Horse For The Course: PGA DFS Course History - 2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship

Zach Thompson's DraftKings, FanDuel PGA DFS picks for the 2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind. Picks for daily fantasy golf based on course history

The PGA TOUR closed out the regular season with a great week in Greensboro at last week's Wyndham Championship. Cameron Young finally broke through for his long-overdue first win on the PGA TOUR, while Chris Kirk moved into the top 70 and qualified for this week's start to the FedEx Cup Playoffs. This week, the top 70 enter the FedEx St. Jude Championship, with the top 50 moving on to next week's second event in Baltimore at the BMW Championship.

TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee, has hosted an event on the PGA TOUR or the WGC since 1989. The course has gotten a huge facelift since last season with new greens and tee boxes throughout. The original Ron Prichard design bears many similarities to Donald Ross layouts but incorporated plenty of water in the routing to increase risk-reward shots. The course features difficult, unpredictable rough along with all the water in play, so accuracy both off the tee and on approach have been at a premium. As a result, ball strikers have historically flourished at TPC Southwind with past winners including Hideki Matsuyama last year, Lucas Glover, Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, and Daniel Berger (twice).

Horse For The Course is an article highlighting players in this week's field with elite course history and is part of our free PGA DFS content here at RotoBaller. For some of the favorite DFS plays of the week, check out the Core Four article written by my buddy, Joe Nicely, 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 the Promo Code TDG for an extra discount at checkout!

2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship

This year's tournament will have 69 golfers in a no-cut event. Rory McIlroy is the only qualified golfer not expected to tee it up this week, leaving an elite field led by Scottie Scheffler, making his first start since his memorable victory at The Open Championship. He'll be joined by Sepp Straka, Russell Henley, and Justin Thomas, who round out the top five in the FedExCup standings along with Rory.

Players will be looking to improve their position in the standings since 20 players will be eliminated from the Playoffs this week. Jake Knapp, Jordan Spieth, Wyndham Clark, and Min Woo Lee start the week as the last four in the top 50, while J.T. Poston, Kurt Kitayama, Bud Cauley, and Joe Highsmith start as the first four out. The 50 players that move on to next week also secure invitations for all eight Signature Events and THE PLAYERS Championship next season. While the 20 golfers eliminated this week are fully exempt and get into THE PLAYERS, they are not guaranteed spots in the Signature Events.

Last year, the playoffs began with a big win for Hideki Matsuyama. He opened up a five-shot lead coming into the Final Round but struggled on the back nine, bogeying hole No. 12 and hole No. 14 before double-bogeying No. 15 after a three-putt from 50 feet. He bounced back to finish birdie-birdie on his last two holes, though, and still finished two strokes clear of Viktor Hovland and Xander Schauffele. Scheffler finished fourth in this event and continues his march to the FedExCup title, which he'll look to defend in a couple of weeks.

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TPC Southwind

Par 70 - 7,288| Greens: Bermudagrass | Designed By: Ron Prichard

TPC Southwind has always been ideally suited for PGA TOUR tournament golf from the very beginning in 1989. Prichard carved out the 18-hole layout with influences from Donald Ross out of farmland just outside of Memphis. The course still includes two grain silos and a windmill as callbacks to its days as a dairy farm.

The most notable characteristic of the course is all the water in play. With numerous lakes, streams, and ponds along the fairways and greens, a total of 11 holes have water directly in play. Since 2003, a whopping 6,298 balls have ended up in the water, more than any PGA TOUR venue over that span. Big numbers are in play on several of the holes, especially for players who miss the fairway.

Nothing measures up to Strokes Gained: Approach in terms of stats that lead to victory at TPC Southwind, but Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee is not far behind. Driving the ball accurately is key to staying dry and making approach shots manageable. In the past, almost 45% of Total Strokes Gained at TPC Southwind have been from Strokes Gained: Approach, compared to the average of 35% per tournament. The greens are all new, but since they're still Bermudagrass, players who putt well on that type of surface are strong plays this week.

Recent FedEx St. Jude Championship Winners

• 2024: Hideki Matsuyama (-17)
• 2023: Lucas Glover (-15)
• 2022: Will Zalatoris (-15)
  WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational
• 2021: Abraham Ancer (-16)
• 2020: Justin Thomas (-21)
• 2019: Brooks Koepka (-16)

The Horse

Hideki Matsuyama

• Notable Finishes: Win ('24), 2nd ('21), T16 ('23), T20 ('20)

Matsuyama has had an up-and-down season coming into his title defense at TPC Southwind. He started the year with a monster win at the Signature Event at The Sentry, finishing a record -35. He built on that with four top-25 finishes in his next six events. He struggled with some missed cuts through the spring and summer, but found good form recently, with three straight top-20 finishes with a T13 at the Rocket Classic, a T16 at The Open Championship, and a T19 at the Wyndham Championship.

At TPC Southwind, Matsuyama has 1.4 Strokes Gained: Approach per round in his last three appearances. In 2021, as runner-up, he gained a total of 8.0 strokes on approach, and last year, he gained over 8.0 strokes putting.

Matsuyama never missed a cut at TPC Southwind, even when there was one, and he has consistently posted very high finishes. With his game rounding into form, he should be a strong play this week as the defending champ.

The Ponies

Daniel Berger

• Notable Finishes: Win ('16), Win ('17), T2 ('20), T5 ('21)

Berger is a very interesting fantasy golf play this week based on his course history. He easily could have supplanted Matsuyama as the horse for the course, except that he has not played at TPC Southwind for the last three seasons, since he has not qualified for the playoffs.

With a much better season, Berger will make his return to this venue with good momentum, and his elite iron play should show well once again at this track.

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Justin Thomas

• Notable Finishes: Win ('20), T12 ('19), T13 ('22)

Thomas hasn't had quite as large a gap since his success at TPC Southwind as Berger, but he also hasn't had nearly the recent success of Matsuyama. After missing the playoffs and this event in 2023, Thomas finished T30 last year in his return to the postseason. Thomas has had a much better 2025, though, including his return to the winner's circle at the RBC Heritage along with six other top-10 finishes.

Sam Burns

• Notable Finishes: T2 ('21), T5 ('24), T20 ('22)

While he is the only player highlighted in this post without a previous win on this track, Burns still has a great track record to consider. The Louisiana-native and LSU alum is comfortable on courses that have a southern feel like this one. He finished runner-up along with Matsuyama in 2021 when Abraham Ancer beat them in a playoff and added another top-five finish behind Hideki last year.

While Burns hasn't won in 2025, he has been a regular on the leaderboards and enters the playoffs in the top 30 in the FedExCup standings, ready to make a deep run. He finished runner-up at TPC Toronto at the RBC Canadian Open as one of his 10 top-25 finishes this season.

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