PGA DFS Core Plays: Valspar Championship
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for the Valspar Championship. Whom should you be building your lineups around? Find out below!
THE PLAYERS was nothing but tilt for me. I built 11 lineups that I entered in all types of contests. I had Collin Morikawa in 4 of them, and I had Ryan Fox in another. Right off the bat, 5 of my 11 lineups were dead thanks to withdrawals after lock. To make matters worse, I had Morikawa as my one-and-done pick. I thought my main lineup had a good chance, but Ben Griffin had other plans. He fell apart on his back nine on Friday and missed the cut. I also had him in a made-cut parlay that missed by one.
I mean, congrats to Cameron Young and all, but I’m ready to put last week behind me. There have been far too many withdrawals in recent weeks. Let’s hope we don’t have any this week in the final leg of the Florida swing.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament notes, recent form, and course notes for the Valspar Championship, 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 Valspar Championship is held at the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Florida. The course is a Par 71 that measures 7,352 yards. This is a unique Par 71 layout in that it features four Par 5s and five Par 3s. It’s not a bad idea to take a long look at Par-5 Scoring and Par-3 Scoring this week. This has been a tough test of golf over the years, and that’s evidenced in the winning scores being -11, -12, -10, -17, and -17 in the last 5 years.
While this course is in Florida, it has more of a Carolinas feel to it. The fairways are tree-lined, there are several elevation changes, and water is only in play on 6 of the 18 holes. The fairways are extremely narrow (27 yards wide), and there are several dog legs on the course. These are all reasons why this is a less-than-driver course. Golfers only hit driver on 52% of tee shots last year, and the average Driving Distance was only 276 yards. Both of those marks were well below TOUR average.
The greens here are average in size (5,800 square feet) and feature bermudagrass. They should run at 12 on the stimpmeter, which is pretty average for a PGA TOUR event. The greens are difficult to hit in regulation, which places a major emphasis on approach play and around-the-green play. To show how little driving matters compared to most events, 3 of the last 5 winners of this event were negative in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee.
Course history hasn’t been super predictive here over the years. That doesn’t mean having solid course history is a negative, but we shouldn’t avoid golfers if they have bad course history or if they have never played this event.
Let’s dive into the picks for the Valspar.
Top PGA DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel for the Valspar Championship
Core Plays
Matt Fitzpatrick
DraftKings: $9,800 / pOWN%: 26%
FanDuel: $11,800 / pOWN%: 28%
Course History L5 Years: MC, 5
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 30
Strokes Gained: Approach: 10
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 7
Strokes Gained: Putting: 27
Fitzpatrick nearly won THE PLAYERS Championship last week. He held the lead with 3 holes to play, but he played his final 3 holes at 1 over par, while Cameron Young played them at 1 under. Golf is weird in that we wouldn’t want to target Fitzpatrick as much if he had won, yet we are encouraged by his 2nd-place finish. He’s been in elite form over the last 9 months and is back to gaining strokes in all facets of his game. He’s a good total driver of the ball, his irons have improved dramatically, and he has an elite short game. He’s only played here twice in the last 5 years, but he posted a T5 finish in 2022.
Conviction Plays
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