It’s the last chance for players to qualify for the Open Championship and it’s going to take a TON of birdies to do it!

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 Gthan you could ever need!

What a fun finish! We haven’t had an ending like that on tour yet this year, with most events being fairly anticlimactic on the 18th hole, but the 3M Open brought the goods with their fantastic finishing hole. Knowing he needed at minimum a birdie to win, Matthew Wolff took a less than aggressive approach hitting three wood off the tee and being well back of his playing partner Collin Morikawa who was in the same spot. As they got to their balls, Bryson DeChambeau drained his eagle, meaning both players needed birdie to force a playoff and eagle to win. After his approach leaked left of the hole, which had been a dead all day for players, Wolff was stone cold draining the birdie putt for the win. These young guys have put the old guard on notice that they are here and they are ready to play. And not only are they ready to play, but they are ready to win!

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Course Breakdown:

The John Deere Classic takes place this week at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Illinois. TPC Deere Run has hosted this event since 2000, and is known as a birdie fest.

TPC Deere Run is a par 71 that plays at 7,248 yards and typically is pretty easy to score on. The average score here last year was -1.6 strokes under par and there was just over double the number of birdies as they were bogeys.

Key Stats:

Designer: D.A. Weibring

Course Record: 59 – Paul Goydos

Greens: Bentgrass

Fairways: Bentgrass

Average Cut Line (10 years): -3.4

Average Winning Score (10 years): –21.6

As you can see, you clearly need to make birdies here. An average winning score over the last ten years of -21.6 is insane. And at only 7,248 yards this isn’t a very long course. We have wide fairways, and easy to hit greens and a crazy high eagle rate. Should be a bombers paradise right? Not so fast. Take a look at the winners here over the last few years. Michael Kim, Bryson DeChambeau, Ryan Moore, Zach Johnson, Brain Harman, Jordan Spieth, Steve Stricker not exactly a list of the longest guys on tour. So how do they protect this course? Expertly placed bunkers, dog legs, and elevation changes.

The bunkering on this course is great. It’s not extremely penal in that you can’t make par from a fairway bunker, but you are going to be hard pressed to make birdie. The fairway bunkers are placed directly in the landing zone/run out areas for all the bombers. Most tee shots over 290 yards bring trouble into play. You’re going to see lots of guys hitting 3 iron/3 wood off the tee to avoid that.

Along with the bunkering, 8 of the 14 par 4/5’s have some sort of dogleg to them. Forcing players into yardages that most of the time aren’t driver. There are a few holes, particularly number one that is going to require maybe even less than 3 iron to put yourself in the right position in the fairway. Most of the doglegs are on the front as the course opens up a bit on the back. Along with the doglegs the course also has quite a bit of elevation change and after two weeks in a row on relatively flat courses that may be a bit of an issue for anyone who hasn’t played here before. There are multiple greens that are at a different level than the tee shot whether that be above or below. This is going to require some calculation from players and caddies to get the distance right.

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If we look at some of the approach shot numbers we can see that the majority of what these guys have into greens is going to be wedges.

Combined, players will hit 5% more shots from 150 yards and in and 4% fewer shots from 200 yards and out compared to an average tour event. The majority of those shots will be fairway as this course ranks second in not only shots from the fairway but also in the least amount of shots from the rough. Find the fairway, wedge to the green, make the putt. That’s the formula here.

Overall, this is a really fun golf tournament. Lots of birdies, but there’s trouble if you go looking for it. Slow and steady tends to win the race here. If we look at the winners, with the exception of Spieth in 2015, they’ve been pretty consistent with their efforts. Four straight 66’s will win you this golf tournament. If you don’t shoot in the 60’s for a day though, you likely need a low one like Spieth in 2015 where he opened with a round of even par 71 but had a 61 in the third round. Similar to last week, the All four rounds under 70 bonus is going to be huge. There also is a good chance we see lots of bogey-free round bonuses on Draftkings and those can be the difference between winning a GPP and finishing tenth.

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Key Stats:

Key Stats to look for this week – Birdies Gained, Short Par 5 Scoring, SG: Approach L25, Bentgrass Putting, Field Rank, 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!

The top three on the board, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Matthew Wolff have a COMBINED 16 PGA Tour starts between them. These young guys are good..but are they that good? I feel like there is some recency bias baked into these odds, and while I like all of these guys this week, the odds just don’t fit especially with some of the talent priced behind them.

Brian Harman is a former winner here and coming off an excellent performance at the 3M Open, and the leader in Eagles on tour this year, Sungjae Im has been bet down from 33-1 to 25-1.

The highest ranked player in the Official World Golf Rankings is priced all the way down to 15th in this field, and that’s Kyle Stanley. Last year’s runner up Joel Dahmen at 66-1 is interesting as well.

For the most part, though, this week is going to be all about the long shots. Over 45% of the winners of this event since it’s inception we’re first-time winners on tour. Essentially unless you were a repeat winner here, winners have been first-timers. Michael Kim fit that bill last year, getting his first win by a whopping 8 strokes, and he played well the next week too, but since then he has missed 17 cuts in a row! This tournament really lends itself to long shots, and some of my favorite this week are guys like J.T. Poston, Adam Svensson, Joey Garber, and Hank Lebioda.

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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 jumped on Sungjae Im as soon as the odds came out as he was mispriced at 33-1, but I think there is still value in him at 25-1 and am recommending a bet here. He’s just such a proficient scorer that in this field, at this course, he makes a ton of sense. Had the young guns not had a great week at the 3M I think we would have seen him around 20-1 so we’re getting at minimum 5 points of value here.

Sam Ryder had an excellent tournament last year at the John Deere and is trending in the right direction with his current form as well. He’s coming back off an injury and has started to see some more consistent results. He scores well and ranks out as the fourth best player in projected course score.

Peter Malnati has been knocking on the door for a while now, as he’s produced some incredibly consistent results in the last few months, having not missing a cut since way back the Wells Fargo. He’s two for four in made cuts here, including a missed cut last year but his form was not near as good. He’s a great scorer and won’t be afraid of a birdie fest, having won the Sanderson Farms Championship a few years ago at -18 (played at the Country Club of Jackson which I think is a comparable score). 66-1 is maybe a little short but I just think he’s trending and knocking on the door of a win and for him to get one it needs to be in an event like this or an opposite-field event where the field strength is weak.

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And finally, two longer shots in Sebastian Munoz and Robert Garrigus. Munoz is an excellent par 4 scorer and shorter par 5 scorer and rates out well here. He played much better than his finish last week as he struggled on Sunday hitting one into the water and really struggling with his around the green game. That shouldn’t be an issue this week and I’ll take the strong iron game. Garrigus has three straight top 30 finishes at this course. He was solid last week at the 3M falling to the MDF but making the cut was an accomplishment given that it was only his third tournament (and first on the PGA Tour) since his suspension for using marijuana. This is a course he crushes and 250-1 is too long for a guy of his caliber at a course he loves.

I’ll have top 10 bets on Sungjae, Ryder, Malnati, and Munoz and a top 20 bet on Garrigus as well.

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, and while the weak field with barely any recognizable names isn’t always ‘fun’ there is typically a big advantage to those of us who put the time and effort into research. 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!

Remember, this is the last week before the Open Championship, so don’t be afraid to enter some satellite contests for Milly Maker tickets!!

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