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Daily Fantasy PGA Showdown Strategy and Picks for DraftKings – Farmers Insurance Open
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. Want more? He also provides a cheatsheet with stats, course history, current form, player write-ups for cash and GPP, a customizable model, and much more. You can get access to the sheet in the member's chatroom.
Welcome back golf fans. If you are familiar with my work, you know I do a weekly article breaking down the course, key stats, and provide some core plays for DraftKings and FanDuel for full tournament contests. You may have also noticed that since the calendar flipped to 2020, I have also been providing not only the cheatsheet I have for years but have also started providing a DraftKings showdown sheet for each round of the tournament. For those of you knew, I just wanted to go over some of the scoring differences between the three contest formats on DraftKings(regular full tournament, one-round showdown, weekend golf). I will then go over my strategies for both Showdown and Weekend Golf and provide a few picks for the final two rounds at the Farmers Insurance Open.
Scoring & Strategy
The first thing to note is you are playing Showdown and/or Weekend Golf is that there are no finish position points handed out to golfers making it scoring heavy with a few bonuses. While Weekend Golf awards fewer points for eagles and the same amount of points for birdies, Showdown awards more points in every area while also punishing you more for bogey or worse. The bonuses on Showdown are also two points more for Bogey Free round and three-birdie streak.
In terms of strategy, there are multiple things that go into it and like every week changes, so does every round. First of all, with no leaderboard points to worry about, it comes down to scoring so Birdie or Better % gets a huge boost in my model, no matter the course or setup. This week and the other weeks with multi-course rotations also adds an additional element that can provide an edge. The North Course at Torrey Pines played between 2.5-3 strokes easier than the South Course so that had me targeting almost exclusively North Course players for the first two days. I also start feeling more comfortable as the week goes on as the data sample size grows. I often look for players who are gaining strokes tee to green while possibly losing or at least below their long-term average in putting as putting is extremely variable from round to round.
Farmers Insurance Open Weekend Picks
Collin Morikawa
Morikawa came into the Farmers ranked 21st in my model and was ranked 3rd in Ball Striking in this field over the last 50 rounds. That has carried over to his first trip to Torrey Pines as he has hit 75% of fairways(T2) and 83% Greens in Regulation(T1) through two days while also getting up and down 83% of the time as well. The only thing letting him down so far is the putter but the good news is that before this event, he had gained strokes putting in seven of his previous eight and 15 of his previous 20 rounds going back to the CJ Cup. I will be going with another balanced approach in Showdown on Saturday and Morikawa is a key piece of my core.
Russell Knox
He barely made the cut after somewhat of a disaster round on the North Course as he tallied just two birdies and four bogies. The good news is that he played much better on the South Couse hitting 57% of fairways(43% on North) and 83% of greens in regulation(72% on North). His putting will always hold him back but he started the week above average in Birdie or Better and Top 10 in Bogey Avoidance, round 3 scoring average, SG: Approach, Proximity, and three-putt avoidance. That is a recipe for success on the South Course over the weekend.
J.B. Holmes
The bogey-free round bonus is never something we are looking for from Holmes but he can put up birdies in bunches and he has shown that through two days with six birdies on each course. Not surprisingly, he also ranks 5th in SG: Off the Tee on the South Course and has been overall ball striking really well hitting 71% of his fairways and 81% greens in regulation. To cap it off, he also has a hot putter sitting 10th in both putts per GIR and SG: Putting. Put it all together, and you have a player who can easily crush value at just $6,700 on Draftkings for Round 3 Showdown.
Thanks for checking out the article and to see all my top plays for the weekend make sure to get into chat and get your copy of my cheatsheets and hit me up with any questions. You can also reach my on Twitter(@jager_bombs9).
When breaking down the top stats I use a combination of my own cheatsheet(get your copy in the members-only chatroom) and the tools over at FantasyNational.com.
