PGA DFS Core Plays - DraftKings & FanDuel: FedEx St. Jude Championship

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.

FedEx St. Jude Championship

Welcome to the first leg of the FedExCup Playoffs. Tom Kim needed to win last week in order to be eligible for the playoffs and he did exactly that. Winning by five strokes in your 15th career PGA Tour start is impressive, especially when you consider the fact that the 20-year old started the event with a quadruple bogey. He spotted the field four strokes and still managed to win by five strokes. Everyone is clamoring to the fact that he gained 12.5 strokes with his putter, but he also gained 5.5 strokes with his ball striking.

The first playoff event will be held at TPC Southwind. This course has held the St. Jude event every year since 1989, but we need to be careful when looking at course history. For starters, many of the sites out there have event history and not course history. This course has held the WGC event the last three years, but was a full field event prior to 2019. We also need to factor in the field size when looking at course history. A T45 finish in one of the WGC events isn’t nearly as valuable as a T45 in a full field event. Luckily, this is all factored into the course history scores in this week’s model.

As for the course, TPC Southwind is a Par 70 that measures 7,243 yards. It may not seem daunting at first glance, but this is the second longest Par 70 on the PGA Tour. There are only two par fives on the scorecard and eight par fours that measure at least 445 yards. The fairways are narrow and there is a significant penalty if you aren’t playing from the short grass. Water is in play on 11 of the 18 holes and the bermuda rough is around 2.5 inches thick, which can create some very tricky lies. While strokes gained off the tee or total driving is your best bet when it comes to off the tee metrics, I certainly prefer accuracy over distance this week.

The greens at TPC Southwind are extremely small (4,300 square feet) and tough to hit on average. If you are playing from the rough, you can only expect to hit the green in regulation about half of the time. Given the small greens and the number of hazards in play, approach play will be vital to success this week. Even if you are striping the ball, you will still miss a fair share of greens, which makes around the green play more important than usual. Unlike the birdie fests of the last few weeks, you can get away with mediocre putting here. In fact, three golfers have either won or finished second while losing strokes putting at this event over the last three years.

As Justin Thomas said, this isn’t a difficult golf course if you are playing from the fairway. That is obviously a big if given the narrow fairways and how tough they are to hit on average. Ideally, we want to target golfers that are good total drivers of the ball, golfers that are elite with their irons, golfers that can scramble, and golfers that are comfortable on bermuda greens. With little wind in the forecast and with a stacked field, I expect the winning score to be in the mid-teens. One final note is that there are only 121 golfers in the field this week, so at least 54% of the field is going to make the cut.

Downloadable and Customizable Model for the FedEx St. Jude Championship

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Weather Forecasts

Key Statistics

Core Plays

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About the Author

Notorious
Derek Farnsworth (Notorious)

Derek Farnsworth (aka Notorious) is a lead RotoGrinders Expert and one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of DFS. Before joining the RotoGrinders team, Derek received a Master’s Degree from the University of Utah. When he’s not busy providing content, he’s dominating the DFS industry as evidenced by his consistent top rankings in several sports and multiple Live Final appearances. Noto provides expert NBA, NFL, MLB, and PGA analysis for RotoGrinders Premium members on a daily basis and has also been nominated for five different Fantasy Sports Writer’s Association (FSWA) awards. Follow Noto on Twitter – @RG_Notorious