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Welcome to our PrizePicks PGA DFS prop picks for the Farmers Insurance Open (Round 1). The 2024 PGA Tour season is already in full swing, and to celebrate, PrizePicks has an extensive selection of PGA props to take advantage of! PrizePicks is a great DFS props site where you can choose to select plays in terms of fantasy points or singular stats. The goal is to build a 2-player, 3-player, 4-player, or 5-player entry and then select whether or not you want to play for the power play or the flex play. On the power play, you will need to be correct on each of your selections to win, and on the flex play, you will have a little more wiggle room for a chance to win some money back.
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This week, we're at Torrey Pines for the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open! For many golf fans, this venue marks the true beginning of the 2024 campaign, as the daunting links of Torrey Pines' South Course start a stretch of four consecutive marquee events on the golfing calendar. From Torrey Pines, to Pebble Beach, Phoenix, and Riviera, there is plenty to look forward to for fans, and plenty to be wary about for the golfers in contention this week. Torrey Pines South has routinely played as one of the most difficult courses on the PGA Tour, and with recent heavy rains softening up the ground in the Greater San Diego area, we expect this venue to play every inch of the nearly 7,800 yards on its official scorecard. One thing is for sure this week: whoever can lift the iconic Torrey Pine trophy on Saturday afternoon will have done so by conquering the most demanding test of golf we've seen in many many months.
I and the entire Rotoballer PGA staff have put out 1,000s of words on the course, key stats, and field this week, so this article won't be focused on the minutiae of projecting outright winners or DFS pivot plays. Instead, I'll be solely focused on a few money-making opportunities I've found in PrizePicks' unique markets to help you build your bankroll as the PGA Tour season gets into full swing! Today's plays are specifically for round one on Wednesday, January 24.
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Single Stat PGA Totals - DFS Prop Picks
Prize Picks prop totals are not always available first thing in the morning, so check back during the day as other props may be added during the day.
Keegan Bradley MORE than Ben Griffin - Birdie or Better Matchup
Already a holder of three top-five finishes here at the Farmers over his last five starts, Keegan will be looking to improve on both his runner-up finish here last year; as well as the painful playoff loss he notched in his last start at the Sony Open. Bradley's ball striking was in rare form over four days at Waialae: gaining 4.1 shots on Approach and 7.1 from tee to green. That marked the best ball-striking performance we've seen from Keegan since his runaway win at the Travelers Championship last June, and two weeks later, he returns to a venue in which he's gained in each of the two ball-striking categories on six consecutive occasions.
This forward momentum makes it even more perplexing as to why he's matched up against 120-1 longshot Ben Griffin in this round-one Birdies or Better proposition. Griffin lags well behind Keegan in every key ball-striking metric (Long Iron Proximity, Strokes Gained per Approach >150 yards, and GIRs Gained from >150 yards), but it is Griffin's deficiency with the driver that has me most worried about his prospects around Torrey Pines South.
Griffin ranked 166th out of 193 players in Total Driving last season, and graded below the Tour Average from both a distance and accuracy perspective. That sort of driving profile might be passable around the Swing Season birdie parties we see Giffin pop up at now and again, but around a 7,800-yard golf course with 26-yard wide fairways and ankle-deep rough, Griffin's driver is almost assured to get him into an abundance of trouble.
Keegan, on the other hand, seems to thrive on long, demanding courses that guard themselves with thick rough. His two best driving performances of the 2023 season came at Bay Hill and Quail Hollow, and he hasn't lost strokes off-the-tee around La Jolla since a missed cut in 2013.
The putter has always been Griffin's failsafe in the event that the ball-striking isn't all the way there, but Torrey Pines' bumpy poa annua greens will almost certainly play more into the hands of the man with more experience. Griffin has only stepped foot on California poa on three occasions: losing a cumulative total of 5.4 shots to the field in six career rounds. Keegan, meanwhile, gained a season-high seven shots on the South Course's putting surfaces in last year's rendition. Even if the ball-striking stabilizes enough for Griffin to create similar birdie chances to Bradley, it's difficult to find a substantial advantage for him with even his most dependable historic weapon.
Michael Block MORE than 72.0 Strokes
I understand that the North Course at Torrey Pines acts as the soft underbelly of the two courses on offer this week, but let's not make the mistake of grouping it into the same category as El Cardonal, the Pete Dye Stadium Course, or La Quinta Country Club: all venues within the last three months that saw winning scores peak close to 30-under, and that also saw Michael Block fight tooth and nail to break par.
Block played his five rounds at PGA West/El Cardonal at two-under (breaking par on just two of five occasions), and has lost a cumulative total of 29.1 strokes to the field in nine competition rounds since his Cinderella run around Oak Hill. His admitted deficiencies off-the-tee (particularly in terms of length), will not serve him well around a waterlogged Torrey Pines. As even though the North Course measures over 500 yards shorter than the course he'll play on Friday, it still features four Par 3's over 200 yards, five Par 4's over 450, and similarly narrow fairways and penal 3.5" rough to its sister course to the south.
Of course, one argument you can make for Block is the fact that the Southern California native will come into this start with six renditions of past experience. In the six starts he's made at the Farmers Insurance Open, he's recorded one (1) under-par round (nearly ten years ago), and an average score of 73.67.
I don't want to take anything away from the magical four-day run that earned him national acclaim and a spot in this year's PGA Championship at Valhalla, but I've reached the point where one outlier week doesn't change my overall projection of Block as a seriously sub-standard entity on the PGA Tour. I wouldn't be comfortable taking any sort of under-par proposition in the PrizePicks rotation (no matter which Tour course he's been invited to compete on), and I'm certainly not buying an even-par line around Torrey Pines.
Other Recommendations
- Min Woo Lee MORE than 70.5 Strokes
- Tony Finau LESS than 4.5 Birdies or Better
- Sahith Theegala MORE than Eric Cole - Birdies or Better Matchup
Overall recommendation for this play: Power Play
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