PGA DFS: Picks & Preview for the Sony Open including: Matt Kuchar

What an opening week on the PGA Tour with a three-way playoff between some of the games best. Now we turn the page to the first real PGA Tour event of the year. With this First Cut article, I aim to cover everything essential for the upcoming PGA DFS week as a first glance article, one you can expect every week in the industry.

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Here’s what you can expect to see in the article:

Tournament intro
Course commentary
Sweatsheet and scorecard
DFS preview
Player and statistical preview
Summary

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PGA DFS Tournament Intro: The Sony Open

This Week’s Course(s): Waialae Country Club

Tournament Format: 144 players: 36 hole-cut, Top 65 and ties make the weekend.

Course and Tournament Commentary

From 100-yard wide fairways and elevation changes on every hole this past week to flat holes with tree-lined fairways, we see a totally different side of Hawaii this week. Waikiki Beach is about five miles away, a big tourist destination for Oahu Island. This course can be considered oceanfront with a couple of holes along the backside right on the beach where the best view is from the sand.

I Island hopped on my trip out to Hawaii, attending this event as I did with the last tournament there. Beyond the drastic differences in elevation changes and fairway width, the courses also play three strokes different in their par. This course is a par 70 with only two par 5’s, both on the back end of the nine holes, and those account for over 30% of the DraftKings scoring.

The Sony Open is one of the longest standing tournaments on the tour’s rotation, having been around since the mid-60s. That’s not something you see very often. All types of winners have come out of this tournament, with bombers like Ryan Plamer, Justin Thomas and Jimmy Walker (twice) and non-bombers like Matt Kuchar and Zach Johnson. That means it is a second shot course, giving any golfer that gets hot with his irons a chance this week.

Course Statistics

Par: 70

Yards: 7044

Course Difficult 2019: 39/49

Hole Dispersion:

Par 3’s – 204, 176, 194, 194
The Par 4’s- 480, 423, 422, 467, 450, 454, 341, 440, 477, 430, 400, 417
Par 5’s- 506, 551

Grass Types:

Bermuda throughout

Designer:

Seth Raynor

PGA DFS Sweatsheet

PGA DFS Preview

To my surprise, DraftKings is giving $100,000 up top for the $5 but not giving us any more money to the prize pool.

Fantasy Golf Player & Statistical Preview

PGA DFS Commentary

23 golfers are heading over from Maui to join the rest of the PGA Tour gang on Oahu. 29 golfers out of the world’s top 100 are here in Honolulu to compete for the PGA Tour’s first full-field event of the year. It will be headlined by Tournament of Champions winner Justin Thomas, along with the guy he beat in the playoff, Patrick Reed. Hideki Matsuyama and Matt Kuchar round out the golfers ranked in the top 25 that are here to compete.

A strong contingent follows them, however, with Presidents Cup participants Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Sungjae Im and Abraham Ancer all making the trip out west for this week’s event. A few other names people will want to keep an eye on include Shugo Imahira and Collin Morikawa.

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Fantasy Golf Statistical Preview: Sony Open

I mentioned a bit earlier how easy these fairways are to hit, and not just for the straight, accurate hitters but for everyone. Thus, it makes driving accuracy basically obsolete and puts heavy emphasis on driving distance. Look at the past winners here; it would certainly fit that narrative. Let’s take a look at our quick fix stat report:

Driving Accuracy vs. Driving Distance: With all types of winners here, the course won’t favor distance or accuracy. It’s all about the second shot.
Strokes Gained Tee to Green Analysis: Strokes gained around the green for winners of this event have been almost non-existent with an average of less than a half shot per round over the last five or more years. Strokes gained on the approach, however, have been most prevalent, averaging close to 1.5 per round coupled with a hot putter.
Putting…How good do you need to be here? Really good, to the tune of over two per round.

Join Ben Rasa and I Wednesday night at 8:30 p.m. EST on the Awesemo YouTube channel for some more great info on this week’s tournament!

Cheers!

As always, message me on Twitter or in our Premium PGA Slack Chat!

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].