PGA DFS Core Plays: The Northern Trust
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 Northern Trust Preview
When it comes to DFS and betting advice, transparency is needed. I always try to own my bad picks and bad bets, which allows me to celebrate the good weeks. All six of the plays from last week’s article made the cut and three of them finished in the top 10. Billy Horschel nearly pulled off the win, but his putter let him down on the last three holes. We can forgive ourselves for not playing Jim Herman. He only has two top 25 finishes on the PGA Tour all season and both of them were wins. Golf is such a beautiful, random, fun, and agonizing game.
The PGA Tour playoffs aka the FedEx Cup starts this week at the Northern Trust. The playoffs used to include four tournaments, but they cut it down to three last year. TPC Boston used to host the Dell Technologies Championship, but that event is no longer on the schedule. This course is now in the rotation as part of the Northern Trust. If you are looking for course history, start with the 2018 Dell Technologies Championship (won by Bryson DeChambeau) and go back from there.
The course itself is a Par 71 that measures over 7,300 yards. It features three par fives that are of the boom or bust variety. The final hole is a short par five, but you’ll have to hit a great approach shot to hold the green. There is a massive “native area” in front of the green that you’ll recognize if you’ve watched the playoffs in the past. There are only 125 golfers in the field this week and the top 70 in the standings will move on to next week. With the 65 and ties cut rule, at least 52% of the field will play the weekend.
The course isn’t overly difficult, as it was ranked in the top 20 of easiest courses in the last three years it was played. The winning score should be somewhere in the mid to high teens. If we strip down the data, the fairways and greens are both easier to hit than tour average. If you miss the greens, scrambling is easier than tour average. The average driving distance is a little higher than tour average, which suggests a lot of drivers will be hit this week. The greens themselves are made of pure bentgrass if you like to dive into putting splits.