PGA DFS Core Plays: The Masters
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.
The Masters
My friends, it is the best golf week of the year. The Masters typically takes place in April, but now we get to see it in late fall. Many were concerned about the weather when they first announced when the event would take place, but it’s expected to be mid to high 70s all week. There is a lot of rain in the forecast, but we are going to see split tees (less of a weather edge for tee times) and Augusta National has one of the best drainage systems in the world. Rickie Fowler mentioned that unless we see extremely heavy rain, the course will play close to the way it usually does. Rory McIlroy mentioned that the bermuda grass on the fairways is causing some different lies on approach shots and some tricky instances around the greens. Ultimately, we aren’t going to know how different the course plays in November until we crown a champion on Sunday.
For our purposes, I am relying on the course fit for Augusta National that we have come to know and love over the years. Course history matters here more than at any other PGA Tour stop and that’s clear as day when you see many first-timers struggling and when you see Fred Couples posting a top 20 finish. We have certainly seen some first-timers fare well here in the past, but I typically like to target golfers that have played the course in competition at least once. The fairways here are wide and the rough is essentially the same as the fairway at most municipal golf courses. The only way to get in trouble off the tee is to get a bad line to the hole from the pine straw or if you find the water hazards. Shorter hitters can play well here, but make no mistake about it — this is a bomber’s track. Driving distance is a bigger advantage here than it is at any other regular PGA Tour venue.
The reason for this is fairly simple — all four of the par fives are reachable with a long drive and there is a drivable par four. With wide fairways and little to no rough to speak of, getting the ball as far out there as possible is a big advantage. While you have to be sharp with your irons to contend here, this isn’t your typical course where you take straight lines at all the pins. The greens are extremely fast and very contoured and you have to know the different ways to get the ball close to the hole. I typically have strokes gained approach as the biggest stat weight in my model, but that won’t be the case this week. You don’t have to be as precise with your irons if you know how to use the slopes of the greens to your advantage. The greens themselves are pure bentgrass and should run at around a 13.5 on the stimpmeter (extremely fast).
The winning score this week will largely depend on the weather. Wind doesn’t appear to be an issue for any of the four days and the course could play a little softer with all of the rain in the forecast. In my opinion, this only makes driving distance more important, as golfers won’t get a lot of run-out on their drives. Carry distance and apex height aren’t usually statistics that I’m looking at, but I will at least glance at them. In terms of scoring, golfers need to take advantage of the four par fives and they need to avoid bogeys everywhere else. Looking at strokes gained around the green is valuable, as there are many run-off areas around the green that create tricky chip shots. We’ve long heard that this course favors a right-to-left ball flight (Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, etc.), but I would only use that as a tiebreaker.