The wait is over and PGA DFS is back this week with the 2021 Sentry Tournament of Champions. The host course of this no-cut event is the Plantation Course (par 73, 7596 yards) at Kapalua in Maui, Hawaii. This event was formerly reserved for golfers who were victorious the prior season, but the PGA has expanded and is also including every player who qualified for the 2020 Tour Championship to Maui, giving us a field of 42 golfers this week. Below are some of my favorite PGA DFS picks of the week for both DraftKings and FanDuel based on Awesemo’s Top Golfers Tool. This tool was designed by Alex “Awesemo” Baker to provide leverage scores for each golfer in the field, based on their ownership, salary and the player’s chances of finishing inside the top-6 or winning the tournament.
PGA DFS Picks: Leverage Leaders for the Sentry Tournament of Champions
Dustin Johnson
Awesemo PGA DFS Leverage Score: DraftKings: 23%, FanDuel: 1.3%
Dustin Johnson currently carries the week’s highest DraftKings leverage score per the Awesemo Top Golfer Tool. You might be thinking, how does the highest priced golfer of the week on DraftKings carry the most leverage? Well, based on Awesemo’s simulations, Johnson has by far the best chances of carding a win this weekend in Maui. His current Awesemo win percentage is 16.7%, the next best odds after him are John Rahm at 13.1%. Furthermore, Johnson sports an ownership projection of 21.7% in DraftKings PGA contests, only the 5th highest number in this field.
This will be Johnson’s 11th time appearing in Kapalua, and the 2020 Masters Champion has had tremendous success at the seaside venue throughout his career. He has produced eight top-10 finishes at the Plantation Course in ten appearances, including a pair of wins. One of those was in 2013, the second more recently in 2018. Johnson has gained more total strokes at this track than any other golfer in Hawaii this week. He also ranks 1st in nearly every single strokes gained metric when we compare all of these golfer’s prior 24 rounds on tour. All in all, Johnson is clearly mispriced and overlooked for his high win equity at the Plantation Course. I highly recommend finding some exposure. Do note that Johnson’s ownership on FanDuel is expected to be nearly double what it is on DraftKings, making him a far less appealing GPP option on that site.
Collin Morikawa
Awesemo PGA DFS Leverage Scores: DraftKings: 5.5%, FanDuel: 5.2%
Morikawa, currently the #7 ranked player in the world, is expected to be the lowest owned golfer of the top-20 priced options on DraftKings this week. After his T-12 at the CJ Cup, the 23-year-old posted back-to-back subpar finishes at the Zozo Championship (T-50) and the Masters (T-44), but he then rebounded with a T-10 at the DP World Championship in Dubai just four weeks ago. The 2020 PGA Championship winner shot under par in his final three rounds of this tournament. Since this finish came overseas, both DraftKings and FanDuel didn’t include this result in Morikawa’s game log. This makes the average DFS player think his recent form is much weaker than it actually is, hence Morikawa’s low expected ownership.
Via Awesemo’s Top Golfer Tool, the Cal product presents the 14th best odds to post a top-6 finish this week and Morikawa also ranks 9th in SGT2G and 9th in SG APP over his past 24 rounds. Morikawa was excellent in his course debut at Kapalua last year, ranking 3rd in SGT2G and 3rd in birdies gained, lifting him to a T7 finish. He brings elite upside every time he tees up a golf ball, we must capitalize on people over looking Morikawa this week.
Andrew Landry
Awesemo PGA DFS Leverage Score: DraftKings: -4.8%, FanDuel: 0.7%
Landry hasn’t played competitively in nearly two months, but in his last start he carded a T-4 at the RSM Classic. For the week, the 33-year-old ranked 3rd in SGT2G, 7th in SG APP, 10th in SG on the par fours and T-3 in bogeys avoided at the Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia. He gained 12.3 strokes total at that event, the most he has gained in 17 starts, and the track featured Bermuda greens, just like the greens he will see this week at the Plantation Course.
Landry has now made six consecutive cuts on Bermuda, and his two career wins at the PGA level have both come this type of surface. He did well in his debut here last year (T-22), but Landry is an appealing cheap option with big upside for the Tournament of Champions in both DraftKings and FanDuel PGA contests, and he is expected to come with essentially no ownership on the latter.
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