RBC Canadian Open PGA DFS Playbook

The Open Championship was one crazy ride. Amateurs were all over the leaderboard while Dustin Johnson disappeared from it in an instant. Jordan Spieth made a run at history while Marc Leishman had the best weekend in Open history only to come up short in the playoff. Oh yeah, and there was a 10 ½ hour wind delay on Saturday.

Twelve of the 14 players in my Open Championship Playbook made the cut, but unfortunately I was stupid enough to have either Tommy Fleetwood or Tiger Woods in each of my four Millionaire Maker entries. I usually try to keep my lineups fairly diverse, but somewhere in all my lineup shuffling on Wednesday I wound up with Tommy Fleetwood in three lineups. I would have been fine if he had made just one birdie in his second round, but even so it was a reminder I need to do a better job making sure I am not relying too heavily on one player; especially one who is not a lock to make the cut.

I thought Tiger was a lock to make the cut, and he didn’t even come close. I would love to say I am done with him, but if his price drops ahead of the Bridgestone Invitational next month, it will be nearly impossible to fade him. Tiger has eight wins at Firestone, and while I will not pay up for him like I did last week, I will probably take a shot in a GPP if the price is right.

As for this week, the Canadian Open may be the toughest tournament of the year for fantasy. Like The Open Championship, the Canadian Open rotates courses. This year’s host, Glen Abbey, last hosted in 2013, and I am reluctant to recommend anyone based on what he did in one tournament two years ago. That being said, I believe we can learn quite a bit from the type of players who appeared on those leaderboards. The Canadian Open leaderboards are littered with guys like Jerry Kelly, Bob Estes, Briny Baird, Mark Wilson, Carl Pettersson and Ken Duke who were known more for keeping the ball in the fairway and making putts than for bombing it long off the tee.

At 7,273 yards, the par 72 Glen Abbey GC is long, but not too long. Length off the tee can help, but avoiding the trees that line most of the fairways is more important. For that reason, the two stats I’m focusing on this week are Strokes Gained: Putting and Good Drive Percentage. I’m also ignoring the results from the Barbasol Championship. It is basically a glorified Web.com Tour event, and reading anything into those results is probably a mistake. I actually liked Scott Piercy for the Canadian Open, but his win last week has priced him out of my lineups. I’d much rather play somebody like Jerry Kelly who costs less on both FantasyAces and DraftKings.