PGA DFS Core Plays: Truist Championship
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for the Truist Championship. Whom should you be building your lineups around? Find out below!
Welcome back. I hope everyone had a good week at the Cadillac Championship. As has been the case more often than not over the last 2 years, I had a much better week of Showdown than I did on the main slate. I was able to finish 3rd in the $555 GPP on DraftKings on Sunday. Cameron Young felt a little too obvious last week, but sometimes the obvious plays are exactly the ones we need. He was dominant in all 4 rounds and secured his second win of the year.
The PGA TOUR now heads to North Carolina for the Truist Championship. If you don’t recognize the name of the event, this used to be the Wells Fargo Championship. Quail Hollow Club is typically the host course, but it hasn’t hosted a few times over the last 10 years because it hosted two PGA Championships and the Presidents Cup. If you are a course history buff like me, make sure not to look at the course history for the Truist Championship in 2025, as it was held at a different venue.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament notes, recent form, and course notes for the Truist Championship, check out this week’s PGA DFS First Look.
This is another Signature Event, which means we have a limited field (72 golfers) and no cut. This means that ownership will be inflated and that all golfers are guaranteed to play 4 rounds (barring a withdrawal). As for the course, Quail Hollow Club is a Par 71 that measures nearly 7,600 yards. This is one of the most difficult courses on TOUR, so we can expect the winning score to be in the -11 to -15 range.
The fairways at Quail Hollow are fairly narrow, but this is still a bomber’s paradise. In fact, golfers hit driver on 91% of non-Par 3 tee shots here last year, which is one of the highest marks on TOUR. While bombers have an advantage, I will note that a lack of distance can be overcome with accuracy off the tee and elite long iron play (I’m looking at you Si Woo Kim). The greens here are average in size and feature bermudagrass overseeded with poa trivialis.
This course will test every facet of a golfer’s game. The fairways are difficult to hit, the greens are tough to hit in regulation, and the scrambling success rate here is way low compared to TOUR average. Ideally, we want a bomber who is excellent on approach, around the green, and on the greens. Unfortunately, those are few and far between in this week’s field. My final note is that this course has the 5th-most predictive course history on the PGA TOUR, so bump that up in your models this week.
Top PGA DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel for the Truist Championship
Core Plays
Xander Schauffele
Noto Rating: 2 / Cash Rating: 1 / GPP Rating: 4
DraftKings: $10,000 / pOWN%: 20%
FanDuel: $12,100 / pOWN%: 27%
Course History L5 Years: 28, 2, 2, 14
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 4
Strokes Gained: Approach: 3
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 47
Strokes Gained: Putting: 24
It’s scary fading Rory McIlroy and Cameron Young at the top, but they are both coming off huge wins and likely focusing their attention on next week’s PGA Championship. I like starting my builds with Schauffele, who is playing his best golf in quite some time. He’s rattled off 4 straight top-12 finishes, gaining 5.2, 12, 6.8, and 9.2 strokes ball striking in the process. Over the last 3 months, he’s top 4 in the field in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Approach. In addition to the great form, he finished runner-up at Quail Hollow Club in both 2024 and 2023.
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