PGA DFS Playbook: Play it Safe

The 2015 Wells Fargo Championship is the most challenging tournament for DFS I have encountered in some time. When I make PGA DFS picks I look for players who have played well lately and have played well at the host course, in this case Quail Hollow. Those players don’t really exist, and the few who do are outrageously expensive. I couldn’t figure out why Rory Sabbatini cost so much until I looked at the rest of the prices and realized Sabbatini is a better fantasy play than most of the people listed after him. That tells you all you need to know about the field this week.

While I consider recent performance and historical performance in a given tournament for my PGA DFS games, I tend to give more weight to historical performance. The reason is simple: more often than not those players cost less. You almost always have to pay for a hot streak, but it is possible to find bargains with guys who have repeatedly gotten it done on a particular course. The field and prices for the Wells Fargo Championship dictate giving less weight to recent performance. I’m not going to pay up for middling players like Bo Van Pelt and Jonathan Byrd just because they happened to have a couple nice finishes at the Wells Fargo Championship. I would rather pay a similar amount for somebody like Russell Knox or Sang-Moon Bae who has been better all season. In other tournaments I would be all over somebody like Bo Van Pelt, but he just costs too much this week.

I think the best way to go, at least for cash games, is to just fill your lineup with safe mid-priced options. There is so much volatility in this field that I would happily take my chances with a lineup where everyone makes the cut but maybe doesn’t have a great chance to win. Someone like John Peterson who has just one missed cut but zero top-10s in 15 starts seems especially attractive in a week where just about everybody else is a 50-50 bet to make the cut. I feel like I could get a lot of mileage out of a lineup with guys like Peterson, Justin Thomas, Webb Simpson, Adam Scott, and Russell Knox. You could always supplement those players with a Kevin Kisner or Rory Sabbatini to give yourself a bit more upside.

This field would be a great one for Stars and Scrubs, but it is impossible to pair Rory McIlroy with another stud and have enough left over to field a full lineup. Even if you apply a loose definition to the word “stud” and pair Rory with Patrick Reed and Adam Scott you would have $6,100 left to spend on each of your last three roster spots. Even just pairing Rory and Reed would leave you extremely  weak in the other four lineup spots. I am content with a lineup where my best player is Hideki Matsuyama or Patrick Reed if it means a decent shot at having all of my players make the cut.