PGA DFS GPP Breakdown: Charles Schwab Challenge
Top-ranked grinder, STLCardinals84, will break 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.
PGA Championship
Welcome, golf grinders! We have another PGA Tour stop in Texas this week, and this tournament will be held at Colonial Country Club for the Charles Schwab Challenge. Sponsorship has changed over the years for this event, but the one constant has been the course. Colonial has been the host site for this event since 1946, and we have a surprisingly strong field for the week after a major.
As for the host course, Colonial has withstood the test of time, even as technology has helped players get much better on the golf course. It’s a traditional par 70 layout that doesn’t offer much in the way of length, but the course can be very challenging, especially when the Texas winds pick up. The short par five first hole is the only real pushover on the course, and even that hole is no longer the “gimme” birdie hole that it once was. The traditional late spring winds in Texas often pick up during this event, which serves to make Colonial even more of a challenging test. However, it’s worth noting that the wind is not expected to be very strong this week, so perhaps we will see better scoring than usual at this event.
As with many shorter courses, Colonial sets up as your typical second shot golf course, and distance off the tee is largely irrelevant. Almost the entire field can reach the par five first hole in two shots if their drive is in the fairway, and very few golfers can reach the par five on the back nine in two. It’s all about approach play and ball striking for me this week, and I am valuing course history a little more than normal. Most winners of this event tend to have some history at the venue, so that factor can’t be discounted on a challenging layout. No first time participant has won here since Sergio Garcia all the way back in 2001.
With only 120 golfers in the invitational field this week, we will see a lot more 6/6 lineups in DFS (unless there is massive carnage from the studs), so keep that in mind as you set your lineups. It’s time to look at some of my favorite GPP picks!
Tony Finau
DraftKings: $10,700
FanDuel: $11,600
Yahoo: $44
If you are looking for safety at the top this week, there’s no doubt that Scottie Scheffler is the choice. He is a top 15 machine that just keeps cranking out elite finishes every week. Tony Finau is also coming off a poor showing at last week’s PGA Championship, though he did make the cut. Recency bias is going to scare people away from Finau in this spot, and early ownership projections have Finau around 10-15% lower than Scheffler. If that’s the case, I’ll gladly pivot to Finau in GPP builds. He has top 25 finishes in four straight editions of this tournament, including a runner-up finish in 2019 and a 4th place finish a year ago. He ranks third in the field in approach over the last 36 rounds (behind only Scheffler and Morikawa), and Finau has plenty of win equity of his own.
