Chris will be bringing you weekly PGA picks, analysis, and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings and FanDuel. 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 providing his DFS PGA Weekly cheatsheet where he provides stats, course history, current form, fantasy points, and much more. Grab your copy today and edge out the competition.
Welcome back golf fans. This week the PGA Tour is split into two events with the Sanderson Farms Championship from the Country Club of Jackson and the WGC HSBC Champions from Sheshan International Golf Club in Shanghai, China. Both tournaments are listed on DraftKings but FanDuel just has the WGC event so that is the one I will be concentrating on this week in my article.
As with any World Golf Championship event, the field is very strong and includes last weeks winner and new World #1 Brooks Koepka along with seven of the Top 10 and 35 of the World's Top 50 golfers. For the third straight week, this is a shortened field, no-cut event with 78 players battling for the title. From a fantasy strategy standpoint, it is much more viable to go with a stars and scrubs approach as al six of your players will play all four rounds.
Since this WGC event moved to China, the Sheshan International GC has hosted it each year. We have seen the winning scores vary a bit over the five years with Justin Rose winning at -14 and Bubba Watson winning at -11 but the in each of the other three years it has been a birdie fest with a winning score south of -20. The one thing that remains constant over those five years are the hard to hit fairways as the field has averaged just over 50% driving accuracy in that time. What has separated the players at the top of leaderboard here has been that accuracy as the average fairways hit for the Top 10 in those five years is right around 59% which in turn has helped those players hit 67% of the greens vs. the overall field average of 58%.
Not only will I be concentrating on Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and Accuracy but looking at the hole breakdown below you will also see all three Par 3 holes are 200+ yards and five of the Par 4 holes are between 450 and 500 yards. This will have me not only weighing Strokes Gained: Approach but Proximity from 175-200 and 200+ yards. Finally with this event projected to be low scoring, Birdie or Better % will also be a key stat. Let's now jump in and take a look at some course stats and then get into the picks.
Sheshan International Golf Club
Par 72 - 7,261 Yards
**Click the pic above to see a hole by hole breakdown from PGATour.com**
One little note before jumping into the article. I use multiple sources for my research to help determine key stats starting with Fantasy National Golf Club and their elite set of tools from course history, hole composition, past performance and much, much more. I also combine it with some of the information on Future of Fantasy including correlated courses and most importantly the quotes from players section to help determine what it takes to win here(key stats). When breaking down ownership and trying to come up with popularity, I love the tools over at FanShareSports as they break down every piece of information on articles and social media mentions to provide us with Tag Counts, Sentiment Ratings, Subject Tags, Salary Differential week to week and much more.
Duston Johnson
World Golf Ranking (#2)
Vegas Odds (8/1)
Draftkings ($11,500)
FanDuel ($12,600)
For the second time in under two months, DJ has lost the #1 spot in the World Golf Rankings after Koepka won last week. He will have a good chance to regain that spot this week in a WGC event he has finished Top 5 in three times in the five events here at Sheshan International GC including a win back in 2013. He is one of just three golfers to rank Top 10 in all three categories on my cheatsheet led by the stats model as he ranks 1st in SG: Off the Tee, 3rd in SG: Approach, 2nd in Proximity, 9th in Par 4 Scoring, 5th in Par 5 Scoring and 6th in Birdie or Better %. I don't think we need to go here in cash games but for GPP formats he is an excellent start to a stars and scrubs lineup.
Tony Finau
World Golf Ranking (#17)
Vegas Odds (18/1)
Draftkings ($9,900)
FanDuel ($10,800)
Finau joins Johnson and McIlroy as the only three players on my sheet to rank Top 10 in all three categories and comes in #4 in my overall model this week. He finished T11 here at Sheshan in his first trip last season and comes in with some terrific form coming off a T10 at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship after posting a runner-up and three Top 10 finishes in the four PGA Tour Playoff events. He is 8th in my stats model and looking at more recent stats(via Fantasy National GC) he ranks 4th in SG: Total, 5th in SG: Off the Tee, 5th in SG: Putting, 1st in SG: Par 4(450-500 yards), 9th in SG: Par 5 and 2nd in DraftKings scoring over th
Rafa Cabrera Bello
World Golf Ranking (#26)
Vegas Odds (40/1)
Draftkings ($8,900)
FanDuel ($11,000)
I wrote up Cabrera Bello last week and he didn't let us down with a T3 after two closing rounds of 65 also hitting the E/W I listed as well. I am going back to the well again this week as he returns to Sheshan International where he has finished T19 in 2016 and T5 last year. Like I mentioned last week, he has been one of the most consistent golfers on tour on a week to week basis and is coming off a season where he missed just one cut in 19 stroke-play events. His stats tell the same story as he ranks 16th in SG: Off the Tee, 10th in SG: Approach, 5th in Proximity(13th from 175-200 & 9th from 200+ yards), 7th in Par 4 Scoring, and 10th in Birdie or Better % on my sheet. If you are going with a balanced approach this week, which may be a bit contrarian, Bello is an excellent place to go especially on DraftKings under $9K.
Kyle Stanley
World Golf Ranking (#28)
Vegas Odds (70/1)
Draftkings ($7,600)
FanDuel ($9,000)
He disappointed last week with a T66 after making just 11 birdies all week combined with eight bogeys and two doubles. He really struggled with his putting averaging 1.9 putts per GIR(67th in the field) but has a shot to rebound this week due to his elite accuracy off the tee(6th on Tour last season) at a course that demands it. He proved this last year in his first trip here with a T5 and while that is likely his upside, he has a nice floor for the price in cash games and could also be lower owned for GPP if recency bias has anything to do with it.
C.T. Pan
World Golf Ranking (#100)
Vegas Odds (110/1)
Draftkings ($7,000)
FanDuel ($8,200)
Pan has been very consistent on the PGA Tour and has made a huge jump in the Official World Golf Rankings going from #188 after his last missed cut at the Travelers Championship to jumping into the Top 100 after the CJ Cup last week. In those nine events, he has two Top 5's and four Top 25 finishes and ranks 13th in SG: Total, 13th in SG: Ball Striking(20th OTT, 10th APP), and 10th in DraftKings scoring. At these prices, he is an excellent target in all formats helping you to get one or two of the top players in the field in your lineups.
Ashun Wu
World Golf Ranking (#176)
Vegas Odds (225/1)
Draftkings ($6,800)
FanDuel ($7,300)
Another low-end value I will be targeting this week is Ashun Wu who has played here in all five years the event has been held at Sheshan International and has picked up a Top 25 in three of his last four here. He also comes in with some good form on the European Tour having made four straight cuts including a win at the KLM Open and T6 at the Omega European Masters. He doesn't stand out in many statistical categories but is 25th on the Euro Tour in Bogey Avoidance, 43rd in SG: Approach, adn 10th in SG: Around the Green. With his price and experience here at this course, he is an excellent GPP target in stars and scrubs lineups.
**Weather Update**
Chris Durell has been playing Daily Fantasy Sports for six years and fantasy in general for more than a decade. He is an active player in college football, NFL, MLB, NASCAR, NHL 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.
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