PGA DFS Core Plays: The Open Championship
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 Open Championship Preview
It’s hard to believe the year’s final major is already upon us, but here we are. While the Olympics, the FedExCup Playoffs, and the Ryder Cup mean a lot to many golfers, the entire field is trying to peak for this week in order to hold the Claret Jug come Sunday afternoon. Like the U.S. Open and PGA Championship, the Open Championship rotates venues every year. For the 2021 edition, it will be held at Royal St George’s Golf Club in the United Kingdom. The course is a Par 70 (only two par fives) that measures around 7,200 yards. The last time the Open Championship was held here Darren Clarke held off Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson to win at five-under par.
Historically, this venue has been one of the toughest relative to par in the Open rotation. In five events here, the lowest winning score was five-under par. Granted, golfers are more talented now and hit the ball farther than ever, but I am not expecting this to turn into a birdie-fest. If you haven’t had a chance to see pictures of fly-over videos of the course, I highly recommend it. It features plenty of undulations, both on the fairways and on the greens. Even good shots will get repelled into the fescue and into these deep pot bunkers at times. Golfers will constantly have uneven lies and be at the mercy of the golf gods in terms of getting good or bad bounces. This course is links golf at its finest. Patience could play a big factor.
I don’t have a strong take on course fit this week. The course isn’t overly long and while distance is always an advantage, golfers need to keep the ball in the short grass. A sharp short game and even an imaginative one should come in handy this week given how tough it will be to hit these greens in 20+ MPH winds. I’m not looking at any putting splits, as the greens are a mix of fescue and bentgrass. Ideally, golfers that have the ability to gain strokes in all facets of their game are the ones that I’m looking to target this week. If you have a glaring weakness in one aspect, this is a course that can expose it. I will be looking at a combination of recent form, long-term form, ball striking, scrambling, links experience, and Open Championship history.
There are a few notes I wanted to make before we get into the core plays for the week. First off, lineups lock late Wednesday night (or early Thursday morning depending on your time zone). I doubt many DFS players build lineups the morning of, but make sure that your lineups are set before you go to sleep on Wednesday. Better yet, brew a cup of coffee like myself and stay up as long as possible. The second note is that I’m relying less on stats and projections this week and more on form and Open Championship experience. And finally, this is the event where we typically see the biggest wave advantages. We are expecting heavy wind on both Thursday and Friday, so carefully monitor the forecasts below to look for potential tee time stacks.