PGA DFS Core Plays: The American Express
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for The American Express. Who should you be building your lineups around? Find out below!
We are back to break down the second PGA TOUR event of the year. I had some sweats heading into the weekend, but my hopes were quickly dashed with some bad rounds on Saturday at the Sony Open. Hopefully, some of you found more success than I did. The TOUR now heads to California, where four of the next five events will be held. After this week, we have the Farmers Insurance Open, the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and then the Genesis Invitational. We have a lot of fun events coming up, so let’s have ourselves a week at The American Express.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for The American Express, 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.
While I don’t love the tournaments that have three courses in the mix, it’s not because they feature different courses or have a 54-hole cut. It’s strictly because we don’t have Shot Tracker for two of the three courses. All we are asking for as fans is the ability to sweat every single shot of every single player in the field. Is that really too much to ask?
The three courses in play this week are the Pete Dye Stadium Course, the La Quinta Country Club, and the Nicklaus Tournament Course. All three courses are easy Par 72s that are quite short compared to most courses on the PGA TOUR. All three courses have bermudagrass greens with poa trivialis overseed. While they aren’t replicas of each other, they are pretty similar in terms of their setups and their scoring. Over the last five years, these have been three of the easiest courses on the PGA TOUR.
There are 156 golfers in the field this week, so we can expect the 6/6 percentage to be lower than usual. With that said, the cut won’t be made until after the third round, so at least we’ll have an extra day of sweat for all of our golfers. The Pete Dye Stadium Course is the host course, which means the final round will be held there. It’s a little more generous off the tee than most Pete Dye designs, but you don’t have to be a bomber to contend here.
With the winning score of the event being at least -23 in each of the last five years, the name of the game at this event is making birdies. It doesn’t matter if you create those birdies through ball striking or putting; you just have to make birdies. Without a strong course fit, focusing on Birdie or Better % might be the path of least resistance this week. Course history hasn’t been super predictive here, likely because there are three courses in play.
Top PGA DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel for The American Express
Core Plays
Ben Griffin
DraftKings: $10,200 / pOWN%: 19%
FanDuel: $11,900 / pOWN%: 21%
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 43
Strokes Gained: Approach: 16
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 28
Strokes Gained: Putting: 15
Birdie or Better %: 30
Bogey Avoidance: 3
Listen, I love Scottie Scheffler and have him tagged as a conviction play, but paying a massive premium for him in what amounts to a putting contest (says Jon Rahm) doesn’t feel great, especially at 35% ownership. All factors considered, Ben Griffin is my favorite play on the board. In his last 16 events, he has 2 wins, 2 runner-up finishes, and a total of 13 top-20 finishes. His form is as good as anyone on TOUR who is not named Scheffler. He’s added distance off the tee, which has turned him into one of the most complete golfers in the world. He’s elite on approach, around the green, and on the green. He finished in the top 20 last week in Hawaii, and he’s posted back-to-back top 10s at this event.
Conviction Plays
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