One week until the Masters’ and the tour heads up to TPC San Antonio for the Valero Texas Open!

My name is Josh Thomas, and I am a PGA and NFL Coach here at DFS Army! Welcome to the 2019 PGA Season! We here at DFS Army have got you covered this year for DFS golf with my weekly preview out on Sunday Nights, Chalk Donkey article breaking down the ownership projections, where to pivot, and GPP strategy out Tuesday Nights, and our Research Station that is full of more information than you could ever need!

Last week was exciting with Kevin Kisner taking down Matt Kuchar in the final of the WGC – Dell Technologies Match Play Championship! While I wasn’t necessarily heavily invested in Kuchar, I had a fair share of Kisner and was way overweight on Francesco Molinari who ended up leading the field in DK points by a large margin. I was also pretty heavy on Lucas Bjerregaard who burst on to the scene for the first time in America beating Justin Thomas, Henrik Stenson, and Tiger Woods en route to a 4th place finish.

Match Play is always a tricky tournament to handicap because there is so much variance. I was on the right side of it this week, but I also think that’s partially because of how I built my lineups. While the sample size is small (only two years of tournaments on DK), we have seen in back to back years that only a minuscule (3 this year, one last year) amount of lineups had 4/4 semi-finalists in their lineup. I hate to draw conclusions from such a small sample size but it appears that focusing your build on two to three quadrants and giving yourself the best chance to get two or three players in the semi-finals which have shown in the two-year sample to be very profitable. Maybe next year we see more than .005% get 4/4 but until then I’ll likely keep building my lineups every year “sub-optimally” (according to DFS Golf Twitter) and I’ll likely keep profiting.

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With the excitement of the Masters’ on the horizon, we have one last tournament to try and build our bankroll. It’s time to turn our focus to the Valspar Championship and get ready for the tough test that is TPC San Antonio!

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Course Breakdown:

The Valero Texas Open takes place at TPC San Antonio. The players will be teeing it up at the Oaks Course which is a Greg Norman design. Norman notoriously designed this golf course while going through a divorce, which some say has made the layout much more difficult than some of his other designs! He also worked with his former son in law (daughter’s boyfriend) Sergio Garcia on it, which would annoy me enough to make it difficult too!

While we have seen winning scores here of -17, -12, -12, and -11 over the last four years, this course actually does play as one of the tougher courses on tour. The teeth of this course are difficult to hit fairways and greens, but really its the Texas wind. If the wind picks up (it will, its Texas), the conditions go from a difficult course to one that is an extreme challenge. The tour can make it play much easier with different tee locations and hole locations like they did last year in round 3 when the wind was down and the pins were easy. That round saw the course play a full stroke under par, whereas it played over par in all three of the other rounds.

Par 4 scoring will be essential here, with 8 par 4’s between 400 and 500 yards, as well as two super short drivable par 4’s that you NEED to score on. With Bermuda greens and Fairways, the players will be fairly comfortable on them. Especially those that teed it up last week in Austin or on the Florida swing. It’ll be a bit of a change for the guys coming from the Corales championship. The greens here are fairly easy to read and typically run pretty slow. This benefits the good putters who typically get a boost putting on slow greens.

Hitting these greens (and staying on them) will be absolutely essential this week. The greens are pretty severely sloped and elevated and have runoffs that throw the ball into collection areas. Chipping the ball around the green here is very difficult. While I don’t want to target SG: Around the Green this week, I do want to look at who struggles there and avoid them.

Length is a benefit to a certain extent here, but the guys who really dominate are those with a great wedge game. Players hit 6% more shots than the average tour event from 125 yards and in. The other thing to target is guys who hit fairways. Putting yourself in position off the tee is essential to avoiding the big numbers.

Overall, this is a difficult test for the players, but those that stay out of trouble can score when the conditions are right. The issue we see sometimes with these events that lead into a Major is that guys are trying to get their game right for it and there often isn’t a big correlation between the course they are playing and the one they are really focused on. Players who aren’t already in the Masters may actually have a bit of an edge from a mental standpoint this week.

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Key Stats:

Key Stats to look for this week – Driving Accuracy, SG – Approach, Birdies Gained, Par 4 Scoring, Par 3 Scoring, SG: Around the Green (negative), Course History, and Projected Course Score.

You can find all of these key stats in our DFS Army research station accessible ONLY for our VIPs.

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The Field:

In this section, I’ll cover who is in the field this week, the odds, any pricing discrepancies, and a few of my favorite plays on first look!

Rickie Fowler leads the top of the odds table here at a pretty strong 11-1. He’s followed by last week’s winner at the WGC – Dell Technologies Match Play, Matt Kuchar who I assume will be extremely popular this week. Golf is the DFS Sport that I think has the biggest recency bias of any, so Kuch will be massively owned.

For some reason, Vegas thinks Spieth is going to win here soon. They keep his Masters’ odds high, and even in this field, 20-1 seems like too high. He played OK last week, but only won one match. No thanks.

Man, my boy Sungjae Im, couldn’t quite make enough birdies on the weekend to win at Punta Cana. On paper, this course should set up well for him, but we really don’t know how good of a wind player he is, which makes me a little wary, especially considering the price.

I’m a sucker for Byeong Hun An as you know and love him at 33-1 and in DFS this week. Tee to Green game is unreal. Slow greens make his mistakes not as bad. Keeps it in play he’ll be in contention.

Lucas Bjerregaard will be fairly popular coming off an event that he played very well at. He’s a good play, but I need to see his ownership first. A player that played well last week but ended up struggling against Paul Casey was Abraham Ancer who I love the number on, and I’m hoping he’s priced around 8K on Draftkings. He’s got a great game for here even though he hasn’t really put it together in his past two trips (two made cuts).

Justin Harding is a sneaky name for DK this week. He played very well last week in Austin, pushing Rory to the limit. He’s not really a bet for me but could be a sneaky play on DK.

The other guy I have a bunch of interest in is Martin Laird who while hasn’t played great this year, he has a great course history here.

As always, playing the ownership game is going to be vitally important this week and I can’t wait to break it down more in depth, including ownership projections and pivots, in my weekly ‘Chalk Donkey’ article for our DFS Army VIPs!

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Beat the Bookie Betting Card:

Something new I’m adding each week to this article is my personal betting card for the week for Outrights, First Round Leaders, Top 5’s and Top 10’s. The real bread and butter with golf betting is a tournament and round matchups but I’m saving those for our Beat the Bookie VIPs!

As a rule, I typically don’t bet many outrights under +3500 unless its an extremely weak field (DJ at the FedEx St. Jude last year comes to mind) It’s just not a +EV most weeks when you think about 156 guys teeing it up. Hitting 3-4 outrights a year is a fantastic year for most golf bettors. The return on investment of hitting an outright at 50-1 can pay for a long dry spell (which is fairly typical in golf betting if you are only playing Outrights, FRLs, and T5/T10).

I’ve sunk so much money into Ben An over my career in DFS and Betting its not even funny. It’s bound to pay off at some point though and with the way he is playing right now, I love him this week. He’s got a T40 to his credit here and his tee to green game might be the best in the field right now. He’s a value at +3300 and one I just can’t pass up.

Abraham Ancer is another guy I really like who should be comfortable playing in the Texas winds. He was born in Texas, raised in Mexico, played junior college in Texas and then at Oklahoma. Made the cut here both times out and is in arguably the best form of his career. 40-1 is pretty short but without anything else I really like in that range, he makes the most sense.

After those two, I’m taking some deeper darts and they are both guys I’ll be playing in DFS as well. Martin Laird has back to back top 20 finishes at this event and while his form is pretty awful (3 MC’s in a row) I think a return here to an event he has had some success at in the past, and especially a return to Texas where he has crushed overall, will benefit him.

Maybe my favorite play this week though is DJ Trahan. Trahan has shot up the OWGR with a string of 5 made cuts in 6 events so far this year on the PGA tour, including four top 20 finishes (and three in a row). He is an excellent golfer who can score, and his real strength is his ability to pound the ball off the tee and get it in the fairway. He’s able to put himself in position A and while his irons aren’t excellent, he is able to get close enough to make some putts for birdie. This event has had its fair share of maiden winners on tour and I think that Trahan is destined to get one at some point and likely in the near future if he continues to play as he has.

I’ll have Head to Head and full tournament matchups posted for our Beat the Bookie VIPs on Wednesday. And there are some reaaaaly juicy ones this week! These are truly where you can make your money in golf betting, while not as sexy or as big as an outright win, they are much more profitable.

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Final Thoughts:

This is the last week before the Masters’! Be smart with your bankroll so you aren’t redepositing before next week’s Major! There are tons of great contests, particularly satellites to some of the bigger contests on Draftkings and Fanduel for the Masters.

We will have content for you all through the week at DFS Army. Our research station and domination station optimizer will be updated on Tuesday and I will have my full Chalk Donkey article breaking down all the ownership and GPP strategy for our VIP’s on Tuesday night! If you aren’t a VIP yet, use code UPNORTH for 20% your first month!