Daily Fantasy PGA Picks for DraftKings - RBC Heritage

DFSR is proud to bring you, Chris Durell. He'll be bringing weekly PGA picks, analysis, and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings. As every week in DFS PGA changes with the course setup, field of players and weather, Chris will be providing a range of different picks for cash games as well as upside plays for tournaments. If you have any questions to lineup lock you can reach him a variety of ways. Leave your question/comment below in the comments section, find him in the DFSR Chat room or hit him up on Twitter(@Jager_Bombs9).

Chris is also currently providing his DFS PGA cheatsheet for FREE while it is still in BETA mode. You can also grab a copy of the Salary/DK Points/Ownership Trends Sheet HERE. If you are looking for some help with either sheet please go check out my YouTube video going over this week's sheet for the Masters.

RBC Heritage

Another incredible Masters tournament wrapped up on Sunday with Sergio Garcia finally taking the monkey off his back. In his 74th Major Championship start(record) and 19th Masters appearance(record), he finally broke through with what ended up being a battle of two players(Rose & Garcia). Both made incredible shots as well as mistakes but it was Rose's wayward drive on the playoff hole that opened the door for "El Nino". With Rose missing his Par putt, Garcia had two putts for the win but would only need one to secure his first Green Jacket. I ended up without the Sunday sweat in the Millie Maker I was hoping for(overweight on Spieth) but was 100% entertained by the events that unfolded.

Every year when we transition from the Green Jacket to the Plaid Jacket it has me think of my favorite golf sports movie of all time.Happy Gilmore.

Happy has a point. The color of the jacket doesn't matter, especially for us daily fantasy golf players. This is the mindset we will have to use this week as the field is just nowhere near what we saw last week in Augusta. Tyrrell Hatton(15) comes in ranked the highest in the Official World Golf Rankings and joins Danny Willett(17) and defending champion Branden Grace(20) as the only players inside the Top 20 this week. After those three, however, the field is fairly balanced with talent as 16 of the Top 50 and 41 of the Top 100 are in the field.

Before jumping into the stats, trends and fantasy approach, let's take a look at the course.

The Course

Harbour Town Golf Links
Par 71 - 7,101 Yards
Greens - Bermuda

*Click to enlarge*

Harbour Town Golf Links is a Par 71 so we see just three Par 5's this week with 11 Par 4's. The Pete Dye/Jack Nicklaus design is one of the shortest courses on Tour but don't let that fool you as it can be a very tough challenge with a premium put on ball placement. The fairways are narrow and tree lined but looking at the stats, they haven't been too hard to hit over the years. The greens, on the other hand, are very small difficult to hit.

The Stats & Fantasy Approach

My Top 5 Key Stats:

• Par 4 Scoring Average
• Bogey Avoidance
• Strokes Gained: Approach + Off the Tee
• Strokes Gained: Around the Green/Scrambling
• Par 3 Scoring Average

With 11 Par 4's and seven coming under 450 yards, scoring on these holes will be key this week. I will also be looking closely at Bogey Avoidance as it was a Top 3 correlated stat over the past three years. It will be even more important if the wind gets up like it often does here at Harbour Town. This also brings us to Strokes Gained: Around the Green and Scrambling. The greens are very tough to hit which is going to lead to a ton of scrambling for par from around the green. For cash games, I will rely on the SG: ATG, Scrambling, and Bogey Avoidance much more than for GPP's where I will weigh Strokes Gained: Off the Tee + Approach. To win the tournament or sneak up on the leaderboard late on Sunday, players will not only have to gain strokes on their approach to get birdies but also place the ball in the right spots off the tee to even have a shot at the green.

Cheatsheet Trends

• Only two players(Kevin Kisner & Pat Perez) rank inside the Top 20 in the field in Course History, Stats and Current Form
• Open it up to the Top 30 and we can add two more players(Marc Leishman & Jason Dufner)
• And finally, if we open it up to the Top 50 in all three areas we get seven more names(Molinari, Kuchar, Kaymer, Poulter, Donald, Stuard, and Herman)
• The last two and three of the last four winners have missed the cut the week before at the Masters

For some more in-depth analysis and course breakdown head over to Future of Fantasy where you can find almost any trend possible. Windy round rankings, Pete Dye Course rankings, Bermuda Grass rankings and more. 

For a feel of where ownership is going to be this week, be sure to head over to FanSharSports where they track all the social media mentions of all players throughout the week. They then quantify this data and rank each player in their "Most Tagged List". They have also added Salary Differential, Subject Tags and Projections. All the tools you need to help you become a better daily fantasy golf player.

High End Targets ($9,000+)

Russell Henley
World Golf Ranking (#61)
Vegas Odds (25/1)
Draftkings ($10,700)
FanDuel ($7,900)

Henley tops the charts this week and for different reasons on FanDuel and DraftKings. On FanDuel, his price is just too cheap to pass up which likely to make him chalky but provides so much roster flexibility. On DraftKings, he is the highest ranked player(5th overall) on my cheatsheet of the players $10K and up and should also have a bit of an ownership edge on at least two of them. Matt Kuchar did see a big price jump this week in a much weaker field but won the event in 2014 and finished 5th and 9th the last two years. Branden Grace is the defending champion here and also finished 7th in 2015. I have a feeling that those two combined with Kisner, just under $10K, will soak up a ton of ownership in the upper tier.  That isn't the only reason to like Henley, however, as he entered the Masters as the last man in after his big win at the Shell Houston Open and had a very impressive T11 in Augusta and oh ya might just have had the shot of the tournament. Check it out if you haven't yet or be like me and watch it for the 50th time.

Bill Haas
World Golf Ranking (#39)
Vegas Odds (25/1)
Draftkings ($9,100)
FanDuel ($9,000)

I wrote him up for the Masters and while he did make the cut, he finished with a T41 and the 45th most DraftKings points. I am sticking with the Wake Forest alum this week as he comes back to a course he has had some success at over the last few years. After a T24 in 2013, he withdrew from the 2014 event but came back and has finished T31 and most recently T14 last year. He vaults to #1 on my overall model with his stats that match everything I am looking for. He is 11th the field in SG: APP, 1st in SG: ATG, 10th in Par 3 Scoring, 5th in Par 4 Scoring and 1st overall in Bogey Avoidance. Lock Haas in your lineups in all formats.

Also Consider: Martin Kaymer(GPP)

Mid Tier Targets ($7,000 - $8,900)

Russell Knox 
World Golf Ranking (#23)
Vegas Odds (45/1)
Draftkings ($8,000)
FanDuel ($7,500)

With so many popular chalky plays in this $8K range, I will go a bit contrarian here and roll with Fort Knox. After a fantastic start to the season, he has fallen into a bit of a lull with four missed cuts and 70th place finish in his last five tournaments. This will most definitely drive people away with Leishman, Perez, McGirt, Howell III and more in the same range of salary. Checking out FanShareSports confirms my suspicion of people's feeling of current form over course history as he has only been recommended four times thus far. Players definitely go through these lows but there is no better place to turn a season around than a course you have crushed in the past. This is the case for Knox who has finished 2nd, 18th, and 9th in his only three trips here. I wouldn't trust him in cash games but he makes an excellent GPP play that you won't have to have too many shares to be overweight on this week.

Jim Furyk
World Golf Ranking (#59)
Vegas Odds (35/1)
Draftkings ($7,900)
FanDuel ($9,200)

It appears FanDuel weights course history a little higher than DraftKings in their models as Furyk breaks the $9K barrier over there. This makes him a projected low owned GPP play in my opinion and don't actually think his ownership will get too high on DraftKings either. I mean, he hasn't even been mentioned on FanShare to this point on Tuesday.  He is coming in after missing the cut at the Masters by just one stroke but worry as he won this event back in 2015 after missing the cut at the Masters. His stats are a little off this season but has always been a terrific scrambler and second shot kind of player. Lock him into your GPP lineups this week.

Also Consider: Luke List(Any format)

Low End Targets (Min Price - $6,900)

Chez Reavie
World Golf Ranking (#132)
Vegas Odds (200/1)
Draftkings ($6,800)
FanDuel ($5,400)

I will continue my contrarian approach to the week with another player that hasn't been tagged on FanShareSports due to some absolutely awful form. Reavie has missed five of his last six cuts with a T27 at the Valspar sandwiched in the middle. Before that, he had made six straight cuts including a T12 at the CareerBuilder Challenge and T8 at the Sony Open. He finished 33rd here last year and comes in with some terrific stat rankings. The SG: ATG statistic(111th) could be a bit misleading as he ranks 7th in Scrambling. He also ranks Top 25 in SG: APP SSG: OTT + APP, Par 3 & 4 Scoring and Bogey Avoidance. With Cameron Smith and even John Peterson appearing to be the chalk in this range you will most likely get Reavie around 2% owned. A perfect separation play in the bottom tier for stars and scrubs lineups if you are chalky at the top with a Kuchar/Kisner stack.

Brian Stuard
World Golf Ranking (#145)
Vegas Odds (160/1)
Draftkings ($6,800)
FanDuel ($5,100)

Stuard pops in my model this week and is the second-highest ranked option in the sub $7K tier. I think he makes an excellent play in GPP's and while he will be higher owned than Reavie, I don't think he exceeds 10% this week. He missed the cut here in his first two starts in 2010 and 2013 then jumped off the board with a Top 5 in 2014. He also comes in with decent form making four of his last five and seven of his last 11 cuts. He ranks #1 in the field in Driving Accuracy, 35th in SG: APP and 24th in Scrambling.

Also Consider:  Zac Blair

If you have any questions leading up to lineup lock Thursday morning you can reach me in a variety of ways. Leave a Q below in the comment section and I will get you an answer. You can hit me up in the new chatroom here at DFSR(It's crazy busy with NBA/NHL talk so try and private message me for specific PGA Q's. I am also always available on Twitter(@jager_bombs9). Good luck this week!

**Note on Stats - The stats I refer to in this article are from my own spreadsheet/cheatsheet and weigh both 2017 and 2016 stats. If you have any questions about the cheatsheet please contact me on Twitter(@Jager_Boms9).**

RBC Heritage Update Thread

**Weather Update**

Chris Durell has been playing Daily Fantasy Sports for three years and fantasy in general for more than a decade. He is active player in college football, NFL, NBA and of course PGA. He lives in Saskatchewan, Canada with his wife and two daughters. You can follow him on Twitter at @jager_bombs9 for advice, strategy, answers to any PGA questions and how he copes with the winters up north.