Expert Daily Fantasy Golf Picks This Week for The Tour Championship

The PGA Tour finalizes its 2020-21 season this week with a visit to East Lake for the Tour Championship. The playoff format here includes 30 players, all seeded according to their FedEx Cup standings. The seeds then correspond to certain starting positions, which give the higher seeds an advantage. No. 1 seed Patrick Cantlay will start at 10 under with a 2-stroke lead over Tony Finau and will have as much as a 10-stroke lead over some of the field. However, it is worth a reminder that players in the DraftKings and FanDuel player pools have been assessed their values based on the starting positions, which I have included in this DFS golf advice article.

Dustin Johnson won by three strokes as the No. 1 seed here last year, but in 2019 Rory McIlroy, who started at 5 under par, won the event and the FedEx Cup. East Lake is a Donald Ross course that plays as a long par 70 and tends to favor elite ball strikers (like McIlroy). The bigger greens and long par 70s tend to keep scoring down, and hot and humid weather this week should mean fast greens. Look for higher scoring than the past two events.

East Lake Stats and Info

Par-70, 7,319-yard venue; a Donald Ross design that features Bermuda greens.
Ranked as the 14th-toughest venue on tour; has not seen a winning score higher than 13 under par (outside of starting positions) over last six years.
Six par 4’s measure over 450 yards; driving accuracy is 5-7% under PGA Tour average, and scrambling percentage is also slightly under tour average.

Putting Splits

The green types shift this week again. East Lake is notorious for its big Bermuda greens with faster speeds, and the winning scores here have been much higher since they installed the newer greens last decade. Use caution with these in your daily fantasy golf picks; they are not the be-all, end-all, but they make for a nice tiebreaker.

Positive Bermuda Putting Splits, Last 50 Rounds

Sam Burns: +40 strokes on Bermuda, +5.5 strokes on all other surfaces
Sungjae Im: +27 on Bermuda, +9 on all other surfaces
Billy Horschel: +29 on Bermuda, -1 on all other surfaces

*+ equals total strokes gained | – equals strokes lost

Negative Bermuda Putting Splits, Last 50 Rounds

Patrick Cantlay: -8 on Bermuda, +18 on all other surfaces
Kevin Na: +3 on Bermuda, +13 on all other surfaces
Hideki Matsuyama: -34 on Bermuda, -11 on all other surfaces

Daily Fantasy Golf Picks for DraftKings & FanDuel

*Grades are ordered DraftKings, FanDuel. Initial grade indicates a player’s strength of output for the week with the value grade indicating their strength as a play in relation to their salary.

Jon Rahm: Grades: A+, A+ Values: D, C

Rahm starts this week at 6 under par, which will put him 4 back of the leader Cantlay. Rahm has been right in the mix over the last couple of starts, landing a third-place finish at the Northern Trust and opening with a 63 at the BMW Championship before falling to ninth on the weekend. He has looked great in spurts, albeit a little rusty from his layoff (COVID-19) that he endured after the British Open. This will be his third start in a row, though.

The format this week means that players in the 5- to 7-under range will need to put in a couple of low rounds if they want to take home the overall win, so the upside in rostering Rahm is pretty evident, as a win would mean he could top the DraftKings scoring. This will be his fifth time playing East Lake, so experience is on his side too. From a daily fantasy golf model perspective, he tops the field by over 3 points and has a better value score than Cantlay. It is a small field, but eating the chalk here makes a lot of sense since Rahm is the best in class and somewhat of a bargain in this format.

The Stats:

First in strokes gained tee to green and second in DraftKings points over the last 12 rounds.
Has gained strokes putting and off the tee in six straight starts; is ranked second in this field in strokes gained putting over the last 12 rounds as well.

Projected PGA DFS ownership: DraftKings: 30.6%

Latest PGA DFS Content

Brooks Koepka: Grades: C, B Values: C, C

Koepka has only managed 22nd- and 31st-place finishes at the first two events. Still, there are plenty of reasons to like him here. His price is the undoubtedly the biggest factor, as he is just $7,800 on DraftKings, which is extremely palatable since he will start at 2 under par with McIlroy ($9,300) and Xander Schauffele ($8,900), who are both far more expensive.

Koepka does not have the course history of those two players, but he has not been a huge slouch at East Lake either, finishing third and sixth in 2019 and 2017. While his approach and putting are inconsistent, his off-tee game looks in fine form, and he has gained at least two strokes off the tee in nine straight starts. The value certainly shines through in the Awesemo model too, as Koepka is ninth in projected points despite being the 16th-most expensive player on the slate. Buying the dip on Koepka here seems prudent, and he is a core play to build around this week.

The Stats:

Has gained two strokes or more off the tee in nine straight starts.
Is second in DraftKings points over the last 50 rounds; has scored 84 or more DraftKings points in four of his last five starts.

Projected PGA DFS ownership: DraftKings: 23.8%

Low-Owned PGA DFS GPP Flier

Sam Burns

Burns is the lowest-priced player on DraftKings of the 4-under starting group this week (which also includes Harris English, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Abraham Ancer). Despite the discount on Burns relative to the other players in his group, however, he is a low-sentiment play, likely due to his salary, which puts him in front of Koepka and Viktor Hovland. Burns should be getting some respect here from DFS players, though, especially in GPPs. He enters having made 68 birdies over his last three starts, two of which have yielded top-10 finishes.

The playoffs are all about momentum, and over the last 12 rounds Burns is fourth in DraftKings points and second in birdies. The venue this week also could be a great benefit for Burns, who has some of the strongest Bermuda splits on tour and has gained 40 strokes on Bermuda greens over his last 50 rounds (tops in this field by far). With his ownership trending towards the bottom 10, he makes for a great GPP target here.

Projected PGA DFS ownership: DraftKings: 16.6%

DraftKings Top Three Low-Owned Plays

It is a 30-man field with one person out, so no one will be close to under 5% owned this week. Still, we will discuss some potential overlooked names here.

Hideki Matsuyama ($6,400)

Matsuyama comes into this week off a couple of slow starts in the playoffs. He also recently busted at the Wyndham as heavy chalk, so his sentiment could not be much lower. Still, it was only a month ago he lost in a three-man playoff and putted half-decently on Bermuda greens at TPC Southwind. He has played East Lake a ton and has decent history here, so a big week could be coming.

Billy Horschel ($5,100)

Horschel is trending as one of the lowest-owned players under $6,000 on DraftKings, which is surprising since he is a former winner at East Lake and has a great Donald Ross course history. His off week at the BMW Championship should keep ownership super low here, and he putted well on Bermuda his last time at Southwind.

Bryson DeChambeau ($12,300)

DeChambeau projects as the second-lowest owned of the big four in play this week (Rahm, Cantlay and Finau are the others). He and Cantlay both seem to have much lower sentiment than Rahm, who projects in the top five for ownership. DeChambeau’s ball striking is trending very well, though, and he has made 76 birdies over his last three starts.

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