Football is finally over… mostly. Either way, it’s time for golf to take center stage on the DFS scene. And we get a heck of a tournament this weekend with the Farmers Insurance open at Torrey Pines, featuring some of the best golfers in the world. Including the 2020 debut for Tiger! That said we can expect larger tournaments on Draftkings this weekly, and more importantly, likely some inexperienced players coming over from NFL. So let’s get into the course breakdown to see what type of players to look for.
Tournament Structure
The Farmers Insurance Open is a typical PGA event that will have a cut after the first round down to the top 65 and ties. The one caveat here is that the first two rounds will be played on both the north and south course, while the final two rounds will both be played on the south course. The north course is slightly “easier” but neither is course is “easy” by any means. We also only have ShotLink data from the south course. But both courses need the same skill set to succeed, so let’s get into that.
Course Layout
I’m going to only talk about the south course here because if your golfer needs to play the south well to be in contention here… obviously. So here are the quick metrics to know:
Par: 72
Greens: Poa
Weather: Clear (check back Wednesday)
This course plays like a typical par 72 course, with four par 3s and four par 5s. But it is long, like really long. Bombers should have an advantage with easier second shots, but the approach is what is really going to matter. Expect to see a lot of approaches from 175+ on par 4s that are most common at 450-500 yards total length. Speaking of long, all three par 3s measure over 200 yards in to small-ish greens, yikes. Finally, it looks to me like only one of these par 5s will be reachable in two. However, there should be some short wedges into the the green for some of these.
Course History
This tournament does not typically see very low scores win, almost the exact opposite of last week at The American Express. We would expect the winning score on perfect scoring conditions to be around -10-15, so about -3 per round would be a good number to shoot for. It is also typical to see a good player with prior experience at this course win the tournament. Long shots are very unlikely to win here, but that certainly doesn’t exclude them from Draftkings lineups, especially in a week where I think stars and scrubs will be the most successful lineup construction.
Key Stats
With all that said, let’s get into my key stats:
Strokes Gained: Approach
Bogey Avoidance
Strokes Gained: Around the Green
Strokes Gained: Par 4s (long par 4s in particular)
Strokes Gained: Off the Tee
Strokes Gained: Par 5s
Strokes Gained: Putting (Poa)
This is more stats than I usually list, but you really do need a good all-around golfer here, which is why someone high in the world rankings usually wins.
Thanks for the read.. picks/fades/contrarian plays will be out later this week after we get some ownership projections.
Firkz DFS 