The new season of the PGA TOUR is about to be underway as they head to Silverado Resort and Spa for the Fortinet Championship. Matt Vincenzi already touched on which stats matter most at this course, so I’m going to dive into which golfers our projections are highest on this week.
Once our PGA projections roll in, I like to use our Lineup Builder to run 150 lineups with no restrictions in the settings. This allows me to see which golfers our projections are trying to jam in when you run the optimizer. Overall, it’s an easy way to get an overview of which golfers our PGA DFS projections view as the best combination of raw points and value.
In this piece, I’ll highlight golfers who were put into at least 60% of lineups when the optimizer was run with no restrictions in the settings.
Don’t forget about the other tools that FantasyLabs has to offer, such as the Trends tool and PGA Correlation Dashboard.
This analysis may reference Strokes Gained, a set of proprietary metrics generated by the PGA TOUR using millions of data points to calculate how many shots on average it takes a player to get the ball in the hole from every distance and situation.
Strokes Gained is now available in the FantasyLabs PGA Models.
Jon Rahm ($12,100 DraftKings)
Even at $12,100 on DraftKings, the optimizer run put Rahm in 89% of lineups (133/150). This shouldn’t be too surprising when you look at his odds to win and finish inside the top 10 in our Player Models. Bryan Mears wrote a fantastic article on how top-10 odds may be one of the most predictive metrics for fantasy performance that we have.
Note: LT Adj Rd Score is a course-and-field adjusted catch-all metric.
Ram’s Median and Ceiling Projections are 10 and 12 points higher than runner-up Webb Simpson’s projection. Not to mention, Rahm’s Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score) is a full stroke better than the next closest golfer (also Webb: 67.9 vs. 68.9):
Charley Hoffman ($8,800 DraftKings)
When I ran the optimizer, Hoffman just made the cutoff as he was put into 63% of lineups (94/150). Surprisingly, Hoffman ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and first in Strokes Gained: Approach in this field over the last 50 rounds.
The only golfers who’ve been better than Hoffman over that time frame are Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, and Will Zalatoris. Hoffman’s price allows him to fit into just about any lineup style this week.
Additionally, Hoffman’s 69.9 LT Adj Rd Score is tied for the sixth-best mark in the field. According to our PGA Correlation Dashboard, LT Adj Rd Score has been shown to correlate well with fantasy scoring.
Pat Perez ($7,900 DraftKings)
Perez has been solid, boasting a top 15 Recent and LT Adj Rd Score. And since April, he’s missed just three cuts across 13 tournaments. Overall, Perez’s Strokes Gained metrics don’t jump off the page as he ranks 27th in Strokes Gained: Approach and 26th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.
And even though he ranks 96th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, he still doesn’t get into too much trouble on his tee shots since he ranks 26th in Good Drives Gained, per Fantasy National. If his irons are solid this week, and he putts near his average (fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting), Perez should have a good week.
As of Tuesday morning, Perez has a Buzz Score of 5.0 and a Sentiment Rating of 100% from FanShare in our models, so he is gaining some steam in the industry early on.
Lanto Griffin ($7,300 DraftKings)
Griffin can be a tough golfer to judge, but he’s projecting as the best value in Pts/Sal in our models. In our Trends tool, when Lanto has a comparable salary and outright odds, he’s averaged a solid 55.6% Consistency Rating with a +10.72 Plus/Minus.
His metrics don’t jump off the page, but not many metrics do for a golfer this cheap. Lanto ranks 28th in Strokes Gained: Approach and 23rd in Strokes Gained: Total, which isn’t bad for the No. 40 golfer in DraftKings pricing.
