PGA DFS Core Plays: Shriners Children's Open
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 lineups around? Find out below!
Perhaps I’m biased since I live in Utah and have played the course, but I loved the Black Desert Championship. The course showed extremely well on television and showed some teeth on Sunday with a little wind in the afternoon. Hopefully, it can draw a stronger field in 2025. The PGA TOUR stays out West this week for the Shriners Children’s Hospital. This is my favorite event of the fall swing and has a relatively strong field (the keyword here is relatively).
TPC Summerlin is a par 71 that measures 7,255 yards. It has been one of the easiest courses on the PGA TOUR in each of the last 3 years. The fairways are wide (35 yards), the greens are large (7,400 square feet) and easy to hit (74% GIR in 2023), and all three par 5s are reachable by almost all of the field with a decent drive. However, the difficulty of the course hinges on the wind (this is in the desert, after all). I’m writing this early in the week, but the forecast currently calls for major wind on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. The forecast is something to keep an eye on as we lead up to lineup lock on Thursday morning.
Noto’s PGA Model Download & Video for the Shriners Children’s Open (link coming soon)
While hitting fairways is important here (the penalty for missing fairways is higher than TOUR average), this is a course where you can hit a lot of drivers. The fairways are generous, and the average driving distance here last year was 305 yards. The greens have been easy to hit in regulation here over the years, but scrambling is rather difficult when golfers do miss the greens. Around the green play might be a tad more important than usual here, especially on Thursday and Friday.
We typically see a lot of long-shot winners in birdie fests, but that hasn’t been the case here over the years. The last five winners have been Tom Kim, Sungjae Im, Kevin Na, Bryson DeChambeau, and Patrick Cantlay. Four of the five (except Na) are elite ball strikers. I’m looking for good total drivers, good iron player, golfers with experience here (and in the desert), good putters on bentgrass, and birdie makers.
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PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel Core Plays for the Shriners Children’s Open
Field Size:
- 132 golfers
Cut Rule:
- Top 65 and ties
Weather Forecasts
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TPC Summerlin
- Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
- Par 71 — 7,255 yards
- Type: Desert
- Recent winners: Tom Kim (-20), Sungjae Im (-24), Kevin Na (-23), Bryson DeChambeau (-21), Patrick Cantlay (-9)
- Difficulty: 2023 (44th), 2022 (42nd), 2021 (42nd)
- Green type: bentgrass
- Green size: 7,200 square feet
- Fairway width: 35 yards
- Missed fairway penalty: medium/high
- Holes with water hazards: 4
- 2023 tournament averages:
- - Driving Accuracy: 61% (TOUR average: 59%)
- - Driving Distance: 305 yards (TOUR average: 293)
- - Greens in Regulation: 74% (TOUR average: 66%)
- 2023 approach shot distributions:
- - 50-75 yards: 4%
- - 75-100 yards: 7%
- - 100-125 yards: 16%
- - 125-150 yards: 19%
- - 150-175 yards: 19%
- - 175-200 yards: 15%
- - 200-225 yards: 5%
- - 225+ yards: 15%
Event and Course Notes
- While this is a stronger field than we’ve seen the last few weeks, it’s still lacking star power outside of Tom Kim
- Despite the weak field this event gets each year, it is consistently one of the easiest courses on TOUR
- A lot of the difficulty does hinge on the wind, and we could have some serious gusts this week
- The fairways are wide (35 yards), and the greens are massive (7,400 square feet)
- The greens feature bentgrass; they are on the slower side, and they are receptive
- While the average GIR rate is high (74%), scrambling is fairly difficult here
- Elite list of winners here over the last 10 years; not many long-shot winners
- Plenty of locals are in the field if you want to play the home game angle: Kurt Kitayama, Maverick McNealy, Seamus Power, Doug Ghim, and many others
What to Look For
- Strokes Gained: Approach
- Total Driving
- Strokes Gained on easy courses
- Strokes Gained: Putting (emphasis on bentgrass)
- Strokes Gained on desert courses
- Birdie or Better %
Core Plays
Chan Kim
DraftKings: $7,600 / pOWN%: 12%
FanDuel: $9,500 / pOWN%: 14%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 25
Strokes Gained Approach: 20
Strokes Gained Around the Green: 12
Strokes Gained Putting: 89
Birdie or Better %: 14
Bogey Avoidance: 16
My core plays this week are both in the mid-range. Kim is the 8th-best overall play in my newly revamped PGA model. In this field, he’s top 25 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, Strokes Gained: Approach, Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, Birdie or Better %, and Bogey Avoidance. He’s made 6 of his last 7 cuts and has 3 top-15 finishes during that stretch. He’s never played this event but has a great track record on easy courses and courses with large greens. The only concern is the putter, but he actually has his best putting splits on bentgrass greens.
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