PGA DFS Core Plays: Valero Texas 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!
Min Woo Lee picked up his first PGA TOUR win at the Texas Children’s Houston Open last week. Given the length of the course and how well Australian golfers tend to play in Texas, I suppose I should have seen a big performance coming. Unfortunately, I wasn’t on him last week and had far too many golfers in my player pool miss the cut. I’ll look to right the ship this week at the Valero Texas Open, which serves as a nice warmup for the Masters next week.
PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel Core Plays for the Valero Texas Open
TPC San Antonio is a par 72 that measures over 7,400 yards. While it’s a fairly long course on the scorecard, this isn’t exactly a bomber’s paradise. The fairways are narrow (27 yards wide on average) and tend to pinch in around 300 yards. The field hit less than 50% of the fairways here last year. Rather than focusing on distance like we did last week, I will be looking at Strokes Gained Off the Tee and Total Driving.
The greens here are average in size but difficult to hit on average. This increases the importance of approach play and around the green play. We’ve essentially seen two types of golfers perform well here in the past- accurate ball strikers like Charley Hoffman and Corey Conners, and elite scramblers like Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, and Matt Kuchar. That seems to be the path to success at TPC San Antonio.
Let’s dive into this week’s picks!
Editor’s Note: For more tournament and course notes for the Valero Texas 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.
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Core Plays
Keegan Bradley
DraftKings: $9,500 / pOWN%: 16%
FanDuel: $10,900 / pOWN%: 18%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 30
Strokes Gained Approach: 13
Strokes Gained Around the Green: 59
Strokes Gained Putting: 39
Birdie or Better %: 42
Bogey Avoidance: 89
Many are going to start their lineups with one of the $10,000+ golfers this week, but I love the look of balanced lineups that start with Bradley. As the Ryder Cup captain this year, he’ll have to play his way onto the team if he wants to be a playing captain. For that to happen, he’ll need to continue the strong stretch of golf he’s put together over the last 6 months. He’s an elite total driver of the ball and an excellent iron play. He’s finished T8 and T23 at this event in his last 2 appearances and is no longer struggling with the flatstick.
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