PGA DFS Core Plays: Rocket Mortgage Classic
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.
Rocket Mortgage Classic Preview
Over the next two weeks, we are going to see some weak fields as many of the game’s best gear up for the Open Championship. The John Deere Classic does have a private charter across the pond for those that are qualified for the year’s fourth major, but don’t expect to see many big names on PGA Tour leaderboards over the next two events. This will be the third edition of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, as this event was added to the rotation in 2019. The event is hosted at the Detroit Golf Club, which is a Donald Ross design that measures 7,370 yards on the scorecard. It is a wide open Par 72 that will yield a ton of birdies to the field. In the last two editions, the winning scores have been 23 and 25-under par.
After Bryson DeChambeau and Matthew Wolff battled it out here last year, many will naturally assume this is a bomber’s paradise. It certainly was for “Brooksy,” as he won the event despite losing strokes on approach (very rare on the PGA Tour). While there has been a ton of rain in the area leading up to the event, I’m not completely sold on the bomber narrative this week. We’ve seen a number of shorter hitters contend here over the last two years. If we look at the raw data, it tells a non-bomber type of story. Here are how the top 20 finishers gained strokes at this event over the last two editions — +0.31 OTT, +0.58 APP, +0.22 ATG, and +0.95 putting. As long as you can make birdies at a high rate, it doesn’t matter how you get the job done.
We don’t have a ton of data to work with at this course, but fairways have been easy to hit here, greens have been easy to hit here, and scrambling hasn’t provided much of a challenge to the professionals. The greens are small in size and feature a mix of bentgrass and poa annua grass. While most approach shots at this event have been hit from 75-150 yards, I’m not sure looking at proximity from those ranges will do a lot of good. With no forced layups here, distance off the tee will determine approach lengths for each individual golfer. In other words, Bryson is going to be hitting his approach shots from different yardages than Brian Stuard. Ultimately, I am looking for golfers that score well, that have played well on Ross designs, that like bent/poa greens, and that are in good form.