After a couple of events in Hawaii, the Tour is coming back for the Cali swing. The first stop in California is The American Express. This is a rare type of event in that there are multiple courses on the agenda. This year, The American Express will feature the PGA West TPC Stadium Course and the Nicklaus Tournament Course. The Stadium course is a fair bit tougher and plays as a 7,100 yard par 72. The Nicklaus Course is the easier of the two. It plays about the same length and is a par 72. We can leverage that information in showdown contests this week. On Thursday-Friday, stacking golfers from the Nicklaus course is the obvious play.
Checking The Chalk
With Jon Rahm as a late withdrawal, we’re in a similar position to where we were last week. Sungjae Im ($9,900) was the flavor of the week last week. Scottie Scheffler ($9,500) is getting a lot of buzz this week as a golfer near the top of the board that had great odds for a bit while books scrambled to adjust to the Rahm WD.
Scheffler has settled in at about one stroke better[1] than the average Tour golfer. His ball-striking has been excellent throughout most of his young career. It’s very hard to make any golf-based arguments for fading Scheffler in DFS this week, but we know that the community as a whole isn’t great at selecting golfers in this price range.
Sam Burns ($8,300) and Doc Redman ($7,500) are the value chalk this week. Burns’s ownership is largely a product of his course history. Over the past two years, Burns has an 18th and a sixth-place finish. Last we saw him, the 24-year-old finished T7 at the Vivint Houston Open. But, to be fair, that was in November.
Redman’s PRK peaked about three events ago with a T4 in Bermuda. He’s spent most of his career in the -0.75 Raw PRK range and his current score is 90 in this field.
Historically, golfers that hit at least a 90 PRK Score finish in the top 10 about one-third of the time and only miss the cut about 19% of the time. For a golfer at just $7,500 that’s pretty rare. Redman is someone who I’ll be overweight on this week.
Mid-Range Target
Burns comes in with the largest number of appearances in the optimal lineup via our simulator, but we talked about him already. Adam Long ($8,500) appears in just over 10% of the optimal lineups. 
He’s about as volatile as they come, but when it comes to GPPs we don’t mind. Long has made 57 starts since the beginning of 2019. Over that span, 22 (about 39%) starts have resulted in missed cuts, but he’s also had 17 Top 25 finishes.
Deep Dives
This week, we have a quartet of golfers under $7,500 that showed up in the optimal lineup at a higher than expected rate.
- Joel Dahmen ($7,500)
- Cameron Tringale ($7,400)
- Sepp Straka ($7,400)
- Talor Gooch ($7,400)
For ownership projections, you can head over to the Optimizer or the Ownership Explorer!
Footnotes
| ↑1 | per round |
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