PGA DFS Core Plays: the Memorial Tournament
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 Memorial Tournament
We have a fun few weeks of golf ahead of us. The Memorial Tournament is one of my favorites of the year, and we have the RBC Canadian Open and the U.S. Open coming up in the next couple of weeks. With this being a Signature Event, there are only 72 golfers in the field. Luckily, we do have a cut this week. The top 50 and ties, plus anyone within 10 strokes of the lead after the first 2 rounds, will make the cut. This brings an interesting strategy element into DFS builds, as the 6/6 percentage should be fairly high this week.
Muirfield Village Golf Club is a Par 72 that measures nearly 7,600 yards. Despite its length, this is far from a bomber’s paradise. The fairways are tree-lined and guarded by 4” rough that is extremely difficult to play out of. At last year’s event, the greens in regulation rate from the rough was less than 35%. While distance is still an advantage, it will only be a positive this week if the drive ends up in the fairway. For off-the-tee metrics, I am focusing on Good Drive Percentage and Total Driving.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for the Memorial Tournament, 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.
The greens at Muirfield are tiny (5,000 square feet) and extremely tough to hit in regulation. The field hit around 55% of greens last year, which places a major emphasis on approach play and scrambling. On top of that, it isn’t easy to get up-and-down here. Essentially, golfers will have to scramble more often than usual, and they are scrambling at a course where it’s difficult to get up-and-down. Strokes Gained: Around the Green will have a high weight in my model this week.
We’ve seen 3 of the last 5 winners of this event finish with a score in the single-digit under par range. The cut is certain to be over par, especially with windy and rainy conditions expected on Friday. This will be a solid all-around test, especially tee to green. If there is one statistic that I don’t mind overlooking this week, it’s putting. I’ll take my chances with good ball strikers over good putters on a course that is so demanding tee to green.
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Core Plays
Tommy Fleetwood
DraftKings: $9,400 / pOWN%: 17%
FanDuel: $11,100 / pOWN%: 17%
Good Drive Percentage: 18
Strokes Gained Approach: 9
Strokes Gained Around the Green: 5
Strokes Gained Putting: 47
Birdie or Better %: 61
Bogey Avoidance: 5
While Scheffler could easily run away with another tournament, I prefer the balanced-build approach this week. My goal is to get as many 6/6 lineups through the cut as possible. Beginning lineups with Fleetwood allows you to avoid the value range that nobody feels great about. He’s been in solid form all year and is coming off a T4 finish at the Charles Schwab Challenge. He’s one of the best all-around golfers on TOUR, as he doesn’t have a single weakness in his game. He also tends to play his best golf on difficult courses. If the winning score is going to be in the -8 to -12 range, I think he’s live to win this week.
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