PGA DFS GPP Breakdown: Genesis Invitational
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!
Greetings, DFS golf fans! Welcome back to the weekly GPP breakdown article! We have the strongest field of the 2023 calendar year to date staring at us with The Genesis Invitational. Most of the top golfers on the PGA TOUR will tee it up at Riviera Country Club this week, and there are some massive GPP contests out there for this event with the NFL season now in the books. More eyes will be turned to the golf world, and this is a great tournament for that to be happening.
As for the tournament itself, we are dealing with a smaller field with the invitational setup that Riviera adopted a few years ago, and it is even smaller this year with this being an elevated event. This is also one of only two elevated events that will feature a cut. Despite just a 70 golfer field, the cut will be reduced to the top 50 and ties (or anyone within ten shots of the lead) after the second round… so you really don’t want the golfers at the bottom this week.
Outside of the format, everything else remains the same with the event on this iconic golf course. We do have plenty of course history to lean on at Riviera. This event has been around for decades, and the course is as tried and tested as any that is used on the PGA Tour. It has certainly withstood the test of time, and it’s a true all-around challenge for the golfers that tee it up here. As is the case with many difficult layouts, the top golfers tend to rise to the top of the leaderboard. Experience tends to matter, as first timers often struggle here. The cut has come in at even par or worse in each of the last nine editions, so this will not be the birdie fest that we often see on the PGA Tour these days.
From a statistical perspective, you need to be pretty good at… pretty much everything in order to succeed at Riviera. Keep it in play off the tee. Try to hit the greens in regulation. Scramble for pars when you need to. The solid all-around, patient golfer is the type that we need to consider, and course history is also more important this week than we see with some other events. If I had to pick one statistical measure to focus on, tee-to-green and specifically approach play would be my first priority. Bogey avoidance is also worth a look. We also see a different type of grass at this event with kikuyu grass being the surface on the fairways and poa annua on the greens. Riviera has one of the most iconic short par fours with its tenth hole, and it plays as a Par 71 at just over 7,300 yards on the scorecard.
Distance off the tee has proven to be more important on this golf course over the past few years as well, so I am prioritizing that more than I did in the past.
Let’s find some GPP picks that I like for this tournament!
PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel GPP Breakdown for the Genesis Invitational
Max Homa
DraftKings: $9,800
FanDuel: $11,500
Yahoo: $43
If we have learned one thing about Max Homa over his last few years on the PGA TOUR, it’s that Homa really, really likes playing golf in California. He seems to have fantastic course history on almost every California layout, and Riviera is no exception. His last four results on this course? 5th, 1st, 10th, and 2nd. That’s pretty, pretty, pretty good, and it’s not an outlier result. He just plays well on California tracks. He grades out better than field average in every statistical metric, and there’s just no denying that he’s a top three option in this week’s field.
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