The PGA TOUR continues its worldwide travels this week and heads for Bermuda after a week in Japan followed by one stateside. THE CJ CUP in South Carolina drew a top field and Rory McIlroy claimed the top spot in the World Rankings with his second straight win at the event. This week, the field will not include nearly as many big names, but we should still get a great tournament at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
The tournament debuted in 2019 opposite a WGC tournament, but this year will be the third straight year it will offer full FedExCup points, including 500 to the winner. It’s an important place for recent graduates and other players looking to keep their PGA TOUR card to grab some early season points and put themselves in a good position heading into 2023.
Each year since it began, the event has been held at the Port Royal Golf Course, designed by the famed Robert Trent Jones. Like last week’s event at Congaree, the course plays as a Par-71, but the similarities basically end there. That course could stretch to over 7,600 yards, but this week’s track only plays at 6,828. Accuracy is more at a premium, and low scores are much more available than last week, but some of the same trends apply.
I always lean into SG: Approach as the most predictive advanced stat, but this week I’m also looking closely at SG: Around the Green, which has been key for success at this course in the past. Long hitters can definitely take a “bomb and gouge” approach like last year’s winner Lucas Herbert, who won the first PGA TOUR event of his career. He held off Patrick Reed and Danny Lee to claim the win, while Patrick Rodgers ($9,700) finished fourth, and Scott Stallings and Taylor Pendrith rounded out the top five.
Rodgers is the only one of those top-five finishers back this year, and the field this week doesn’t contain many of the biggest names in golf. Don’t worry, though, it’s still a lot of fun to play from a fantasy perspective. The trends and models mentioned below can be even more key this week since most golf fans may be less familiar with many of the options in play.
In this weekly post, the focus is players who are strong plays in GPP contests. These contests usually have lots of entries and pay out big prizes to the top few percent. One example is the DraftKings $300 K Pitch + Putt, which pays out $100K to the winner. In large contests like this one, it is critical to try and target players who have a chance to outperform salary expectations.
The players highlighted will be good options if they deliver in all formats, but they come with risk factors that usually keep them from being the safest plays. Safety and reliability should be the focus of lineups in cash and double-up contests where finishing in the very top spot isn’t quite as important, while GPPs call for high-risk, high-reward options with low projected ownership. To find specific guidance for those contests, check out the other articles in our Daily Fantasy Golf coverage for this week.
No matter how you prefer to play, be sure to use the FantasyLabs PGA Models to help you make the best choices. These models use stats and simulations to highlight different players’ strengths and weaknesses. A couple of key new stats to specifically use for GPP play are Perfect% and SimLeverage, which are further explained here.
Usually, I prefer the Stroked Gained Model, which is very predictive of results. I also tend to lean into players that gain shots on approach since week-to-week putting performance can be extremely volatile, even for the best players on the PGA TOUR.
As you dig into the numbers, you can enjoy the many tools that FantasyLabs offers, including the Lineup Optimizer, which effortlessly creates up to 150 lineups. Alternatively, you can use the Lineup Builder if you prefer a more hands-on approach.
Check out my top picks in each price range listed below.
High-Priced PGA DFS Picks
Adrian Meronk $10,300
There are six players with a salary of at least $10K on this slate, which is a huge salary increase for all these players who usually check in with much lower numbers. For example, Denny McCarthy ($10,400) was just $7,000 last week at THE CJ CUP.
Of the big fish in this small pond, Meronk looks like the best place to get some good leverage and take advantage of his lack of U.S. notoriety. The 29-year-old was born in Germany, represents Poland internationally, and attended East Tennessee State. Recently, he has been DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) and made the cut in 17 of 20 events so far in 2022. His best form was this past spring, when he notched five top 10s in a seven-tournament span, culminating in his win at the Irish Open in June, which made him the first player from Poland to ever win on the DP World Tour.
Meronk is projected for the second-lowest ownership in the top tier of six players at 11.08%. He has the second-highest Perfect% in the field, though, at 22.88%, and offers the highest SimLeverage in the field at 11.92%, while no other player has a mark over 7.2%.
Meronk enters the field as the 61st-ranked player in the world after making the cut in 6-of-7 DP World Tour events this fall, including a top 25 result at the Cazoo Open de France and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. He also made the cut at his last event on the PGA TOUR, finishing T42 at The Open Championship this past summer.
He matches five Pro Trends, which is the second-highest mark in the field. His SG: Tee-to-Green over the past 75 weeks is the fourth-best in the field, and his 3.8784 SG: Total is the top mark in the field by a significant margin.
Nick Hardy $9,800
Hardy has the highest projected ceiling of any player with a projected ownership under 10%. He also brings a solid 2.92% SimLeverage and checks the box in four Pro Trends.
Hardy has played three PGA TOUR events this fall since being promoted from the Korn Ferry Tour. He made the cut in each of those events, including an impressive T5 about a month ago at the Sanderson Farms Championship. In that event, he led the field in SG: Approach and has the kind of shot-making stats that can result in very low scores if his flat stick starts rolling.
Mid-Priced PGA DFS Picks
Nick Taylor $8,800
Another Nick with big upside this week is 34-year-old Candian Nick Taylor. Taylor started the Fall Series strong with a pair of top 20s before missing the cut in his most recent event at the Shriners Children’s Open. He had an especially strong tournament in Napa at the Fortinet Championship, with just an ugly second-round 75 keeping him from being in contention for the win and dropping him into a still-impressive T6.
Taylor has the third-highest rating of all players under $9K, and he has the fourth-highest SG: Tee-to-Green over the past six weeks in the entire field. Vegas also respects his chances this week, giving him a 2.4% Implied Chance to Win the Tournament, which is the highest mark for any player under $9K.
Will Gordon $8,600
Gordon matches up with five of the Pro Trends this week, tied for the second-best total in the entire field with Meronk and Justin Lower ($9,900). He has the fifth-highest rating of all players under $9K, and his ceiling projection and leverage also rank in the top ten in that salary range.
In each of his three events so far this season, Gordon has made the cut but has yet to notch a top 25. He is still riding a tide of momentum from his re-qualifying for full-time PGA TOUR membership on the Korn Ferry Tour, which included a win at the Albertsons Boise Open last August.
Value PGA DFS Picks
Ben Taylor $7,400
Taylor is the only player under $9K in the top 12 in terms of ceiling projection for this week, and he’s the only player over $7K with a Projected Plus/Minus, showing he has ultimate value potential if he reaches near that ceiling.
He has made the cut in five of his past seven events dating back to the end of last season and finished T25 and T39 in his first two events of the year before missing the cut at the Shriners Children’s Open. Taylor has also played this event and made the cut in each of the past two seasons, finishing T28 and T49.
Taylor has produced a 57% upside rate over the past year, meaning he regularly has outproduced his salary-expected results. He, Will Gordon, and Zecheng Dou ($7,600) are the only players under $9K who have over 50% upside on this slate.
Garrick Higgo $7,400
Higgo is a boom-or-bust play, but he comes with a high enough upside to be worth a look in this salary range. Higgo’s name just came up a lot last week since the PGA TOUR returned to the site of his win at The Palmetto Championship at Congaree in June of 2021. Since then, though, the South African has been mostly quiet and has missed the cut in 15 of his past 18 worldwide events.
However, his most recent made cut was an impressive one. He finished solo third and just one shot out of the playoff after a four-under final round at the Sanderson Farms Championship, where he ranked fifth in SG: Tee-to-Green. He was only 0.4% owned in that performance, and while that number is sure to jump this week, he still will be lightly owned.
He has the second-highest SimLeverage of any player in the field, behind only Meronk, so he will be a great value at low ownership if he ends up hitting and contending as he did just a few weeks ago.
The clincher for me on Higgo is how he played last year on this course. He was T10 headed into the final round but struggled on Sunday to post an under-the-radar T34.
Sleeper PGA DFS Picks
Jonathan Byrd $6,800
In tournaments like this, things get wild down here under $7K!
One option to consider is 44-year-old PGA Tour veteran Jonathan Byrd, who has the best Leverage Rating of any player $7K or less, and the second-highest leverage in the entire field.
He has made the cut in four of his six most recent PGA TOUR events, finishing above his salary expectations in each of those four tournaments, highlighted by a T41 at the Barbasol Championship.
While he will be making his first start of this season on the PGA TOUR, he posted three top-25 finishes last season, including one on this track, where he fired a third-round 65 to climb the leaderboard.
Cody Gribble $6,500
Gribble has had a long journey back since claiming his lone PGA TOUR victory at the 2016 Sanderson Farms Championship. He is probably best known for being a teammate of Jordan Speith at Texas, but his rise to the top was derailed due to shoulder surgery, the COVID-19 work stoppage, and the qualifying process to earn his status back.
He matches up with four of the Pro Trends this week, largely on the back of a strong showing back in Jackson, where he finished T30 despite a one-over final round.
He has posted the second-highest SG: Around-The-Green of any player under $7K over the past 75 weeks and the second-highest SG: Total over the past six weeks. The sample size for Gribble is admittedly small, but if he can continue that success and stay healthy, he should be able to post a strong finish and take another big step in his return.
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