PGA DFS Tournament Breakdown: The American Express
Long-time grinder, stlcardinals84, breaks down his top PGA DFS tournament picks in various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for The American Express. Which golfers should you be targeting to try and take down the big DFS tournaments? Find out below!
Welcome back, Grinders! We have an unusual event this week, with one of the two annual Pro-Am tournaments on the docket with The American Express at PGA WEST. Every professional golfer will be paired with an amateur golfer during the tournament rounds. In order to get all the professionals and amateurs through their rounds, three courses are utilized. As such, the cut will not be made until every golfer has gotten one round on each of the three courses (assuming no delays, this would be after Saturday’s rounds).
The PGA WEST Stadium Course will be the host course, and everyone who makes the cut will play there in the final round on Sunday. The PGA WEST Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club are the other two courses. The Stadium Course is the most difficult of the three, but all three courses generally average well under par. Birdies and eagles are the name of the game, as the PGA TOUR doesn’t want to offer super tricky pin placements for the amateurs. The rounds already take about six hours even with easier pin locations. The amateurs will not play on Sunday for the final round, and that’s the day where scoring might be more difficult, particularly if the coastal winds kick up.
With all three courses playing to a relatively short par 72 length by today’s PGA TOUR standards, par 5 scoring will be key this week. Distance is not necessarily a priority though, as plenty of the par 5s are on the shorter side and are reachable in two for most of the golfers. The winning score at this event has been -20 or better in a remarkable 18 straight editions. You need to go low to have a chance. As for statistical measures, ball striking, short game play, and birdie or better percentage are other key stats I am looking at.
Let’s move along to some of my favorite GPP options for the second event of the year!
PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel Tournament Breakdown for The American Express
Ben Griffin
DraftKings: $10,200
FanDuel: $11,900
Scottie Scheffler is great, but he will also cost you a gigantic premium this week in DFS salary terms. I prefer the significant discount down to Griffin, especially on DraftKings. While Griffin isn’t the caliber of Scheffler, you can do a lot with that extra savings. Griffin’s game is rock solid across the board, he scores well on easy courses, and he has posted back-to-back top-10 finishes in the last 2 editions of this tournament. Throw in his 11 top-10 finishes from a year ago, and his overall profile is just a whole lot better than many people realize. The expectations are rising on a weekly basis, and that’s part of the reason why Griffin’s T19 last week felt like a bit of a letdown. Scheffler doesn’t have a great history at this tournament, and I prefer to start my GPP lineups with Griffin.
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