PGA DFS Core Plays: Waste Management Phoenix Open
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.
Waste Management Phoenix Open
Many consider the Farmers Insurance the real kickoff event to the golf season, but I personally see it as the week we stop having pro-ams with multi-course rotations. For whatever reason, I haven’t had much success at the American Express or the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, so I for one am excited to have them behind us on the schedule. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year — we have the rowdiest event on tour in the Waste Management Open and get to finish the week with the Super Bowl. I’m fired up and feel a big week on the horizon for RotoGrinders members.
TPC Scottsdale is most famous for its 16th hole, which is a par three with an entire stadium built around it. I’ve been to this event twice and can confirm that it is a wild few days of golf and drunken fans. The heckling the golfers get on 16 alone is astounding. While I wouldn’t love this type of atmosphere every week, I absolutely love having it on the schedule one time each year. The course is a Par 71 that measures just under 7,300 yards. It features three reachable par fives and a drivable par four.
The fairways here are tough to hit on average and while the rough isn’t particularly penal, you don’t want to stray too far offline. There are plenty of waste areas and quite a few water hazards as well (including three of the final four holes). This is one of the more driver-heavy courses on tour and that’s backed up by the data — the average driving distance here is 12 yards farther than an average PGA Tour event.
While the fairways are tough to hit on average, the greens in regulation number here has been fairly high over the years. Again, as long as you aren’t too far offline, you should have a decent chance of hitting the green. Scrambling isn’t overly difficult here and putting is fairly simple on these greens. The three-putt percentage here is low and the number of putts made within 10 feet is one of the highest rates on tour. The greens featured bermudagrass and are average in size.
There isn’t a strong course fit this week. We’ve seen bombers (Bubba Watson & Wyndham Clark) play well here, we’ve seen short game specialists play well here (Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth, & Webb Simpson), and we’ve seen ball strikers play well here (Hideki Matsuyama and Byeong-Hun An). Essentially, you have to take advantage of the easier holes and avoid the big numbers on the holes with trouble. I’m looking heavily at bogey avoidance this week.
My final note is that course history here is as predictive as any course on tour not named Augusta National. And this isn’t me making an educated guess looking at a few golfers, this is backed by data. This could be due to a number of factors — perhaps the sight lines of the course set up well for some golfers and not others, perhaps the raucous crowds take some getting used to, or perhaps there is course knowledge that benefits golfers that play here every year.
As part of your premium subscription to RotoGrinders, you get access to my model each week. Not only that, you can download it and adjust the weights to create your own player ratings that can be used to build lineups in LineupHQ.
Noto’s PGA DFS Model Breakdown Video and Download Link
Field Size:
- 132 golfers
Cut Rule:
- Top 60 and ties
Key Statistics for the Week
- Strokes Gained Approach
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee
- Bogey Avoidance
Weather Forecasts
Hole Yardage Specialists (based on holes at TPC Scottsdale)
- Jon Rahm
- Abraham Ancer
- Matt Fitzpatrick
- Viktor Hovland
- Daniel Berger