PGA DFS GPP Breakdown: TOUR Championship
Long-time grinder, stlcardinals84, breaks down his top PGA DFS picks in various price ranges for this week’s tournament. Which golfers should you be targeting to try and take down the big DFS tournaments? Find out below!
We’ve made it to the end of another PGA TOUR season. It has been another fun season of golf, but this will mark the end of the current golf “year.” The top 30 golfers in the FedExCup standings have qualified at East Lake, and the TOUR is going to continue the new format that was introduced a few years ago. There were cases in the past where the winner of this final tournament didn’t end up hoisting the FedExCup trophy, so the TOUR felt a need to change that. I still don’t love this new format, but it’s what we have.
Enter the “starting score” theory.
Based on their current position in the standings, each golfer will start at a certain score. Here is the list:
1st – Scottie Scheffler – starts at -10
2nd – Xander Schauffele – starts at -8
3rd – Hideki Matsuyama – starts at -7
4th – Keegan Bradley – starts at -6
5th – Ludvig Aberg – starts at -5
6th to 10th – Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, and Rory McIlroy – all start at -4
11th to 15th – Tony Finau, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott, Sungjae Im, and Sahith Theegala – all start at -3
16th to 20th – Akshay Bhatia, Robert Macintyre, Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley, and Byeong Hun An – all start at -2
21st to 25th – Taylor Pendrith, Sepp Straka, Matthieu Pavon, Billy Horschel, and Tommy Fleetwood – all start at -1
26th to 30th – Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Justin Thomas, Tom Hoge, Aaron Rai, and Chris Kirk – all start at even par
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If you have ever played the Round 4 Showdown contests on DraftKings, you can think of this as a glorified, 4-round version of that. Everyone starts at a certain position; the finishing position matters and the golfers starting near the top generally have higher salaries. That said, it doesn’t seem quite as extreme this year as it was a year ago. The higher starting salaries for the top starters are good for GPP building because it adds another layer of strategy to the mix. Rory McIlroy won a few years ago despite starting five shots back (and he won by 4 strokes), so don’t over-emphasize the starting position to your own detriment.
That brings about another point. These are 30 of the top golfers on TOUR. There isn’t going to be a lot separating these players statistically. All of them have a semblance of solid form, or they wouldn’t have made it here. Game theory becomes super important in GPP contests this week.
As for the course layout, East Lake is a demanding par 71 course that requires elite play off the tee, a solid approach game, and an ability to offer touch around the greens. Basically, the course is no pushover and will test every aspect of a golfer’s game. If you aren’t striking it well here, you won’t be rewarded.
Let’s take a look at some of my favorite GPP plays for the season finale!
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PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel GPP Breakdown for the TOUR Championship
Xander Schauffele
DraftKings: $11,000
FanDuel: $12,800
Yahoo: $44
You are probably going to need the winner in your lineup this week, and the big question becomes whether to prioritize Scottie Scheffler or Xander Schauffele at the top. With their current form and the starting stroke advantage, these two have the highest win equity on the board by a wide margin. I am leaning toward Schauffele. Once again, the form hasn’t been that different between the two of them over the past few months, and you could argue that Schauffele is actually playing better golf right now. He leads this field in putting and ranks third on approach over the last 24 rounds, and he has been racking up top finish after top finish. Throw in the fact that he has finished in the top 5 in each of the last 5 years at East Lake, and there’s really no downside to playing him at this event. He’s only starting 2 shots back, and he’s cheaper than Scheffler on every site. I’ll take Schauffele as the top play.
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