PGA DFS Core Plays: Farmers Insurance Open
Top-ranked grinder, Notorious, breaks down his favorite daily fantasy golf plays at various salary ranges for the coming week’s golf tournament. Who should you be building around? Find out below.
Farmers Insurance Open
First of all, congratulations are in order for Hudson Swafford (or Harris English II) and all of his backers last week at the American Express. I didn’t have any exposure to him and didn’t have a great week as a whole. Personally, I am beyond excited to get away from the constant birdie-fests that we have seen over the last few months. The Farmers Insurance Open is no picnic for professional golfers, as the winning score rarely cracks 15-under par. Even though we have another course rotation and even though we won’t have Shot Tracker for one of the courses, we have a stacked field and a difficult golf course. LET’S GO!
Torrey Pines is on tap this week and while the two courses are both on the same property, there are very few similarities between the two. Each golfer will only see the North Course in one round. It’s not an easy course, but it’s significantly easier than the South Course. It’s essentially 500 yards shorter and now features bentgrass greens. We don’t have any ShotLink data on the course and we won’t see much of it, so we will focus more of our attention on the South Course. With that said, golfers will need to take advantage of the easier North Course if they want to be in contention on Sunday.
As for the South Course, the renovation before the U.S. Open took it to nearly 7,800 yards from the tips. This is now the longest course on the PGA Tour. The fairways are tough to hit, the greens are tough to hit, scrambling is very difficult, and putting is no easy task on these poa annua greens. There will be a few shorter hitters scattered across the leaderboard each year, but having distance off the tee is a huge advantage here. You can essentially hit driver here on most of the par fours and fives. Despite being long off the tee, you really have to have a complete game to contend here. There will be plenty of long irons and you will have to gain strokes with the short game.
I’m looking for solid all-around golfers that have experience at Torrey Pines, that tend to play well in California, and that have a good track record on difficult courses. Oh, and this tournament starts on Wednesday, so make sure to set your lineups on Tuesday evening.
As part of your premium subscription to RotoGrinders, you get access to my model each week. Not only that, you can download it and adjust the weights to create your own player ratings that can be used to build lineups in LineupHQ.
Noto’s PGA DFS Model Breakdown Video and Download Link
Field Size:
- 156 golfers
Cut Rule:
- Top 65 and ties
Key Statistics for the Week
- Strokes Gained Approach
- Driving Distance
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee
- Bogey Avoidance
- Strokes Gained Around the Green