PGA DFS Core Plays: Bank of Utah Championship
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges for this week’s tournament. Who should you be building lineups around? Find out below!
PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel Core Plays for the Bank of Utah Championship
After a one-week break, we are back to break down another FedExCup Fall event. I had one of my better weeks of the year at the Baycurrent Classic. I had Xander Schauffele as a core play and as an outright bet, so I’m hoping to carry some of that momentum into this week.
As I’ve noted several times already this fall, this is the time of year when there is the least amount of attention on golf. Everyone is so focused on the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA that many are blindly trusting the optimizers for PGA DFS. If we are willing to do a deeper dive into our research, we should have a big advantage over the field.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for the Bank of Utah Championship, check out this week’s PGA DFS First Look. To get access to Noto’s PGA DFS Model Breakdown & Download link, which allows you to create your own projections, click here.
The PGA TOUR visits my backyard this week, as we have the Bank of Utah Championship in St. George. It’s technically a 4-hour drive from where I live, but I’ll consider it my backyard since it’s in Utah. This is only the second time that we’ve seen this course on the PGA TOUR rotation, so we are dealing with a small sample size of data. As for the course, Black Desert Golf Course is a par 71 that measures 7,421 yards. At 3,000 feet above sea level, it will actually play closer to 7,000 yards, which is quite short for a par 71.
The fairways here are massive and easy to hit for the field (85% last year). However, there’s very little rough, and after that, it’s all volcanic rock. If you stray too far offline, you’ll have to re-tee, which is an automatic 2-stroke penalty. The greens here are large and easy to hit in regulation (76%). Putting can be tricky inside of 15 feet, but this is still one of the easiest courses on TOUR. Wind can be a significant factor here, as there are no trees on the property. With that said, the forecast appears awfully calm at the moment.
I’m not going to overthink the course fit this week. I’m looking for good total drivers of the ball, good iron players, and prolific birdie makers. I’m not going to focus too much of my attention on scrambling, as these greens should be extremely easy to hit in regulation.
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Core Plays
Rico Hoey
DraftKings: $9,300 / pOWN%: 17%
FanDuel: $10,700 / pOWN%: 21%
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 3
Strokes Gained: Approach: 4
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 50
Strokes Gained: Putting: 120
Birdie or Better %: 7
Bogey Avoidance: 22
Hoey has been one of the best ball strikers on TOUR over the last 2 years, but his putting has been so bad that he has very few high-end results to show for it. Before the fall events started, we got news that he was making the switch to a long putter. In his 3 events since, he has only lost 4 strokes putting combined. That doesn’t seem like much, but he had lost 28 strokes putting in his previous 4 events. He’s elite off the tee, he’s elite on approach, and his putting is improving. If he can find a rare positive week on the greens, I could see him winning his first PGA TOUR event.
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