PGA DFS Core Plays - DraftKings & FanDuel: The Open 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.
The Open Championship
Ladies and gentlemen, Happy Open Championship week!
We really appreciate you trusting us as your golf content provider and my goal is to make everyone feel that they are all part of the family. If you haven’t joined the RotoGrinders Discord, you should check it out. We have separate channels for each sport and the golf one is a great time each week. We talk strategy and players all the way leading up to lock and then tilt with each other once each tournament starts. Additionally, I am always around to answer and and all questions. There are no such thing as dumb questions. Believe me, I have been doing this for 10 years now. You can send me a direct message on Twitter or on Discord and I’ll get back to you.
Now, let’s get to the year’s fourth and final major. The Open Championship is always special, but this one stands out above the rest. We have the 150th Open Championship on tap this week and it will be held at the home of golf — the Old Course at St. Andrews. Similar to Augusta National, this place has a different aura than other golf courses. I have never visited in person (it’s on the bucket list), but you can feel it when watching the event or hearing the way golfers talk about it. The course is unique in that there are no split tees here. Everyone will tee off number one, which creates an even bigger gap in tee times (potential weather advantages).
The Old Course is a Par 72 that measures 7,313 yards. It’s not your typical Par 72, as it features two par threes and two par fives. My back of the napkin math tells me that means there are 14 par fours on the scorecard. In fact, nine of those 14 par fours measure less than 420 yards. There has been a lot of talk this week about golfers potentially taking this place apart if the wind doesn’t show up and that could certainly be the case. Each of the last four winners of the Open Championship at St. Andrews have finished with a score of at least 14-under par. The game of golf has certainly changes since 2015, as equipment and golfers continue to get better and better.
The Old Course is a links golf course — no trees, wide fairways, large greens, pot bunkers, and deep fescue grass. There are 112 bunkers on the course and most will serve as a half-shot penalty. Golfers do not want to get too aggressive if they find themselves in one of these deep pot bunkers. They will need to take their medicine and look to get it back on the next shot or the next hole. The greens here are extremely large (seven of which are shared greens) and present a lot of challenges in terms of three-putts. I’m not looking at putting splits myself, but for reference, the greens are a mix of fescue and bentgrass.
As we saw last week with the Scottish Open, the weather can change on a dime in this part of the world. We should carefully monitor the forecast leading up to lock and we should be hesitant to trust it fully. There’s only a small chance I roll out a tee time stack for my main lineup because so much can change on the wind front. My favorite way to attack this is to build tee time stacks on both sides of the draw, regardless of what the forecast looks like. Given the wide disparity of tee times, I might even make stacks of golfers teeing off within a couple hours of each other. One way or another, weather is going to play a factor this week.
There are always a million trends out there to sift through and trends are made to be broken, but I have my eye on two of them when it comes to picking a winner. Eight of the last 10 winners of the Open Championship had a win earlier that season and nine of the last 10 winners at St. Andrews had a top three at the Masters. Using those two trends alone, you can really narrow down your list of potential outright bets. As far as what I’m looking to target for DFS, give me links experience, major experience, solid all-around game, and good form. My final note is to make sure you have your lineups ready to go before you fall asleep on Wednesday night.
Best of luck everyone, let’s have a week!
Downloadable and Customizable Model for the Genesis Scottish Open
Tournament Info
Field Size:
- 156 golfers
Cut Rule:
- Top 65 and ties
Weather Forecasts