PGA DFS Core Plays: Rocket Mortgage Classic
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various salary ranges for this week’s tournament. Who should you be building around? Find out below.
While Si Woo Kim ended up missing the cut, it was another good week for the DFS picks. We had Patrick Cantlay, Brian Harman, Denny McCarthy, and Scottie Scheffler all finish in the top seven. Once again, we had two outright bets in the mix, but they couldn’t get the job done on the weekend. On top of that, the two top 40 parlays that were alive each had one golfer miss the top 40 by one or two strokes. When it comes to golf betting, all we can ask for is a Sunday sweat and we’ve had a lot of those lately. We’ll keep at it and hope for a better Sunday at this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Given the fact that this is two weeks after a major and a week after a designated event, I’m pleasantly surprised with the field that we have at Detroit Golf Club this week. The course was designed by Donald Ross and is a Par 72 that measures 7,370 yards. This seems long compared to TPC River Highlands last week, but it’s still pretty short by PGA Tour standards when you adjust for par. If you are a fan of birdie-fests and winning scores in the 25-under par range, this tournament is for you. It has played as one of the easiest courses on tour each of the last four years and three of the four winners have been at least 20-under par.
This is one of those courses that doesn’t require distance, but golfers will be able to grip it and rip it off the tee. There is only one water hazard on the course, the fairways are wide (34-35 yards), and the missed fairway penalty here is low compared to tour average. A lot of drivers will be hit this week, so it’s not a big surprise that golfers like Tony Finau, Cameron Young, Bryson DeChambeau, and Taylor Pendrith have played well here over the years. I’m bumping up off the tee metrics in my model this week. While I will mostly be focusing on strokes gained off the tee, I will also include a small weight for driving distance.
While the greens are small (5,150 square feet), they are easy to hit on average. When golfers do miss these bent/poa greens, scrambling has been fairly straightforward. In other words, around the green isn’t as important here as it is at most events. Honestly, if golfers are missing greens on a regular basis, they are going to be behind the eight ball anyway. Approach play is always important and we can expect a lot of wedges to be hit on this course. One interesting stat is that every golfer that has finished in the top 10 here in all four years of the event has gained strokes putting. If you have a bad week with the flatstick, you will have a very tough time moving up the leaderboard.
I’m essentially looking at four stats this week — strokes gained off the tee, strokes gained approach, birdie or better percentage, and strokes gained putting.
