Back to California we go for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Sadly, this Pro-Am tournament is another atypical format with each player guaranteed three rounds, each played at a different course. That’s not ideal for PGA DFS and I much prefer the standard format like we saw last week at the Waste Management Open. Also, the celebrities make the TV coverage borderline unbearable, but that is something we are going to have to deal with. One notable thing to remember is that the cut is made after Saturday, but it is only the top 60 who return to Pebble Beach for the final round on Sunday.
The Course
The three courses, Monterey Peninsula, Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach, are all sub-7,000 yards, making them all relatively short in distance compared to most courses on tour. Many holes require you to club down off the tee which makes fairways much easier to hit, but also makes approach shots that much more important. Greens are Poa Annua so that is something to take note of if you are looking for who may be at an advantage with the flat stick. Monterey Peninsula is a par 71 and usually the course players that yields the best scores. The other two are par 72s and somewhat challenging, especially if there is wind.
I mentioned this a few weeks ago and will say it again: Pro-Ams are always a little tricky because of the unique atmosphere of having celebrities on the course and the three-course rotation creates difficulties for many players. Having the cut on Saturday makes going less than 6-for-6 not as much of a penalty since you are only losing one round. But obviously, we will still be shooting to get everyone through until Sunday.
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I will be looking for golfers who are great with approach shots and hit a lot of greens in regulation. With the easy-to-hit fairways, the ability to hit greens will be a key factor, so proximity to hole is another stat I will be looking at. Scrambling is not a huge priority, but the greens are small so the ability to get up and down is certainly a plus this week.
The Field
This is not the best field, but we have a different batch of top-end players to choose from. Leading off the pricing is Dustin Johnson, who hasn’t been around much in the 2019-20 PGA DFS season. After Johnson, we have Patrick Cantlay, Paul Casey and Jason Day rounding out the top-four options.
Weather looks calm, but since there are three different courses, it may be a little trickier to gauge. Keep an eye on Slack as we will provide updates and break down the latest info as this article is written a few days before lock. Also make sure to check out the Wednesday night Awesemo.com PGA DFS show where we will update weather and talk about lineup construction, player pool and take questions from the chat.
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Quick Targets
Top-Priced
Dustin Johnson $11,600 DraftKings, $12,400 FanDuelÂ
Over the last few weeks, it has been a different feel up top in the pricing with two of the big guns in the field. No disrespect to Patrick Cantlay, but I have Johnson in a tier by himself considering he is showing signs of being healthy again. He played last week in Saudi Arabia and finished second. The travel isn’t ideal, but beyond that, this sets up perfectly for Johnson even if he is the most expensive player on the slate.
Johnson has won this event twice, in 2009 and 2010, and this is a regular stop on his PGA Tour schedule. He isn’t going to be affected by the long rounds or the celebrity atmosphere. I will start with the best available players and work down from there on a ton of lineups and that means Johnson is the first man in.
Brandt Snedeker $10,100 DraftKings, $11,200 FanDuel
I certainly wouldn’t look here in cash games, but if you want to stake some savings off the top, then Snedeker makes sense. He is coming off a quiet exit last week at the Waste Management where he was terrible off the tee and had an outlier putting performance. Snedeker is a fantastic putter and had gained strokes putting in five straight events before losing 1.2 last week. That should rebound quickly and now he comes to a course he has seen plenty of times.
Looking over the course history, Snedeker had a win back in 2015 and another top-five finish in 2017. He was cut last year here at the Pro-Am, but that’s going to come with the territory of a 60-man cut and an event this unique. Fire up Snedeker as a GPP play and if ownership cooperates, he could be sneaky leverage up top.
Mid-Range
Alex Noren $8,700 DraftKings, $10,200 FanDuel
The upper-mid range is loaded this week in PGA DFS and I expect Daniel Berger to be popular after his recent form and course fit. I don’t mind Berger, but there are several other guys that I have interest in at this price range including Noren. We last saw the Swede back at the American Express where he finished 14th despite doing nothing with the putter. Before that, he also gained tee to green at the Sony so the ball striking seems to be back where it needs to be.
The one wild card is Noren’s lack of experience at this event. The celeb and long rounds are tough to quantify, but I think it gives a different feel than a standard PGA event. Still, if Noren continues to strike the ball well, he should have no problem getting in the mix and if he likes these Poa greens, watch out for him this week.
Russell Knox $8,600 DraftKings, $10,000 FanDuel
This is another other upper-mid-range play, but I will land here on several spots in my lineups. Knox hasn’t missed a cut since Greenbrier back in September and he is on a streak with the irons that has to demand your attention. He gained another 4.5 strokes approach last week at the Waste Management and that continued his streak that dates back to 2019.
Course history-wise, Knox finished tied for 15th the last two years, but regardless of the results, this is a good setup for him. He doesn’t have to deal with length like he did at Torrey Pines and with the irons this dialed in, he should have plenty of good looks on the greens. He has been riding a hot putter the last two weeks; if that continues, it could be the difference in Knox getting in contention or having just a middling finish.
Lower-Priced
Maverick McNealy $7,300 DraftKings, $8,800 FanDuel
McNealy is one of the guys who is a long-term buy in PGA DFS and we are starting to get some results from his play. He had a ton of amateur pedigree, but struggled out of the gate and didn’t string together much of anything last year. He now has found his form and comes into this event with eight straight made cuts.
McNealy is gaining strokes every which way, and that can be both a positive or a negative depending on how you look at it. He has no glaring weakness right now, but also can’t lean on a specific part of his game to do the heavy lifting. That to me is a quality I like to embrace in tournaments as it produces a wide range of outcomes and potentially huge payoffs.
J.J. Spaun $6,800 DraftKings, $8,000 FanDuel
It is probably not a shock that I will target Spaun here as he made the article last week where he was just 2% owned at the Waste Management. He found the weekend, but it felt like a missed opportunity to cash in as he gained 6.7 strokes on the approach. That ball striking shouldn’t ever translate to a 47th-place finish, but Spaun was terrible both around the green and with the flat stick. He will need to improve the short game if he wants to get in the mix and build on what is a quality ball-striking game right now.
The lower range this week is pretty ugly with a field of this caliber. We don’t have a lot of players who are in good form and a lot of guys haven’t had a quality result during the season. We still will be forced to go down here, especially if we are aggressive up top with some of the better players. Spaun is a way to save some salary while buying low on a guy who struck it as well as anyone last week in the desert.
Also Considering – Patrick Rodgers
Quick Notes
Course stacks
We have dealt with the rotational tournaments already this year in PGA DFS, but it is worth repeating that stacking a potential course can have its benefits. On a typical week of PGA, we sometimes look at tee time stacks, but that is mitigated with it being a three-course rotation. However, we may choose to group golfers who are playing the same course on the same day in case there is a significant weather edge that emerges. It’s possible that playing a course like Pebble Beach on one of the days is the ideal fit and we can take advantage of that possibility.
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