PGA DFS Core Plays: Tour 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.
Tour Championship Preview
Before we get into East Lake Golf Club, we have to talk about the BMW Championship. I don’t love watching golfers struggle to shoot par every week, but it’s certainly a nice chance of pace after seeing the winning score at 30-under par the week before. Olympia Fields played extremely difficult, especially if you missed the fairway. It took a couple days for most golfers to figure out how to chip around the greens and you got the feeling that your golfers weren’t out of it if they could post an under par round or two.
The finish on Sunday was one of the best we’ve seen all year. Jon Rahm caught a huge break on the par five when his tee shot bounced off a tree in the hazard and back into play. He made two quality shots after that and ultimately birdied the hole. He finished strong and looked like he was going to win the event at four under par after Dustin Johnson drove it in the rough on 18. He hit a nice shot to about 45 feet and had an incredibly tricky downhill putt for the tie. It barely creeped over the ridge and somehow found its way into the hole. In the playoff, DJ appeared to have the advantage before Rahm dropped a 66-footer on the same line as Dustin’s long one that forced the playoff in the first place. If you didn’t see the highlights, do yourself a favor and watch them.
This week we head to Georgia for the finale of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion on how the event should be structured, but I’m not sure there is a right answer. You could go the match play route, but that lessens the importance of a strong regular season and is far too often anti-climactic on the final day. The original format left the door open for a separate winner for both the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup, which also didn’t feel right. We’ve only had one year with the starting strokes, but I thought it played out well in 2019. There is an advantage for playing well all year and we get the same winner for the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup.
The only issue with the format is that it makes betting and DFS less appealing. Dustin Johnson will start at 10-under par, while the bottom five golfers will start at even. It’s hard to imagine anyone that’s not at least five under to start winning, which means the winner will likely come from a pool of five players. The good news is that DraftKings has figured out a way to do dynamic pricing so you can’t just fit all of the golfers that are starting with a big lead. I am going to treat this event the same way I treat Round 4 showdown — target a few golfers up top and a few down the leaderboard that I think can make moves over the course of four days. The difference between finishing points for eighth place and 30th place is only two birdies, so we shouldn’t focus too much on starting position.
East Lake is a tough Par 70 that features narrow fairways and brutal bermuda rough. It’s a long course when you adjust for par, as it measures over 7,300 yards. It’s originally a Donald Ross design and like most of his courses, this isn’t one that can be overpowered off the tee. Distance never hurts, but hitting fairways is more important. Each of the last eight winners have finishing ninth or better in fairways hit the week that they won. Greens are slightly tougher to hit than tour average and scrambling is a little tougher as well, which brings short game into play. The greens themselves are average size that feature bermuda grass if you are a fan of putting splits. Overall, I’m looking for strong all-around golfers that are in good form and/or have a good track record on bermuda.