Horse For The Course: PGA DFS Course History - Sentry TOC

Joe Nicely's under-the-radar DraftKings, FanDuel PGA DFS picks for the Sentry TOC. His Horse for the Course for daily fantasy golf based on course history.

Welcome back RotoBaller PGA family! The PGA Tour schedule was absolutely nuts over the latter half of 2020, so the recent holiday break was a nice chance for us to recharge our PGA DFS batteries. That said, I'm pumped to be back for 2021! You can check out my Top-10 Player Power Rankings for the year on a special preview episode of The Turn Fantasy Golf Podcast that's available free here at RotoBaller every week of the season.

Like 2020, the 2021 PGA Tour schedule is jam-packed. We hit the ground running in Hawaii this week with the Sentry Tournament of Champions and we aren't really gonna stop until the Olympics in August. Really excited to be with you guys this year and happy to say that Horse For The Course will be available to you here at RotoBaller completely FREE for every tournament of the year!

Horse For The Course is an article that highlights players in this week's field with elite course history and is part of our free PGA DFS content here at RotoBaller. For my favorite DFS plays of the week check out my Core Four article here at RotoBaller every Wednesday. It's part of our amazing PGA Premium package that includes an all-new PGA Research Station, Lineup Builder & Optimizer, and some of the best articles in the PGA DFS industry! You can sign up now using Promo Code: NICE for an extra discount at checkout!

Sentry TOC Overview

We're baaacckkk! After some December downtime, the PGA Tour is back for 2021 with the traditional start to the calendar year, the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.

Historically this event is limited to winners from the previous season, but due to COVID-19, this year's TOC will feature not only those winners, but also any players that qualified for last year's TOUR Championship. Rory McIlroy, Tyrrell Hatton, and Jim Herman have elected to skip this event, which leaves us with an elite, 42-man field in this week's no-cut format.

Two-time winner Justin Thomas will be back to defend his 2020 Sentry TOC title and will be joined by eight of the top-10 players in the OWGR. Remember, this article is sort of a "first look" at the week and highlights players with strong course history on this layout, so make sure to check out all of the other articles available at RotoBaller throughout the week (and the year) for our staff's favorite overall DFS plays!

You can also find out who the smart money is on by checking out Spencer Aguiar's PGA DFS: Vegas Report every week. And be sure to read all of our other top-notch weekly PGA DFS articles to help you win big!

The Course: Plantation Course at Kapalua

Par 73 - 7,596 Yards, Greens: Bermuda, Designed By: Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw

The Plantation Course sits at the foot of the West Maui Mountains and incorporates drastic elevation changes into the layout. We will see some of the longest drives of the season this week, as players will have several downhill tee shots. We are dealing with a rare Par 73 course that features four Par-5s. Weather conditions, specifically the wind, can sometimes be a factor at Kapalua, but the conditions are usually mild to moderate enough to allow for very low scoring. For an extensive, in-depth look at Kapalua, check out RotoBaller's Premium Course Breakdown, an article by Josh Bennett that uses Google Earth images to dissect every hole of this week's layout.

Recent Champions & Winning Scores

• 2020: Justin Thomas (-14) *Playoff
• 2019: Xander Schauffele (-23)
• 2018: Dustin Johnson (-24)
• 2017: Justin Thomas (-22)
• 2016: Jordan Spieth (-30)

The Horse

Justin Thomas

DraftKings: $10,700
FanDuel: 

Notable Course History: Win (2020), 3rd ('19), T22 ('18), Win ('17)

We're kicking the new year off with something of a "no-brainer" in Justin Thomas. JT has won this tournament twice, including last year, and heads into 2021 with a full head of steam.

I picked Thomas #1 in my Preseason Power Rankings and fully expect for him to have a monster year. Despite finishing 2020 first on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green, the 27-year-old walked away empty-handed in the area that matters most to a player of his caliber: major championships. His weakness proved to be an often-balky putter that placed him a head-scratchingly-bad 112th on the Tour in SG: Putting in 2020. I look for some positive regression in the putting department this year from JT, which should help him surpass his 2020 win total of two.

In addition to his elite ability and course history at Kapalua, it feels as though Thomas will enter 2021 highly motivated after letting multiple win opportunities slip through his fingertips last year. My buddy Chad Eckert from @fantasygolfpod even recently suggested to me that JT might want to win "too much". It's a fair point to ponder if we're taking a wide view at the year ahead, but if we focus specifically on the Sentry TOC, I look for Thomas to once again flourish in this laid back Hawaiian atmosphere this week, and while his DFS price is high, this no-cut format allows us to get aggressive with lineup construction.

The Ponies

Dustin Johnson

DraftKings: $11,000
FanDuel:

Notable Course History: T7 ('20), T4 ('19), Win ('18), T6 ('17), Win ('13)

As we head into 2021, it feels as though the trendy theory around the DFS industry is that Dustin Johnson will take a “step back” this year. It makes sense. DJ is coming off one of the most impressive stretches in modern PGA Tour history, a run he capped off with a record-breaking win at the Masters. If any player has earned the right to “chill”, it’s definitely Johnson.

However, while the 36-year-old has never had a stretch quite like the one he had to close out 2020, he’s certainly no stranger to winning. Since earning his Tour card in 2008, Johnson has won in every single calendar year he’s been a pro save one - 2014 - when he stepped away from the Tour to work on “personal issues”. So while it’s reasonable to think that DJ falls off a bit this year, the counterpoint is that he’s been tremendously successful throughout his career and is well-equipped to handle last year’s success.

If we head into this year with the notion that Johnson is going to be roughly the same player he’s been for his entire career, then it’s reasonable to assume he performs very well at Kapalua. In 10 career TOC starts, he owns a 69.21 scoring average, has scored two victories, and hasn’t finished outside the top-10 in any of his last eight starts at the Plantation Course. 

There are no ownership projections available to me as I write this, but I get the sense that the “DJ will start the year with a hangover” sentiment will make Johnson lower-owned than he should be this week, especially with an $11k DK price tag that puts him atop the salary scale. 

Xander Schauffele

DraftKings: $10,100
FanDuel: 

Notable Course History: T2 ('20), Win ('19), T22 ('18)

“Near misses” and “almost” seemed to be the theme for Xander in 2020. The rising star kicked off the year with a playoff loss in this Sentry TOC event, suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the first post-layoff tournament at the Charles Schwab, was in contention at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, and was outran by a Jason Kokrak final-round putting barrage at the CJ Cup to close out the year.  

I feel like the “law of averages” might push things Schauffele’s way a bit more often in 2021 - though a COVID-19 diagnosis last month indicates his luck hasn't changed yet - and I’m confident that if he keeps putting himself in position, he’ll win multiple tournaments this year. He stands a terrific chance to win in his very first start of 2021, as he’s historically been a beast at Kapalua. Xander lost in a playoff to Justin Thomas last year after an inexcusable three-putt on the 72nd hole and rode a blistering final-round 62 to a Sentry TOC victory in 2019 over Gary Woodland. He owns a 69.58 scoring average in three career starts at the Plantation Course and we have to imagine he’ll be motivated to “right the wrongs” of 2020 this week.

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Hideki Matsuyama

DraftKings: $9,000
FanDuel: 

Notable Course History: T4 ('18), 2nd ('17)

The player with the lowest career Sentry TOC scoring average in this week’s field isn’t Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, or Xander Schauffele...it’s Hideki Matsuyama. ‘Deki has been masterful in three career starts at Kapalua, never posting a finish worse than fourth, while amassing a 68.58 scoring average on this beautiful layout. 

Matsuyama didn’t log a win in 2020 - a troubling trend for the Japanese superstar whose last victory came at the WGC-Bridgestone in 2017 - but he earned entry into this week’s TOC through his finishing position in the FedEx Points standings. While the 28-year-old didn’t find the winner’s circle last year, his play was nonetheless rock solid. Matsuyama finished the 2019-20 season ranked second on the PGA Tour in SG: T2G and fifth in SG: Approach. He was also surprisingly good around the greens (fifth in SG: ATG), but unsurprisingly horrendous on them (170th SG: Putting). 

As we enter a new year, the same old question seems to surround Hideki...can he make enough putts to win? Putting is the most erratic statistical category that we face in DFS - and that’s especially the case with a player like Matsuyama - but he’s been very comfortable on Kapalua’s bermuda greens in previous visits, which makes me higher-than-normal on his chances to actually book a win this week. 

Cameron Smith

DraftKings: $8,400
FanDuel: 

Notable Course History: T17 ('18)

The course history isn't as extensive as you'll usually find in this article, but there's a lot to like with Cameron Smith. He performed well enough in his lone TOC start in 2018, but if we squint our eyes hard enough, we can find from his record in the Sony Open (Win, T22, T18, T27) that he's extremely comfortable in the breezy Hawaiian conditions, as most Aussies are.

We expect the conditions to suit Smith, but we must also consider that this is a player that closed out 2020 on an absolute heater. He ran off 11 straight made cuts at the end of the year, posting a T4 at the ZOZO and a runner-up finish at the Masters in his last two starts of '20. He's always possessed an elite short game, but has routinely been held back by his inconsistency tee to green. Smith took a leap forward in that area the latter half of last year, gaining strokes on Approach in each of his last nine starts of 2020.

Marc Leishman

DraftKings: $7,400
FanDuel: 

Notable Course History: T4 ('19), T7 ('18)

2020 threw unimaginable obstacles everyone’s way and that was also true on the PGA Tour. Every player was forced to handle the Tour’s three-month layoff in their own way, and while multiple players might have struggled to rebound after the restart, two specific players jump out to me as the most negatively impacted by the COVID hiatus: Rory McIlroy and Marc Leishman.

Leishman appeared to be in store for a monster 2020, as the Aussie conquered an elite field to win the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines and logged a runner-up finish in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, an “elevated status event”. Unfortunately, Leishman came out of the layoff a different player and was regularly horrendous after the restart...failing to log a top-25 for the remainder of the 2019-20 season. 

While Leishman’s play since the restart was shockingly bad, he did close out the calendar year in encouraging fashion with a T13 at the Masters, his best result since the COVID layoff. We can hope that the vet’s solid finish to the year - along with plenty of time to reset and find his swing - sends him into 2021 looking more like the Liesh we saw at the beginning of 2020. Like the aforementioned Cameron Smith, he's an Aussie that thrives in windy conditions and the Sentry TOC shapes up as a nice spot to start a comeback, as he’s went T7-T4 in his two Kapalua starts since 2016.

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