Live golf is finally back with the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, this weekend. With PGA Tour pros back in action, it’s worth a refresher course on important DFS golf strategy before crafting lineups before the tournaments starts on Thursday.
Know the Course History
Some golf courses are great for bombers, but with its tight fairways and tough doglegs, Colonial Country Club isn’t one of them. That’s part of the reason why Chris Kirk, not known as a long hitter, fares well here, making eight of nine cuts with one win.
By paying attention to the course layout and how pro golfers have fared at Colonial, you can draft under-the-radar players like Kirk, whom the DFS sites priced cheaply this week because of his rough start to the PGA Tour season before the pandemic-induced stoppage. You would usually pay attention to a player’s recent form, but with no professional golf played in the past two-plus months, there is no such data to examine.
You Can’t Win If You’re Not Playing on Saturday
After the first two rounds, about half of the field will be eliminated. If any of your players don’t make it to Saturday, you can forget about winning your DFS events. You can often make the money, however, if only one of your golfers misses the cut and the rest of your lineup finishes highly.
As you build your golf lineups, your first goal should be to pick guys who consistently finish in the top half of the fields. Due to salary constraints, you’ll have to choose wisely and should generally err toward a lineup of solid players rather than a lineup of superstars and the lowest-salaried players. (They have cheap salaries for a reason.)
If you try to draft the five highest-priced players this week on DraftKings – Rory McIlroy, John Rahm, Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau, and Webb Simpson – it would cost $53,300. With a salary cap of $50,000, that’s obviously a no-go.
Dig deeper and you can find lower-priced players who might be solid values. Charley Hoffman, for example, has made nine of 10 cuts at the Charles Schwab Challenge on this course and carries a salary of just $7,000. Slot a guy like him into your lineup and you can afford more of the top players. Other value-priced players in this week’s field include Zach Johnson (nine of 11 cuts, with two wins), Jimmy Walker (6/6), Brian Harman (6/7), and Russell Knox (4/4). DFS golf strategy would dictate you need guys that stand a good chance of making the cut who can then play for the win over the weekend.
