PGA DFS Core Plays: U.S. Open
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 U.S. Open
U.S. Open week is here! This is always one of the best weeks of the season. It’s not only a major, but the final round always falls on Father’s Day. It’s the best going over to my dad’s and watching the finish every year on his patio. I’m pumped for the week and hope you are too. We have a ton of great PGA DFS content, and I’m feeling great about my strategy, so let’s have a week where RG logos are at the top of a bunch of tournaments.
Oakmont Country Club is a Par 70 that measures nearly 7,400 yards. While this is still a long course, it’s not going to play as long as you might expect (at least in terms of what golfers will need to do off the tee). The two Par 5s are both over 600 yards and won’t be reachable in two shots by many. There’s also a Par 3 that measures 289 yards. With very few scoring opportunities, we can expect extremely difficult scoring conditions. I’m only expecting a handful of golfers to be under par this week.
The big story of the week is the 5” thick rough. We often see graduated rough at the U.S. Open, but that won’t be the case this week at Oakmont. You have narrow fairways (18-28 yards wide), the intermediate cut, and then 5” thick rough. In many early-week interviews, golfers say that very few lies out of the rough will allow you to go for the pins. If you are playing from the thick stuff, you will likely be hacking it out or trying to run something up near the front of the green.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for the U.S. Open, 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.
This might sound crazy, but I prefer targeting accuracy over distance at this year’s U.S. Open. The 2016 leaderboard was filled with shorter hitters, and as mentioned above, hitting these fairways is going to be extremely important this week. Justin Thomas said in his interview that this is a ball-striker’s paradise and that hitting fairways will be top priority. Distance will always be an advantage if golfers can hit it straight, but I’ll take my chances with the fairway finders and long-iron players this week.
The greens at Oakmont are massive (8,500 square feet) and feature pure poa annua grass. The greens are expected to run at 13-14 on the stimpmeter, so these will be some of the fastest greens golfers will see all year (think Augusta National). Despite their size, the greens will be difficult to hit in regulation given the thick rough and number of approach shots with long irons. Due to that, scrambling will also be imperative if golfers want to stay in the mix.
My friends, let’s have a week!
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Core Plays
Shane Lowry
DraftKings: $7,800 / pOWN%: 20%
FanDuel: $11,100 / pOWN%: 11%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 57
Strokes Gained Approach: 6
Strokes Gained Around the Green: 25
Strokes Gained Putting: 69
Birdie or Better %: 66
Bogey Avoidance: 43
My core plays are all in the midrange this week. Lowry has been playing great golf all year and should set up well for Oakmont. He’s top 25 in this field in Driving Accuracy and Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green. He’s also 6th in Strokes Gained: Approach, which is going to be critical on such a difficult golf course. He’s gained over 6 strokes on approach in 3 of his last 4 events and has been a top-10 machine all year. He was also in contention here in 2016, so perhaps he’ll have some positive vibes coming back here.
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