’s not necessarily in bad form right now, but his stats aren’t painting a great picture for success at this difficult track, especially up against Olesen. We’re backing Olesen this week to cash out our matchup and get us back to square on the season.

Feature Spotlight 🔦

This week’s Feature Spotlight: Betting Odds. A very simple, yet critically important feature within BTN. We bring all our odds in from DraftKings, and they are REAL TIME ODDS. That’s important to highlight because the odds you’re seeing on Friday afternoon are different than what you’re seeing leading into the event before Thursday.

Betting Odds are displayed on both the Tournament Page as well as the Custom Model Page. We have an Odds Button on display directly next to the Player Search field on both pages.

Before the tournament begins, we always sort the Tournament Field section by the lowest odds in the field (Scottie at the top above)… but when the tournament is live, that Live Stats section is filtered automatically by who is winning the tournament. You can easily filter by Outright, Top 5, Top 10 or Top 20 (T30 & T40 markets usually go away once tournament is live) as the tournament is live and monitor a player who might have had a rough start but you like them at a higher odds play.

• If you love Rory McIlroy Top 5 at +220, you’re gonna love him at +500 if he doubles his first hole (Remember when Jon Rahm won the Masters after doubling his first hole?)

Same thing on the Custom Model page. Once the tournament is live, you can monitor real-time stats on that Custom Model page filtered alongside the Model Score. Golf is full of swings, sometimes you’re better off waiting to see how the golf course is playing before you toss out some cheddar. This is a perfect week where the best players in the world display that they are in fact human. Take advantage of it with BTN Live Odds.

GS Luke’s Prop Preview ⛳️ 

GS Luke has been crushing it with the prop picks over on the BTN blog. Stay tuned to his X for the release of his props picks this week and more great insights and analysis for every round.

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There’s nothing better than a major. Enjoy this week and good luck with your bets!

Ryan L.

Bet The Number