PGA DFS Core Plays: Charles Schwab Challenge
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for the Charles Schwab Challenge. Whom should you be building your lineups around? Find out below!
One of the greatest sweats in all of DFS is the Friday cut sweat. It rarely goes how we want it to, and it remains extremely challenging to get all 6 golfers through the cut in my main tournament lineup, but it’s still so much better than these no-cut events. I didn’t have any Wyndham Clark last week, but hopefully, some of you had some exposure to him in tournaments. He went nuclear on Sunday to chase down both Scottie Scheffler and Si Woo Kim in the final group. It was truly an impressive performance.
The PGA TOUR stays in Texas this week for the Charles Schwab Challenge. It’s not the strongest field (where on earth is Jordan Spieth this week?), but we have 132 golfers teeing it up in Fort Worth this week. This is one of my favorite stops on the PGA TOUR, and it’s one of the few events where I always seem to have a higher 6/6 percentage than the field. We are going to manifest that to happen again this year. I’m also long overdue on hitting an outright bet, so hopefully we can get one of those this week as well.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament notes, recent form, and course notes for the Charles Schwab Challenge, check out this week’s PGA DFS First Look.
Colonial Country Club is a par 70 that measures 7,289 yards. It’s one of the more difficult challenges that golfers see each year, as the winning score typically ranges from -8 to -14. To win the $1.8 million prize and don the tartan plaid jacket, you need to have all parts of your game firing. The fairways are tree-lined and narrow, the greens are small, and almost everything is tougher here than the TOUR average (Driving Accuracy, Greens in Regulation, Scrambling %).
Driving Distance has never been a prerequisite to winning here, although golfers have started to get more aggressive off the tee at this event. This has always been a less-than-driver course, but golfers hit driver on 69% of non-par 3 tee shots last year. So while I’m not looking at Driving Distance, I do think we still need to factor in some off-the-tee metrics. I’m looking at a combination of Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Good Drive %. Playing from the short grass is important, as it’s much easier to hit these greens from the fairway.
Approach play is important every week, but especially when we have small greens, as we do at Colonial. Even the best ball strikers are going to miss greens at times, which is why scrambling has played such a crucial role at this event over the years. The greens themselves are lightning-fast (13 on the stimp) and feature pure bentgrass. If you are looking for comp courses this week, Harbour Town Golf Links and Sedgefield Country Club make the most sense.
Let’s dive into the picks!
Top PGA DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel for the Charles Schwab Challenge
Core Plays
Russell Henley
Noto Rating: 1 / Cash Rating: 2 / GPP Rating: 1
DraftKings: $10,200 / pOWN%: 28%
FanDuel: $11,800 / pOWN%: 23%
Course History L5 Years: 16
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 22
Strokes Gained: Approach: 26
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 4
Strokes Gained: Putting: 38
Henley missed the cut at the PGA Championship, but he was one of the few players in the field who couldn’t carry the ball 285 yards (which was needed to carry a lot of the fairway bunkers). I faded him for that exact reason. Colonial Country Club sets up much better for his skill set. This course rewards accuracy off the tee, elite iron play, and a good short game. The likes of Jordan Spieth and Kevin Kisner have dominated this event over the last 10 years, and Henley has a similar skill set. He’s #1 in my model this week, he’s not overly expensive, and he finished T16 here in his last appearance.
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