PGA DFS Core Plays: World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba
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.
World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba
The good news from last week is that all five of the picks made the cut. The bad news is that they all underwhelmed on the weekend and I wasn’t able to turn a profit. These events are always tough to predict and the 30+ MPH winds on Thursday and Sunday only increased the volatility. While I didn’t have any shares of him on the main slate, it was good seeing Patrick Reed playing well again. Whether you love him (does anyone love him) or hate him, he draws eyes to the game of golf. It was even better seeing Lucas Herbert pick up his first PGA Tour win and secure his tour card. He’s been a very good player on the European Tour and will now have the option to play over there or over here each and every week.
We now turn our attention to the Mayakoba Classic, which has generated a surprisingly strong field. A few years ago it was Zach Johnson and Rickie Fowler headlining the event, but this year we have the likes of Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, and Tony Finau. El Camaleon Golf Course provides some tremendous views and should be gettable by the field this week. The last five winners of this event have finished with an average score of 21-under par. This is a Par 71 that measures only 7,017 yards on the scorecard, so this is certainly short by PGA Tour standards. More than almost any other course on tour, driving accuracy plays a big role here. It’s not that the rough is overly penal, but you can get into some real trouble if you stray too far off of your intended line.
Each of the last five winners have finished in the top 11 in greens in regulation that week and four of the last five winners finished in the top nine in putts per greens in regulation. This isn’t breaking news, as hitting greens and making putts tends to work on most courses. However, it does help narrow down the player pool a little bit. The greens are fairly easy to hit on average and if you miss them, scrambling doesn’t provide too big of a challenge. The greens themselves feature paspalum grass, which many compare to a slower version of bermudagrass. The stimp meter can get as slow as 10 here, which really helps players avoid three-putts and we’ve seen that bear out in the statistics here over the years.
You don’t have to be long off the tee to contend here. This doesn’t mean driving distance is a dis-advantage, but it brings everyone into play off the tee. Whether you are hitting driver or clubbing down, playing from the short grass will allow you to attack these pins. I much prefer accuracy or good drive percentage over raw driving distance this week. Iron play is always critical and with very little wind in the forecast, dialing in approach shots will be critical for making birdies. I’m not too worried about around the green play, but will be factoring in putting more than usual (that’s generally the case in birdie-fests like this one). If you want to target different stats, that’s what the downloadable model is for.