PGA DFS Core Plays - DraftKings & FanDuel: Cadence Bank Houston Open
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS plays at various salary ranges for the coming week’s golf tournament. Who should you be building around? Find out below.
Cadence Bank Houston Open
The model popper himself won at Mayakoba last week. Russell Henley ran away from the field on Saturday and was able to coast to a win on Sunday. Rather than trusting the model that I run each week, I decided to bet on golfers like Harris English and Aaron Rai. Far too often in DFS and in betting, we have what we like to call FPS — Fancy Play Syndrome. This is also referred to as GBS — Galaxy Brain Syndrome. While golf is usually the sport for contrarian plays given its volatile nature, we shouldn’t be so willing to trust out gut when the numbers don’t back up the play. Honestly, this strategy rant is as much for me as it is for you. We now turn our attention to the Houston Open.
Starting in 2020, this event moved from the Golf Club of Houston to the Memorial Park Golf Course. We only have two years of data to work with, but at least we have ShotLink data for this event. Yes, that means Shot Tracker is back in our lives this week. Memorial Park is a Par 70 that measures 7,412 yards. It’s a unique Par 70 layout in the fact that it features three par fives and five par threes. The course also features a drivable par four. You wouldn’t think this would be a difficult test given where it is on the schedule and the fact that there are four scoring holes, but this course has played in the top 10 in difficulty each of the last two seasons.
The fairways here are fairly generous in size, but they are tree-lined and are surrounded by thick rough. Hitting fairways will be important, but it won’t be an easy task. On average, only 56% of the fairways have been hit here over the last two years. This seemingly sets up as a bomber’s track, but that’s not what we’ve seen from past editions. The top 10 finishers of this event have gained very few strokes off the tee and a number of shorter hitters have been seen near the top of the leaderboards. I do expect a lot of drivers to be hit this week, but distance isn’t a prerequisite. I much prefer using strokes gained off the tee or total driving over raw distance.
Iron play is always critical on the PGA Tour and this week is no exception. The greens here are average in size (7,000 square feet) and fairly tough to hit. The scrambling success rate here has been lower than tour average, so good around the green play certainly won’t hurt this week. The greens themselves feature bermudagrass if you are someone that likes to use putting splits (which can always be found in my model). One interesting note is that there are only 19 bunkers on the entire course. Pros generally prefer to be in the sand rather than the rough, so perhaps that plays into the low scrambling success rate.
Whenever we have a tough test of golf, I like golfers that are solid in all four aspects — off the tee, on approach, around the green, and putting. It’s tough to find a lot of those golfers in a field like this, but the point I’m making is that I’m not singling out one or two statistics this week.
Downloadable Link and Model Video for the Cadence Bank Houston Open
Tournament Info
Field Size:
- 132 golfers
Cut Rule:
- Top 65 and ties
Weather Forecasts
Key Statistics
- Strokes Gained Approach
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee
- Bogey Avoidance
- Strokes Gained Around the Green
- Strokes Gained Putting (Bermuda)