Daily Fantasy Sports: PGA Championship Lineup Tips

Take a look at our Daily Fantasy Sports Lineup Tips for the PGA Championship:

The Course

Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri is the location of the PGA Championship this year. The course plays as a 7300-yard par 70 course with a lot of trees and a fair amount of bunkers this week. The course hasn’t been played much, so we don’t have a super clear understanding of what to look for. Course analysis shows that the fairways are lined with trees in most spots, which should force poor OTT game to really hurt golfers. This course probably compares most to the tournament just last week in terms of what we are looking for in golfers. We want a well-rounded golfer that can play above average in every facet of the game, as everything should be tested here. I think the winning score will be low, but not insanely low and I think we will have a cut a little better than even. The other main point of this course if the green size. The greens here are really big and being able to put the ball close on the first putt. I think this will really penalize legitimately bad putters because their 3-putt percentage may be much higher than normal this week.

The golfers

This field is obviously stacked and targeting golfers is most importantly really personal preference. Look into what you really want out of your golfers here and target that part of the field, whether its elite drivers, elite putters, just overall solid players that can do it all at an above-average clip, or anything else you may like. Anyone in the top half of this field really has the talent to have a monster week and take the trophy home if they are one. I suggest you find conviction in whatever angles you find best and really go for it this week.

Rory McIlroy seems like the guy that has everything going for him recently. Rory hasn’t closed anything out recently, but he has been in the mix and his OTT game has been elite. Rory’s putting is what concerns me here, but if Rory wins this week, it’s because the rest of his game is so sharp that all he has are 7-foot birdie putts. Hopefully, I can get over the field with Rory without going crazy.

Tiger Woods may go overlooked after the poor weekend he had at the Bridgestone last week, but I am unconcerned with the actual scores he posted. After his Sunday round last week, Woods said that he was just going for everything and trying to practice being as aggressive as possible. When golfers play like that, they’re going to bogey holes. If the ownership stays down on Tiger, which I think it will, I will go back to the well with someone who has been leading on the weekend in 2 of his last 3 tournaments.

Jon Rahm sets up well for this course. Rahm has struggled in majors early in his career, but the PGA sets up much better for him than the other 3. If you haven’t watched Rahm play much, I’d describe him as someone who gets flustered rather quickly. In the first 3 majors, your nerves almost always get tested and Rahm eventually falls apart after a bad bounce or an unlucky lie. This tournament has always been much more scoring-friendly and I think it should stay that way this weekend. This course should play like a standard PGA Tour golf course and that definitely helps Rahm. I think Rahm’s constant underperformance in majors will keep people off of him this weekend, which is a great opportunity to hop on.

Paul Casey is just really good at golf and he should be more expensive. Casey just churns out good performances on a weekly basis and he should suit this course just fine. Casey is a great ball striker, that just does everything well besides putt. Casey has flashed the ability to get hot with the putter and go nuclear, and he has also shown that he can top 10 without a great putting performance. Casey will be a core play this week for myself and many others.

Joaquin Niemann is one of my favorite cheap plays on the board for 3 reasons. 1. TALENT. This kid is 19 and has 4 top 10’s in 11 Tour starts this year. Um, that’s absurd and I don’t think it’s a fluke at all. 2. Niemann is one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the game today already. He hits the ball a mile and also hits the ball straight. These tree-lined fairways should really benefit him, as he shouldn’t have much of the problem setting himself up for a good second shot. 3. The upside is undeniable. This kid can score like the best of them and has won tournaments all of his life. I don’t think the stage is too big for him to go out and kill it this weekend.

Luke List is an interesting play at a cheap price tag this week. List is a bomber with the ability to really play solid golf at times. List isn’t the best iron player. He’s not the best putter at all. He does have the ability to use both of those clubs well enough to hang around the top of the leaderboard. This makes List a GPP dart for me because I want the upside I think he possesses.

Danny Willett is purely a play on talent alone. He has been struggling with injuries for a long time now, but he seems to have found his groove again recently. If so, you are getting a much better golfer than his price tag at what I think will still be low ownership. Willett has missed 10 of 16 cuts this year and that will instantly stop most people from even thinking about him this week. If Willett is low-owned, I will have a lot more exposure than the field this week.