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DFS Golf: UpNorth’s PGA Preview – RBC Canadian Open

North of the border for Canada’s National Championship this week as player’s prepare for the US 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!

Patrick Cantlay finally broke through and got his first ‘real’ win (not during the swing season) on the PGA tour and by doing so jumped up into the top ten of the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time in his career! It was another crazy week at Muirfield with many of the top players missing the cut again. We were able to avoid the carnage and actually got all of our bets through to the weekend with Adam Scott making a run at it but ultimately falling a little short.

I was underweight on Cantlay, thinking that he couldn’t keep this incredible run of golf going (and because he was popular and I wanted all the Rickie)  and that at some point he would hit it in the sand trap and make a big number. Perhaps it was poetic then that he hit it in the trap on 18 with Scott close on his heels and hit a fantastic shot to a few feet and was able to knock in his par putt to win. Just a masterful performance by Patrick and I would think he would be moving up peoples boards for the US Open next week at Pebble Beach.

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This week the tour heads north of the border to partake in Canada’s national championship, the RBC Canadian Open. While many are familiar with this being a birdie fest on a course that benefits the bombers (Glen Abbey)  this year the rotation heads to Hamilton Golf and Country Club for the first time since 2012 when Scott Piercy took down the championship. Hamilton, while still likely a birdie fest will be a completely different test than many are used to for this championship! This is also the first time the Canadian Open will be held prior to the US Open due to the change in the PGA Tour’s schedule this year!

Course Breakdown:

Hamilton Golf and Country Club has hosted the RBC Canadian Open 6 times, first in 1919 with J. Douglas Edgar winning and most recently in 2012 with Scott Piercy taking home the trophy.

At 6966 yards, this is one of the shorter courses players will play all year, and almost 300 yards shorter than Glen Abbey which has hosted this tournament every year since 2013. While short, it is a par 70 which gives it some defense to posting a huge winning score as there are two less par 5’s.

Hamilton is a Harry Colt design and that’s a name you’ll likely hear again in a few weeks as he did an extensive redesign of Royal Portrush which hosts the Open Championship later this summer. This course was lengthened and renovated by Tom Clark in 1990 and plays pretty much the same now as it did then.

The Poa Annua greens (mixed with Bent, but mostly Poa) are postage stamp size, meaning they are extremely small. Players who hit them will have a good look at birdie as long as they are on the right side of the hole, as many of the greens are tilted front to back. That big of a tilt means that they aren’t able to get these greens running super fast, and will likely be around 10.5 or 11 on the stimp which is fairly slow.

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In 2012, the course played almost a half stroke under par with the front playing much easier than the back and while there wasn’t a ton of eagles made (37) there were 1570 birdies made which puts it a little higher than some other par 70’s we’ve seen recently (Harbor Town, Colonial). The issue with this course though is that it’s very straight forward and when he won here in 2012, Piercy referred to it as boring. Hit the fairway, hit the green, make a birdie if you’re in the right spot. Typically in the past, the rough has been long enough to be penal and despite the superintendent saying it was getting to where they want it, videos from the course today showed it is pretty thin and not very long at all. So despite being short and on paper requiring you to hit the fairway, I think you can get away with being a little wayward here, giving the bombers an edge that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t have. Robert Garrigus finished second here in 2012 hitting way more drivers than his competitors and talked about how there were spots he could be aggressive.

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Bombers can also club down and be more accurate than they normally are so we need to be careful when writing off a guy who has poor driving accuracy because he could hit stinger 3 irons here all week and find himself in position A on every fairway. Really what I’m looking for is players who are long off the tee, and great with the approach game. This tends to turn into a bit of a putt putt contest if you look at past results, but it’s not necessarily something I’m going to target.

One thing I really like about this tournament, and it may seem weird, is that it’s a weak field and that benefits those of us who do the research and can find those gems. It’s really uncomfortable to roster ANYONE under $7500 this week, but I have confidence in trusting the research to give us an edge!

Key Stats: 

Key Stats to look for this week –  Birdies Gained, Par 4 Scoring, SG: Approach L25, SG: Off the Tee, Driving Distance, SG: Putting Poa, 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!

Yikes. The top of this field is fantastic with Rory, DJ, Brooks, JT  all tuning up for the US Open, but after that….oofta. This is NOT a strong field. The key is finding value. We obviously love those guys at the top and think they can call win, but who else can take a run at this. If we’ve learned anything recently we know that the studs don’t always even make the cut let alone contend, so being able to identify those deeper values who can win is huge.

I’ve been pumping money into Henrik Stenson for so long with no reward, but this feels like another course he can contend at with his excellent approach game and he won’t lose much off the tee. 35-1 seems short though and he may end up being more of a steady DFS play for me.

Sergio Garcia is maybe the one guy up top that I would be interested in taking a crack at. He’s not very good on poa which is concerning, but this is a European style track and one that should fit his game, despite being a bit wayward off the tee, he is excellent with his irons and I think that 25-1 is a fair price.

Deeper down the field we go we have guys like Adam Hadwin who despite being a Canadian (they haven’t won here in a million years) shapes up pretty well for this course. His irons have been the issue this year but they have flashed as recently as two weeks ago, and Poa is his best surface (not surprising given that it’s the main putting surface in Canada) 66-1 is a bit short, and I actually might favor his Canadian brethren Corey Conners at 100-1 to break the curse!

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Deeper down I really like the Europeans this week. Danny Willett had an excellent week tee to green and even putted pretty well and makes some sense at 100-1. Erik Van Rooyen is coming off an excellent PGA Championship and just qualified for the US Open on Monday afternoon at Sectionals, showing that his game is still in great shape. Lucas Bjeregaard also had a great week at the PGA and then dudded back in Denmark but getting the 44th ranked player in the world at 75-1 when the 43rd ranked player is half the price makes a lot of sense to me.

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).

As I stated earlier, the only guy I really feel comfortable taking a crack at is Sergio Garcia up here. The top of this field is so heavy with Brooks and DJ both at single digit odds to win, I felt like just taking entirely long shots this week in betting, but that number on Sergio is intriguing. If his iron play continues to be hot and he putts at all he can go toe to toe with any of the favorites here and at 4x the odds.

After that though I’m going to drop all the way down to some long shots. Erik Van Rooyen being the shortest coming off an excellent top 10 at the PGA Championship which saw him threaten the top 5 multiple times. I’ll forgive a missed cut as he headed back to the euro tour and the Made in Denmark tournament as he was likely exhausted after a string of really solid performances. He’s coming across the pond with the sole purpose of playing in the US Open in two weeks and this is just kind of a bonus tournament for him if he didn’t qualify. Now that he has, he’ll want to build on the form he has coming in and I think this course really suits his tee to green game.

Corey Conners is my favorite local boy to make a run here and I think he’s a solid bet for top Canadian as well. We talk about how this course is a second shot golf course, and there is literally no one better with their irons within 50 points of him each way in the betting market. He’s solid enough off the tee that it won’t hurt him, he just needs to putt a bit and he’ll find his way up the leaderboard. Depending on the draw, I like him for a first-round leader bet as well.

Having still not qualified for the Open Championship at his home course of Royal Portrush, Graeme McDowell tees it up again with an increased sense of urgency to win. As noted earlier, the original designer of this course designed Portrush and it should give McDowell some comfort at least in sight lines off the tees. His iron play has been a bit spotty of late, but the putter has been excellent and I think he can really contend this week as he tries to sharpen his game ahead of a return to Pebble Beach where he won the US Open in 2010.

 

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And finally, a little deeper gut play in Dylan Frittelli, a player I think is just waiting to pop. He’s played the majority of his year on the PGA Tour and he has hung around the top 30 of the leaderboards for the majority of it. He rates out really well in every stat model because of his excellent tee to green game. Maybe the opposite of GMac in that the putter has held him back week to week, but here’s hoping that he finds it this week and can contend.

I’ll have T10 bets on all of the guys but Sergio who I will have a T5 bet on as well, I’m just waiting for those markets to open to see the price.

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 a fun week with Canada’s national championship and I always like seeing these birdie fests. It’s a great week to play satellites as well, especially considering that the Milly Maker for the US Open is $100 an entry!

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 Wednesday afternoon! If you aren’t a VIP yet, use code UPNORTH for 20% off EVERY MONTH FOREVER!

Also, give me a follow on twitter @dfsupnorth as I’ll be posting updates there as well as useful retweets leading up to this weeks event!

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