PGA DFS Core Plays: WGC-Match Play / Corales 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.
WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play
Matt Jones put on a dominant performance at the Honda Classic and was able to coast to a victory on Sunday thanks to everyone near the top of the leaderboard dropping shots on the front nine. Luckily, he was featured in the core plays. While I’m still kicking myself for not betting him outright, I did have top five and top 10 bets on him. It was a good week of DFS and a good week of betting, so I really shouldn’t be complaining about anything. I got a few tags on Twitter from premium members that had big weeks, so hopefully many of you had a good week.
We now turn our attention to the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. I used to hate this event because we couldn’t play DFS, but now it’s one of my favorites. I even went to the event in 2019 when Kevin Kisner was able to outlast everyone and take home the trophy. Austin Country Club is the perfect type of course for match play because all types of golfers can contend here. The course isn’t overly long, but you can be aggressive off the tee if you want. We’ve seen grinders like Kisner perform well here, as well as bombers like Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm.
Similar to March Madness, there will be quite a few surprises when it comes to golfers advancing out of the first round. Historically, only about one-third of the top seeds have made it out of group play. I won’t be focused too much on course fit this week, as you can spin the narrative any way that you like. You will hear making birdies is critical because that’s how you win holes, you’ll hear avoiding bogeys is critical because it keeps golfers in matches, you’ll hear iron play is the key to match play, and you’ll hear putting is the most important aspect. Ultimately, you have to play well and get lucky in order to advance.
The most important lineup building rule is to avoid golfers in the same pools. If you target two golfers from one pool, you are automatically putting yourself in a bad spot. One of them is guaranteed to be out after the first round and there’s a chance both of them could get knocked out. Additionally, if you are playing large-field tournaments, you’ll want to build rules in LineupHQ so that every lineup has at least one golfer from each quadrant. I’m not worried as much about this in single-entry contests, but ideally you want to build lineups with the potential of having the final four.
Windfinder Forecast
Cut Rule:
- No cut
Key Statistics (In Order of Importance)
- Strokes Gained Approach
- Birdie or Better %
- Strokes Gained Putting
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee
- History on Pete Dye Courses
Hole Yardage Specialists (Based on Holes at Austin Country Club)
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Dustin Johnson
- Justin Thomas
- Patrick Reed
- Russell Henley