PGA DFS Core Plays: Wells Fargo 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.
Wells Fargo Championship Preview
Last week was one of those weeks where I felt like I got more right than wrong, but didn’t have a ton of winnings to show for it. Luckily, we got a ton of screenshots from premium members, so it sounds like it was a good week for Team RotoGrinders. Sam Burns put together four solid rounds to walk away with the win, while Keegan Bradley has to be disappointed with his back nine on Sunday. He was a core play of mine and solo second certainly paid off his price point. A few other notes from the Valspar Championship — Justin Thomas lost 6.5 strokes putting and still finished T13, I vowed to never play Patrick Reed again and naturally didn’t listen to myself, and Cameron Tringale continues to have a career season.
We now turn our attention to the Wells Fargo Championship. It is played at Quail Hollow Club, which is a Par 71 that measures over 7,500 yards. Make no mistake about it, this is not a plodder’s course like the ones we’ve seen over the last few weeks. When we look at raw data, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, scrambling rate, and three-putt percentage are all tougher than tour average. It’s no surprise that this is one of the toughest stops on the PGA Tour each and every year.
Off the tee, distance is more important than accuracy. The average driving distance here has been a whopping 18 yards more than your average PGA Tour event. This means golfers are hitting a ton of drivers on this course. Strokes gained off the tee is always the safest driving statistic, but I prefer golfers that gain their strokes with distance rather than accuracy. Long iron play will also be critical, as over 50% of approach shots will come from 175+ yards.
With the greens being tough to hit, I will be giving a decent weight to around the green play. The greens themselves are fairly big and are made of Champion G12 bermudagrass overseeded with Poa trivialis. I don’t have splits narrowed down to that deep of a level, so looking at bermudagrass splits is probably your best bet. Ultimately, it’s going to take a solid all-around game in order to contend this week.