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vWelcome back to my PGA DFS lineup picks for the Wells Fargo Championship on DraftKings! Many golfers barely miss out on being mentioned here by a fraction of a percent, so if you have any questions about a particular player from a PGA DFS or PGA betting perspective, you can contact me on Twitter @Teeoffsports.
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PGA DFS Rankings Wizard - Wells Fargo Championship
We have a special treat for all you RotoBallers and golf enthusiasts. In addition to this article, be sure to also check out Spencer's PGA DFS Rankings Wizard - a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user inputs to create custom rankings and models for golf. If you want to create your own spreadsheet, you will need to make a copy under "file." We hope you enjoy!
TPC Potomac
7,124 Yards - Par 70 - Greens Bentgrass
With Quail Hollow being the host for this year's Presidents Cup, the PGA Tour will instead head to TPC Potomac - a venue that will serve as the host stop for the 2022 Wells Fargo Championship. Thankfully, we have seen the course in action a few times over the past handful of years, as the facility served as the location for the 2017 and 2018 Quicken Loans, and while I won't necessarily be using those two events for tracking when I look into course history because of the length since we have last seen activity at the stop, the statistical breakdown that we can find from those two appearances should tell a quality story for our models this week.
Measuring in as a Par 70 at 7,124 yards, TPC Potomac accentuates accuracy in all avenues thanks to its narrow landing areas and smaller-than-average greens. We saw those two factors highlighted with the over three-inch-thick rough that provided a strong corollary of mistakes when the tour last used this property, and the ability to offer a complete tee-to-green game should be heavily factored in since putting is reduced on these small Bentgrass greens.
When we dive into the numbers a little deeper, we see the 2017 and 2018 iterations of the course yielding a robust 6.4% increase when it comes to the dispersion of scoring in strokes gained off the tee. The answer for that stems back to my original comment of the rough providing a penal impact on mistakes being produced since the putting surfaces are small in stature and extremely firm and fast, but to me, this is the epitome of 1-2 golf, where I would ideally like to find golfers that are exemplary total drivers that can hit fairways and produce mid-iron production into these small surfaces since the makeup of the course asks the field to hit nearly 68% of their second shots from 150 yards and beyond. In a way, the modeling is almost done for us when we condense the information to feature two or three decisive factors into the mix, but that doesn't mean I won't find a way to assemble some outside of the box narratives, and you can see all of what I will be looking at in the section below.
Let's Look At The Stats
| Stat | Wells Fargo | Tour Average |
| Driving Distance | N/A | 283 |
| Driving Accuracy | N/A | 62% |
| GIR Percentage | N/A | 65% |
| Scrambling Percentage | N/A | 57% |
| Average Three-Putts Per Round | N/A | 0.56 |
Key Stats
Let's quickly run through how I built my model.
- Weighted Tee To Green (30%)
- Strokes Gained Total Firm + Fast Greens (10%)
- Strokes Gained Total TPC (10%)
- Weighted Par-Four Scoring (15%)
- Total Driving Geared Towards Accuracy (20%)
- Ball-Striking (15%)
I will take a deeper dive into what went into these totals later in the week on my podcast. If you aren't doing so already, you can follow Bettor Golf Podcast on Twitter.
Fantasy Golf Lineup Picks for DraftKings (PGA DFS)
We have tons of great weekly PGA articles, DFS analysis, tools and DFS advice. Be sure to read our other fantastic articles regarding this week's event.
High-Priced DraftKings DFS Players
***There are five players priced above $10,000. Please remember that my DFS article is always a first look at the field. Opinions might shift as the week goes on, and I am more than happy to discuss anyone further on Twitter.
Rory McIlroy leads the way at $11,500 on DraftKings and sees a $900 increase over our second man on the board in Tony Finau ($10,600). That price discrepancy is typically good for an option like McIlroy since gamers will generally look to pay down in these spots, and it seems as if everyone this week is looking to jump to the very bottom of the range with Corey Conners ($10,100) and Matthew Fitzpatrick ($10,000). Both of those choices are showing as the two highest percentages on the board as of Monday afternoon, although it is hard to argue against the duo because of their ability to hit fairways and greens.
And then the last man on tap that we glossed over because of his reduction in ownership was Abraham Ancer ($10,400). Ancer is a golfer that will likely come in as the lowest owned player of the group because of his questionable recent finishes, but it is venues like TPC Potomac that are tailormade for his game - evident by his fourth-place finish at this course during the 2018 Quicken Loans. Let's see where numbers trend over the next few days for this entire list before locking in a decision, but there are pros and cons for the group.
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Mid-Priced DraftKings DFS Players
$9,000 Range
It is an abnormally small section for us in the $9,000s, and that factor becomes even more enhanced when you look at my model showing only Keegan Bradley ($9,600) and Russell Henley ($9,300) as potential early values from the group. That doesn't mean Tyrrell Hatton ($9,900) and Marc Leishman ($9,700) are out of contention from my player pool quite yet, but I'd be rostering them more because of the safety that they provide, which means not only are they better cash-game options, but I'd likely need sub-10 percent ownership on either player if I wanted to get involved in GPPs. We can't know those decisions for a few days, but I will say I am likely to be lower on Gary Woodland ($9,100) and Patrick Reed ($9,000) than consensus. You could argue that Reed is beginning to show life after a troublesome few months, but I can't overlook his totals in weighted proximity and accuracy - two numbers he places outside the top 100.
Mid-Priced DraftKings DFS Players
$8,000 Range
As a whole, I am relatively bullish on this collection of golfers. Paul Casey ($8,800) could very easily have been my favorite play on the board if he wasn't entering the contest with health concerns after pulling out of the Match Play and proceeding to miss the past month, but the ball-striking and proximity totals are exactly what you would hope to see out of any target - especially one in the $8,000 range. When I took an equal distribution of those two metrics and combined them into one number, Casey ranked first in this field. (The entire top 10 is in the image below).
Max Homa ($8,600) provided a slight boost in weighted tee-to-green compared to his typical production on a random track. I will go over all the golfers that saw an improvement from $8,000 and above in a second, but Homa's skillset should succeed at TPC Potomac. Homa does lose one of his greatest assets in par-five scoring since there are only two at the property, but not only will scoring at those two holes be a massive boost if he can seize that advantage, but his ability to perform at mid-iron tests that feature firm/fast greens has him fourth in this field.
And then the last golfer I want to discuss from a first-look perspective would be Seamus Power ($8,300). The Irishman ranks inside the top-10 in weighted par-four scoring for the track and is also first in bogey avoidance and 12th in total driving that is geared towards accuracy. Power's game continues to get underappreciated in ownership by the majority of the space, and I have no problem with the 11 percent total we are looking at right now.
Tee-To-Green Improvers From $8,000+
Before we get into the $7,000 prices, I wanted to touch on the topic I mentioned a second ago about the players seeing a boost in their weighted tee to green to mimic the venue. Here are the options that are projected to be better than their baseline projection from our initial list of $8,000 and above golfers:
Rory McIlroy - 1st overall (Four spots better)
Tony Finau - 2nd overall (Six spots better)
Abraham Ancer - 9th overall (41 spots better)
Marc Leishman - 7th overall (32 spots better)
Max Homa - 10th overall (Four spots better)
Low-Priced DraftKings DFS Players To Consider ($7,000+)
These are all the golfers in the $7,000 section that fit two sets of criteria:
- The golfer must be top-65 in some portion of the model.
- The player must be either a positive value against DK price or against ownership from overall or upside.
That is a long list that will need to be worked through to lower playable choices, but we do seem to have a mixed bag of value. Only Mitchell, Glover, Vegas, Laird, Streelman, Steele and Smalley are a value in both markets, and I am not so sure I would rather play some of those choices over the plays like Brian Harman ($7,700), Joel Dahmen ($7,600), Doug Ghim ($7,800), Adam Long ($7,400), Russell Knox ($7,300) and Denny McCarthy ($7,300). We will need to dive deeper into the market as the week goes on to get better clarity. That group of value + upside is where I am narrowing down choices right now from the expanded list.
Sub-$6,000 Options To Consider
We are still early in the week. I will continue to run numbers as more ownership comes in for these $6,000 golfers.
These are all the golfers in the $6,000 section that fit two sets of criteria:
- The golfer must be top-65 in some portion of the model.
- The player must be either a positive value against DK price or against ownership.
We don't have as strong of a $6,000 range as we do some weeks, as Austin Smotherman is the highest-ranked player at 35th, but it doesn't mean options like Chez Reavie ($6,700) and K.H. Lee ($6,900) should be ignored.
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