All of my PGA DFS picks content is geared toward providing information that will help you with all your DraftKings and FanDuel daily fantasy golf and wagering decisions in the best way possible. This is the last of my week-long written material for the Valero Texas Open, and now it’s FREE!
I am primarily a GPP PGA DFS player and enjoy making up to 450 lineups. As such, these allocations are likely not exact, but they are targets for the mass-entry GPPs. If this is your first time reading it, let’s go over what you can find in it.
Article Index
- Key/Legend
- Last week recap
- TV schedule and weather update
- My entire player pool
- Notes on the chalkiest players
Key/Legend
The following sections define who will play and what recommended allocation you should play them at:
- Core: We will start with these golfers in every lineup. At least two from my core will be in every one of the lineups.
- PFs: We all have our guys, and these are mine. They will be in the player pool at a minimum of 20%. I have seven, and they are quite common: Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, Brian Harman, Collin Morikawa, Brian Stuard and, at times, Bryson DeChambeau.Â
- Chalk Zone: These golfers are expected to be the most popular golfers of the week. They are supposed to be widely owned, and so, in a massive GPP, a winning lineup likely won’t have more than one of the guys listed in this area.
- Alternates: On the PGA Tour, alternates are lucky to get in the field each week. However, it happens all the time due to injuries. In this section we’ll identify a few lineup alternates that can help fill a lineup and still provide some decent upside.
- Recommended Allocation: The percentage of time said golfer should be in your lineups, or at least what we are advocating.
- Projected Ownership: The percentage that the field will have said golfer in their lineups.
- Variance: The difference between Recommended Allocation and Projected Ownership. A favorable variance gives you leverage.
Last Week’s Recap
I finally had the breakthrough I had been searching for. Utilizing the best value on the board in Joel Dahmen, pairing him up with some of my favorites in the event like Justin Suh and leveraging an under-owned Emiliano Grillo took me to the top of the leaderboard. It was my first $20,000-plus hit in some time, filling the coffers up for the next couple of weeks with the big contests on the horizon. I missed all the big dollars in match play and my GPP was a slight loss, which is reflected in these results.
Lastly, I fell asleep on Wednesday night early and forgot I had reserved 59 lineups on FanDuel. My 4-for-6 lineup did not cash, so I had a $0 return on FanDuel. That was a brutal beat given my expected player pool. Funny enough, something eerily similar happened in my last $20,000-plus win.
Expected Weather
As the week has moved on, it has looked like less and less of a draw bias. Opening the week, it certainly looked like the p.m./a.m. wave could escape much of the forecasted wind, but the storm rolling through should be almost out of there by the time tee times starts at 7 a.m. local time. The cold front blowing through will certainly make it chilly for those in the early morning on Thursday, but it is hard to see a weather draw based on some really cold temps in the morning. Just play it straight up this week and hope for the best.
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Valero Texas Open PGA DFS Picks
Of my usual favorites, Will Gordon, Brian Stuard and Jordan Spieth are here.
PGA DFS Picks for The Valero Texas Open
Total Player Pool: 68
Week-Long DFS Contests
DraftKings
- 2 ($555) signature holes
- 1 ($200) driver
- 150 $5 drive the green
- 150 $15 Resurgence
- 5 $55 up and downs
- A bunch of satellites to win a $4,444 ticket to next week
FanDuel
- Just GPPs and one main lineup.
Core Golfers (DraftKings Price/FanDuel Price)
Abraham Ancer ($9,700 DraftKings/$10,900 FanDuel) 75.7 Projected PointsÂ
Ancer is $700 cheaper than Scottie Scheffler and has similar upside in an event like this. Based on the latest update from Alex “Awesemo” Baker, all of these golfers above $9,500 are projected to be around 20% owned. Check the rest of the full projections here. Plus, Scheffler is tough to nail, and given the fact that he’s the third-highest-priced golfer on the slate, it’s easy to just match the field and feel whole about the ownership. Ancer is 2-for-2 in his last two trips down the street from his house, as he resides in San Antonio.
Corey Conners ($9,500 DraftKings/$11,000 FanDuel) 76.2 Projected Points
The defending champion of this event seems to set up absolutely perfectly. Conners relies on his premium ball-striking and can, hopefully, match the field with his short game. If there is any course on the PGA Tour that highlights these skill sets better, I am not aware of it. It is always tough to repeat on the PGA Tour, but since Conners is $9,500, he does not need to bring home the win. Just a top-10 would likely provide the value needed in this range.
Brendan Steele ($9,100 DraftKings/$10,600 FanDuel) 68.7 Projected Points
Quietly, Steele is returning to his 2017 DFS Darling form, where he makes every cut, always puts up a good amount of points and every third week had a chance at a top-10 or better. Because of that, and the no missed cuts the entire calendar year, his price has risen all the way up to $9,100, which many gamers aren’t ready to pay. He is projected as one of the two lowest-owned golfers above $9,000, and for no reason either, as everything seems to profile quite well.
Cameron Davis ($8,800 DraftKings/$9,800 FanDuel) 68,9 Projected Points
It was not the greatest Florida Swing for Davis, missing the cut twice and finishing 33rd at the Honda. However, TPC Sawgrass was not a great fit for Davis’ game, as he relies a bit more on power than finesse. That should fare much better at TPC San Antonio than it did at TPC Sawgrass. Plus, there is the fact that he gained over eight strokes ball striking at the Honda while losing around that number on and around the green. That will not happen this week on much easier surfaces to both chip and putt on.
Aaron Wise ($8,000 DraftKings/$9,600 FanDuel) 64.9 Projected Points
Sam Burns ($8,000/$9,600/$9,900) 68.4 Projected PointsÂ
These are two golfers that have way more talent than results have shown on the PGA Tour up until now, even with Wise winning in his first year. Both of them had every accolade one could want coming out of college, but the games haven’t materialized like some of their peers in Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff. While these two may not be on the superstardom level those three are, they aren’t far behind. In this type of field, at mild ownership and this salary, playing them in GPP formats makes all the sense in the world.
Others above $8,000 that made a big-dollar lineup but are a lesser part of the GPP core:
- Zach Johnson and Lanto Griffin
Branden Grace ($7,800 DraftKings/$9,200 FanDuel) 64.4 Projected Points
It has been a resurgent year for Grace, which includes a win at Puerto Rico just a few weeks back. But that wasn’t his only good finish, as he had gone on a streak of making a couple of cuts in a row and finishing in 20th at the Genesis Invitational. Since his win, Grace finished 26th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational before missing the cut on the number at the Players. Still looking for a Masters berth (since winning in Puerto Rico doesn’t give him that), he has another chance to head to Augusta with another win this week.
Doug Ghim ($7,300 DraftKings/$9,100 FanDuel) 66.1 Projected Points
This guy is not going to be in play forever, but at least he has provided quite a bit of return this year. Though, when he was $8,800 two weeks ago at the Honda Classic, he went on to lost 5.2 strokes on in and around the greens in two rounds, not even coming close to the cut line. He did, however, continue his good ball striking, gaining 2.4 strokes total in the two rounds. Those numbers looked bad at Honda, but it could be a spot of regression. However, it could also have been more of a terrible short-game week, which won’t happen in San Antonio.
Gambles of the Week
Golfers below $7,300 that made it into a high-dollar lineup.
Harry Higgs ($7,100 DraftKings/$8,800 FanDuel) 62.8 Projected Points
It was a huge dry spell for Higgs after his good opening tournament in Hawaii, missing three of his next four cuts, and the only one he made he came in last. Since then, though, Higgs has made the cut at each of the next two events, including a 19th at the Honda. He is a young, talented golfer with a ton of personality and the ability to rack up birdies if he makes the weekend. Form seems to be coming in, so fade him when that’s happening.
Matthew NeSmith ($7,100 DraftKings/$8,800 FanDuel) 62.8 Projected Points
The more the week has gone on, the more the parallels become evident. Nesmith is a poor man’s Corey Conners, relying heavily on his ball striking to get by, with little to no short game. NeSmith should profile well on a course that has easy greens and requires premium ball striking. Now, the ball striking didn’t look great at Honda, which does create some concern, but he was able to make it up with his around-the-green work. Maybe with the last little spot of regression, he took the extra weekends off to work on his short game.
Another weird thing about his stats is that every other day he either gained with his approaches or off the tee at the Honda, but he didn’t gain in both once. Hopefully that variance will change this week.
Kevin Chappell ($6,900 DraftKings/$8,500 FanDuel) 59.7 Projected Points
This last spot was between him and Adam Schenk ($6,800). Chappell’s win here a few years ago was a very profitable PGA DFS week and at the time appeared to be a big stepping stone for him to become one of the best players in the world. But a serious back injury and subsequent surgery knocked him out for some time. Playing on a major medical, Chappell has been able to gather up a decent amount of FedEx cup points but needs a couple of good starts in his 12 remaining. He will only be playing a few times this year. Clearly he has been smart about where he plays, playing in events that will help him get his full-time job back. Then he can worry about playing in the big events.
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Chalk Zone Key
This is how I’m allocating my shares to the expected chalk of the week. For this article, anyone projected over 10% for this week’s Valero Texas Open will be considered chalk. In order by salary:
O = Overweight
E = Equal Weight
U = Underweight
- Tony Finau (U)
- Scottie Scheffler (E to U)
- Hideki Matsuyama (E to O)
- Ryan Palmer (E to O)
- Cameron Tringale (U)
- Si Woo Kim (U)
- Chris Kirk (U)
- Keegan Bradley (O)
- Charles Howell III (U)
- Jhonattan Vegas (O)
- Denny McCarthy (E to U)
- Sepp Straka (E to O)
- Adam Long (E to U)
PGA DFS Alternates (5-15% GPPs)
- Matt Kuchar
- Adam Hadwin
- Joel Dahmen
- Rickie Fowler
- Harold Varner
- Ryan Moore
- Danny Willett
- Matt Wallace
- Erik van Rooyen
- Gary Woodland
- Sebastian Munoz
- Byeong Hun An
- Phil Mickelson
- Sam Ryder
- Denny McCarthy
- Sepp Straka
- Chase Seiffert
- Bernd Wiesberger
- Greyson Sigg
- Adam Schenk
- Tom Lewis
- Roger Sloan
- Brandon Hagy
- Peter Malnati
- Akshay Bhatia
- Ryan Armour
- Bo Hoag
- Bronson Burgoon
- Michael Gligic
- Brice Garnett
- Tom Hoge
PGA DFS Holes In One for the Valero Texas Open
- Cameron Champ
- Camilo Villegas
- Wesley Bryan
- Austin Cook
- Andrew Landry
- Vincent Whaley
- Beau Hossler
- Cameron Percy
- Doc Redman
- Rafa Cabrera Bello
- Nate Lashley
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