PGA DFS Picks: The First Cut for the Corales Puntacana Championship

This is the first installment in our weekly PGA content for DraftKings, FanDuel and SuperDraft, breaking down the best PGA DFS picks and everything you need to know for the Corales Puntacana Championship.

If this is your first time reading the article, or you’ve forgotten all about PGA DFS, then I’ll give you a quick summary of what’s to come:

Tournament Intro
Course Breakdown and PGA DFS Sweatsheet
Player Preview
Statistical Preview

PGA DFS Picks: The Corales Puntacana Championship

A brisk change of pace for this week, with a lot of unrecognizable names to most, for a large portion of the field. Names like Akshay Bhatia and Will Zalatoris will be incredibly popular this week, at least among the community. Let’s dig into what we know.

The Tournament

We are now in the third year of the tournament, as the course and resort have gotten rave reviews for the first two years. It was easy for the tour to come back here for the third straight year, even with all the COVID problems. As of right now, the only restriction going is a curfew. But, from my time in the Dominican during my honeymoon, there isn’t much “exploring” done outside of the resort anyway, so I don’t see that being a problem for the players. If a player does test positive, he’d have to quarantine for two weeks on the island before being allowed to do anything. That could be quite tricky, and certainly an element for some players who don’t want to get caught in the Dominican for a couple of weeks.

The tour had two years of what I like to call an “exhibition” match here, with the Korn Ferry Tour competing in 2016 and 2017. Those were won by Dominic Bozzelli and Nate Lashley.

The tournament is played at the beautiful Corales Puntacana Golf & Resort Club, a course that measures 7,600 yards and boasts a par of 72.

The Course: Corales Golf Club

A seaside course, with many holes that have views of the Caribbean, it is quite picturesque. Six holes are right on the ocean. Some of the course winds inland a bit, but there are many lakes and creeks coming from the sea. A Tom Fazio design, the course opened in 2010 and has a few unique characteristics. One of those is the “Devil’s Elbow,” a forced carry on the 18th hole tee shot over the cliff-lined Bay of Corales.

Let’s check out how it’s played over the last couple of years and what we can learn from it.

Tournament Format

There are 144 golfers with a cut after 36 holes and the top 65 and ties making the cut

Course Facts & Figures

Par and Yardage

Par 72: 7,600 yards

Course Difficulty

30/47 or -.926 under par (71.074)

Hole Dispersion

Four Par 3’s: 239,204,265,214
10 Par 4’s: 433, 410, 465, 387, 399, 496, 446, 421, 461, 501
Four Par 5’s: 565, 515, 623, 626

Grass Types & Hazards

Grass Type: Paspalum through the course*
Average Green Size: n/a
Water Hazards: n/a
Bunkers: n/a
Rough Length: n/a

Designer

Tom Fazio

Facts and Figures

Off the Tee: We are going from some of the toughest fairways to hit all year at Winged Foot to some of the easiest to hit here at just over 70%. It ranked fifth in the 2019-20 season.
Approach to the Green: A higher-than-normal fairway hit rate will always mean a higher green in regulation rate. The greens were hit in regulation about two-thirds of the time, ranking it 23 out of 47 on tour last year.
Around the Green: Of the 34% of the time a golfer were to miss the green, he would get up and down for par 60% of the time, good enough for 16th easiest on the PGA Tour.
On the Green: Greens are trickier than the average at 1.6 putts per green, ranking it 17th hardest on tour.

Sweatsheet

The two front-side par 5’s are by far the two easiest on the course. In total, they accounted for 31% of the total DraftKings scoring. Adding in the other two par 5’s, they total almost 50% of the total scoring. Other easy holes include the first, third, sixth and 16th. The par 3’s play very difficult. In all, all four total less than 10% of the total scoring and had fewer than 150 birdies.

Player Preview

Much like the weather in the Northeast this time of year, the field is quite a brisk change from last week’s tournament that featured pretty much every good golfer in the world except for Brooks Koepka. This week, not so much, as the top of the OWGR chart is littered with European Tour players, including Henrik Stenson, the lowest-ranked player in the field. Sam Horsfield will hope to obtain a couple of negative tests so he can get a start, but my guess is he won’t be allowed to enter the country in the Dominican Republic, seeing how he just tested positive last week. That is a brutal blow for him, as I’m sure he was looking forward to these couple of starts on the PGA Tour after tearing up the European Tour restart.

Thomas Detry, Kurt Kitayama and Matthias Schwab all join Horsfield, if he can play, down in the Dominican and look to be some of the favorites of the event. Also playing in this week’s event are the Korn Ferry Tour grads. One of the new qualifications for the Alternate Field PGA Tour event this year is the top Korn Ferry grads from last year.

The most notable name, or at least now after last week, is Will Zalatoris, who has now finished inside the top 20 in 12 straight starts, including the sixth at last week’s U.S. Open. He could end up as one of the favorites this week.

Previous Winners and Cutline for the Corales PuntaCana Championship

2019: Graeme McDowell (-18)
2018: Brice Garnett (-18)

Statistical Comparison for PGA DFS Picks

Driving Accuracy vs. Driving Distance: Certainly, when we see these two golfers who won the event, one would think winners need to hit the fairway, as neither of these guys ranked inside the top 125 of driving distance over the last couple of years. That probably lends credence to this being more of a second-shot course than a first, but the longer par 5’s and par 3’s should lead to length becoming an asset here this week.
Strokes Gained Tee to Green Analysis: Because this is an alt-field event and in a different country, the shot link data hasn’t traveled there in the last few years. Shot link is the data that makes strokes gained info possible. So, all I can do is look at our baseline stats and see that both McDowell and Garnett hit at least 70% of their greens in regulation and 70% of their fairways.
Putting; How good do they need to be here?: Again, with no strokes gained information, this is rather hard to tell if one needs to be a superb putter or not. Given the fact that McDowell ranked fourth in 2019 and Garnett 75th, one would suggest being an above-average putter is a benefit here.

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Author

Jason Rouslin

Jason established his roots in the littlest state that could...Rhode Island. But after 29 years of bitter cold, and only being able to play golf 4 months a year, upended those roots and moved to Florida. Now four years later, Jason is a husband to Sarah and father of two boys, James & Myles. A dog and more specifically Lab lover (Bella), he dedicates his time to serve as the lead of PGA content at Awesemo.com. In the time he is not diving into the PGA stats and covering this week's current tournament, you can find him researching and trading stocks, on the golf course, at Disney World, on a hike, or somewhere in between. Want to chat? Have a question about Golf/Stocks or anything else? Hop on twitter and give him a message @dfsgolfer23. You can also contact Jason by emailing [email protected].