DRAFT PGA Value Watch: Sentry Tournament of Champions

Each week, Justin Van Zuiden will list the players he is overweight (heavier exposure than the field) and underweight (lower exposure than the field) on. Dominate your DRAFT drafts with this cheat sheet from one of the best in daily fantasy sports!

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Sentry Tournament of Champions

Golf is back! The one month break always seems even longer than that, but now we can look forward to several months with golf to be had every single week! It’s an exciting time as we ring in the calendar year of 2019, and let’s get to the breakdown for the Tournament of Champions!

Golfers I Am Overweight On

Dustin Johnson – He has top tens in each of the last three editions of this tournament, and DJ is your defending champion of this event after shooting 24-under par a year ago. All four par 5’s on this course are reachable in two for him, and he is certainly comfortable around Kapalua. His ability to rack up birdies will be helpful on this course, and the distance off the tee is certainly an advantage. This course only has three par 3’s, giving the bombers a bigger edge. If I get the first pick on DRAFT, or if he falls to me at any other pick, DJ is my selection with confidence.

Jon Rahm – After being hit and miss for virtually the entire year in 2018, Rahm could be ready to add the consistency to his game that would help to make him a world class star. He has all the tools to win every time he tees it up, as he is plenty long off the tee and has a creative game around the greens. It’s the mental state when thing start to derail that has been the missing piece. Well, Rahm has looked good of late with a win at November’s Hero World Challenge and a top five finish in the European Tour finals. He finished second in his debut here a year ago and is a fine option if you don’t get DJ in the first round.

Gary Woodland – He is the perfect mid-range pick this week. Woodland endured a rough year in 2017 thanks to some personal issues, but he rebounded with a very solid 2018 which included quite a few top finishes. Woodland is very long off the tee, and he ranked 2nd on Tour during the fall swing in birdie or better percentage. Woodland is one of the middle tier options with winning upside in this tournament, and he is flying under the radar a little bit. Course history people will be off him because he hasn’t played here in four years, and he gets lost in the shuffle in this area. I like him a lot in DRAFT formats in the late second or third round.

Patrick Reed – I am generally not a huge fan of Reed because he never pops statistically, but I like him as an option on a resort course that feels like an “exhibition” for many other golfers. You know this is not an exhibition for Patrick Reed. He plays to win any time he shows up at a golf course, and he has finishes of 6th, 2nd, and 1st in his last three trips to Kapalua. The last time he teed it up, he finished 2nd in a strong field over in Europe at the DP World Tour Championship. The combination of motivation, form, and course history has me on Reed this week.

Cameron Champ – The young bomber is a great fit in a no-cut tournament with modest fairways and four reachable par fives. If you need a pick at the bottom of the list to round out your rosters (which you likely will in a 5+ person DRAFT game with the smaller field), give Champ a long look. Champ led the PGA Tour in driving distance during the fall swing at 328.2 yards per drive, and he is a budding star on Tour. Take advantage if he falls to you in the final round.

Golfers I Am Underweight On

Marc Leishman – It’s not that I don’t like Leishman, as he is certainly a reasonable option on the salary cap sites this week. However, I find it difficult to endorse him as the #3 overall option on the DRAFT board. That’s quite high, and while he has earned that spot with his play over the last year and a half, I prefer taking Leishman on courses that are more challenging overall. This tournament is more of a shootout style event, and I won’t be utilizing a first round pick on the Aussie here.

Bubba Watson – Even on a course that tends to favor distance, I’m not that interested in Bubba Watson. We know that Bubba tends to play well on courses that he likes, and he doesn’t play well on pretty much every other course. His last three trips to Kapalua haven’t resulted in anything better than a 10th place finish despite the small field for this event. Let someone else over-draft him.

Andrew Putnam – In a relative sense, he is simply over-valued in a field of this strength. For reference, DRAFT has him pegged right below Rory McIlroy and above the likes of Francesco Molinari. That’s too high, and Putnam is not worthy of a mid-round selection in this format.

Brandt Snedeker – He has fought injuries for the better part of the last two years and hasn’t been able to develop any consistency. The winter layoff likely will hurt Snedeker more than it did some other players, as it may serve to continue to hinder the development of that consistency. Snedeker doesn’t pop statistically anywhere that will help around Kapalua, and I’m not utilizing him in my DRAFT games this week.

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About the Author

stlcardinals84
Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84)

Justin Van Zuiden (aka stlcardinals84) is a longtime RotoGrinders contributor and show host. He’s appeared in numerous Live Finals, has logged countless 6-figure wins in a host of different sports (including 5 in PGA), and is a former DFS Writer of the Year Nominee by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. You can find Justin’s ‘Covering The Bases’ series on weekends during the MLB season. He is also a main contributor of sports betting picks at our sister site, ScoresAndOdds, and is a co-host on the RotoGrinders Game Night show on SiriusXM. Follow Justin on Twitter – @stlcardinals84