PGA DFS Core Plays: PGA 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 PGA Championship
Ladies and gentlemen, the year’s second major is here. It’s shaping up to be a fantastic week, as the best golfers in the world are all coming into the week in great form. Rory McIlroy has won 3 of the biggest events in 2025 and is playing at one of his favorite courses, Scottie Scheffler just beat the field in Texas by 8 shots, and Bryson DeChambeau is coming off a win on LIV. That’s not to mention so many other elite golfers looking to add a major to their career résumé.
We typically have new venues for the major championships not named the Masters, but we are very familiar with Quail Hollow Golf Club. It hosts the Wells Fargo Championship every year and has also hosted the 2017 PGA Championship and the 2022 Presidents Cup. This is a classical course located in North Carolina. It’s a Par 71 that now measures 7,626 yards. The length of the course would be daunting as a Par 72, let alone a Par 71.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for the PGA 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.
This routinely plays as 1 of the 10 hardest courses on the PGA TOUR as a regular event, so we can expect it to play even tougher as a major. They have added some length to 3 of the holes and have grown the rough up to 2.75” inches (it usually has 2” rough). I’m expecting the winning score to be in the -10 to -14 range. We don’t have a ton of wind in the early forecast, but we should see gusts of 15+ mph on Thursday and Saturday.
Bombers are going to have a major advantage this week. The course is extremely long, the fairways are narrow, and this is a driver-heavy course. This doesn’t mean the shorter hitters can’t contend, but they’ll have to gain their strokes through accuracy off the tee and long-iron play. The greens are fairly large (6,600 square feet on average), but they are difficult to hit in regulation. Scrambling and Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green are two statistics that I will focus on this week.
Course history has been very predictive at Quail Hollow over the years, so don’t be afraid to look at history from the Wells Fargo Championship (with the exception of 2022, when it was played at a different venue). I’m also looking heavily at Carry Distance, Strokes Gained: Approach, Bogey Avoidance, and Greens in Regulation.
RotoGrinders has partnered with Betsperts Golf and the Rabbit Hole!
Tool Highlights
- Build unlimited custom stat models with official PGA TOUR data.
- Hundreds of filters to find the exact data split you’re looking for.
- Save custom reports and run them again with next week’s field.
- Download anything right to your computer with the click of a button.
- See expert models each week.
Editor’s Note: Looking for more places to play? Check out our Underdog Fantasy promo code and PrizePicks promo code, two of the best DFS sites available today.
Core Plays
Rory McIlroy
DraftKings: $12,200 / pOWN%: 24%
FanDuel: $12,700 / pOWN%: 34%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 4
Carry Distance: 2
Strokes Gained Approach: 16
Strokes Gained Around the Green: 15
Strokes Gained Putting: 21
Birdie or Better %: 19
Bogey Avoidance: 8
It’s a tough decision at the very top this week. Scheffler just dusted the field at the THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson, but he’s never played this course in a stroke-play event and could only muster up a half-point for Team USA at the Presidents Cup here in 2022. Meanwhile, McIlroy has been dominating at Quail Hollow for over a decade. In his last 11 appearances at this course (Wells Fargo Championship), he has 3 wins and a total of 9 top-10 finishes. He’s already won 3 huge events this year (Pebble Beach, THE PLAYERS, and the Masters) and is a perfect fit for the course.
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
