Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions – 2023 PLAYERS Championship

Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the 2023 PLAYERS Championship  

PLAYERS Championship Fantasy Preview

Make no mistake, the decision of the PGA TOUR to introduce more ‘elevated’ events – and just last week more no-cut tournaments – is based solely on the need to ward off the prospect of losing their best players and commercial assets to LIV Golf.

The fear is that it will create something of a ‘closed shop’ in the TOUR’s key events. See Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm victories in the two elevated tournaments of 2023 so far as further evidence.

But such an argument does a disservice to the deep pool of talent that competes on the PGA TOUR, and of that group one largely uncelebrated individual smashed the glass ceiling for his comrades at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Although ranked inside the world’s top-50, Kurt Kitayama had recorded just one top-20 finish on the PGA TOUR since August. But golf courses with the complexity of Bay Hill can act as something of a leveller, taking away the best in the business’ advantages, and instead put a premium on grinding out a score.

And Kitayama did that to an elite level over the weekend, even finding time to recover from a triple-bogey on Sunday to run out a one-shot winner from Rory McIlroy and co.

A closed shop? Don’t you believe it.

Meanwhile, over in Puerto Rico, rookie Nico Echavarria secured his maiden PGA TOUR title in the alternate event. He blasted -21 to win by two shots from Akshay Bhatia, and the Colombian has played his way into the field for the richest event of 2023 so far: the PLAYERS Championship.

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Last Event’s Fantasy Results

Of the both reports (Main Picks and Sleeper Report), 10 of our 12 total picks made the cut last week.  

Our top pick Scottie Scheffler ended up finishing T4 on the week along with our mid-tier pick, Cameron Young, who ended up T10 for the week.

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PLAYERS Championship Field

With a $25 million prize pool to play for, you can bet your bottom dollar that the best in the business are heading for TPC Sawgrass.

Some 43 of the world’s top 50 will tee it up on the next leg of the Florida Swing, with Rahm Scheffler and McIlroy front and center.

All 14 of this season’s PGA TOUR winners are in the mix, as well as former PLAYERS Championship victors like Justin Thomas, Jason Day, Rickie Fowler and Si-Woo Kim.

Kitayama booked his spot with victory on Sunday, and he will join other in-form stars like Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa, Viktor Hovland and Jordan Spieth in the hunt for the money-spinning prize.

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This Week’s Course Preview

Pete Dye is regarded as one of the finest golf course designers on the planet, and TPC Sawgrass is perhaps the best of the lot.

It’s a fitting home for the sport’s best non-major tournament, and while the seventeenth hold – the infamous island green – has taken on a life of its own, this is a golf course with so much more to it than that.

TPC Sawgrass is laden with a number of Pete Dye staples. There’s tight, doglegging fairways flanked by trees, stacks of bunkers and smaller-than-average greens, while to add extra difficulty this is also one of the ‘wateriest’ tests on the PGA TOUR rotation.

In a quirk of routing, no two holes play in the same direction either – which means that the players are faced with a different wind to combat every time they step onto the tee box.

The Bermuda greens, which have been overseeded with Poa, run at a lively 13 on the stimp too, and in high winds these can be particularly difficult to hold – Cameron Smith, who won at Sawgrass 12 months ago, recorded a GIR count of just 63%.

Just six holes averaged under par in 2022, and unsurprisingly four of those were the Par 5s. The seventeenth, incidentally, was the second hardest given the fierce wind that blew, and ensuring a challenging finale the closing hole – a 462-yard Par 4 with forced carries – played as the toughest.

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Weather Forecast for Ponte Vedra Beach, FL

The weather looks set to be fine all week long in Ponte Vedra, although the heightened risk of rain on Friday is of interest.

It’s dry and breezy to start the week, while Thursday should be dry and sunny with a wind speed of around 11mph.

The dreaded ‘scattered showers’ are in the early predictions for Friday, while the wind could nip up to 13mph and higher – TPC Sawgrass is fairly exposed in some areas.

The weekend is set fair with sunshine and wind speeds of around 11 mph again, with temperatures hitting 77˚F at the best of times.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH WEATHER

Last Year’s Results from the PLAYERS Championship

Last year’s PLAYERS served up one of the unlikeliest finishes in the whole of the 2022 season.

Anirban Lahiri, considered no better than an 800/1 shot before the tournament, looked to be amongst the most likely winners all week, and even heading into the final hole had a chance to force a playoff against Smith.

An attritional week, in which all involved had to brave the elements, finally relented on Sunday, and Smith – with a round of 66 – took full advantage.

But he inexplicably hit his approach shot at the 72nd hole into the water, allowing Lahiri, who’d been there or thereabouts on the leaderboard, to force extra time if he made a birdie.

The ideal drive laid the foundations, but the Indian tugged his iron approach as well, leaving himself with a chip-in chance only.

Lahiri missed, and Smith breathed a sigh of relief as he managed to convert a bogey putt that was enough to secure a one-shot victory.

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Where to Play Fantasy Golf for the PLAYERS Championship this Week

It’s usually a great sign when your draft comes easily, and our initial lineups did have that easy-going feel to them. As such, we can hopefully have confidence in their success within the following DraftKings contests:

• PGA $2.5M Fantasy Golf Millionaire: If you have the readies at your disposal, this $25 contest offers a world of possibilities. Yes, the $1 million top prize is a pipedream, but the top-75 lineups will all cash a minimum of $500 too.

• PGA $600k Drive the Green: There’s a couple of lineup variations that you’ll probably want to play this week, so a $5 entry contest is perhaps a smart way to go – this one pays $50k to first place and the usual percentage wins for the top 20% or so of players.

This Week’s Fantasy Notes

Like so many courses on the PGA TOUR, TPC Sawgrass is a challenge altered by the inclement weather conditions.

When the wind blows it can be a fearsome assignment, and in 2022 that was reflected in fairways and greens in regulation missed aplenty – Smith’s scrambling game, and outstanding week with the putter, ultimately got him home.

When TPC Sawgrass does bare its teeth, scramblers like Smith and accurate sorts like 2018 champion Webb Simpson come to the fore, but when conditions are more benign success can be found from the rough – the 2021 and 2019 winners, Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy, both adding 10% or more to their GIR ratio when compared to their driving accuracy.

Quality on approach through the bag is key, as is comfort around the greens – plenty of chips will have to be nudged close by our champion this week. Making moves on the Par 5 holes is also non-negotiable.

You can look at other Pete Dye layouts if you seek correlations, but be warned that not all of these feature the same characteristics as Sawgrass – in some cases, Dye has simply reworked existing courses, rather than designed them from scratch himself.

Instead, take a look at events like the St Jude, Valspar Championship and Charles Schwab Challenge – these are played at doglegging layouts with small, fast greens.

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Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the PLAYERS Championship   

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Top 5 Picks/Odds to Win the PLAYERS Championship  

Top Tier Pick #1

Scottie Scheffler (Odds: 11/1, FPPG: 99.9, Salary: $10,600)

It sounds unusual to say, but much of the hard work at TPC Sawgrass is done from tee to green.

Yes, Cameron Smith ranked first for Strokes Gained: Putting 12 months ago when winning this event, but that was a fairly atypical PLAYERS edition with high winds, rain and low temperatures.

Generally, the key is to hit your ball as close as possible to the flag despite the complexities of Pete Dye’s flagship design – and recover well when you do (inevitably) miss the green.

That’s why there’s a preference for Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy over Jon Rahm this week – the Spaniard endangering the lives of the good people of Orlando with some of his drives last week, and McIlroy’s slightly cooler irons make Scheffler the preferred play.

His ball-striking remains as majestic now as it has at any point during his golden year, and he continues to outperform everyone in that regard – it’s just a little heat with the flat stick, as seen as the Phoenix Open, that separates him from victory.

The naysayers will point at a missed cut at Sawgrass last year as a reason for negativity about Scheffler’s chances, but remember that was a fairly atypical year as far as the conditions were concerned. And McIlroy, Day and Fowler had all missed the cut at the PLAYERS the year prior to them lifting the trophy.

Key Stats:

• SG: Off-the-Tee – 2nd
• SG: Approach – 12th
• Scrambling – 14th

Top Tier Pick #2

Justin Thomas (Odds: 33/1, FPPG: 84.6, Salary: $9,400)

When tee-to-green excellence is the prominent factor, Justin Thomas is never far from our thoughts.

His putting remains the missing link, but his work with the flat stick of late has been less bad and, if that uptick continues, JT may finally be able to put away the many birdie chances his ball-striking creates.

The owner of a solid recovery game, which always helps around the small greens of Sawgrass, Thomas has been doing plenty right in 2023 with no finish lower than T25 in his last four starts.

The 2021 PLAYERS champion, JT also has top-10s at each of our correlating courses (TPC Southwind, Innisbrook and Colonial.

Key Stats:

• SG: Around-the-Green – 1st
• Birdie Average – 9th
• SG: Tee-to-Green – 13th

Mid-Tier Pick #1

Jason Day (Odds: 45/1, FPPG: 77.9, Salary: $8,000)

There’s some outstanding ball-strikers in this field – think Viktor Hovland, Cameron Young and Tyrrell Hatton – whose occasionally questionable short games do provoke a lack of confidence.

We’ll have no such problems with Jason Day, who is pretty darn reliable with wedges in hand. Not only that, the Aussie’s ball-striking has been in fine fettle since the start of 2023.

A former champion here as we know, Day has connected four straight top-10s in quality company in recent weeks, and he looks ready to finally get back into the winner’s circle. 

Key Stats:

• Scrambling – 2nd
• SG: Tee-to-Green – 12th
• SG: Putting – 14th

Mid-Tier Pick #2

Keegan Bradley (Odds: 50/1, FPPG: 73.9 Salary: $7,500)

Although his short game is enough to bring is backers out in a cold sweat, there’s enough positivity in Keegan Bradley’s form right now to circumnavigate that.

Firstly, he’s been gaining strokes around the green in recent starts, which is unusual for him but welcome nonetheless. The second is that his ball-striking is in great touch, which should hopefully help him to keep his GIR count high, and he’s enjoyed a fine time of things at Sawgrass in recent years – 5-29-16-7 is actually very good here compared to the inconsistencies of even the big guns at this stretch.

Progressive form off-the-tee and on approach, plus a fondness for faster greens, mark Bradley out as one to watch this week.

Key Stats:

• Scoring Average – 25th
• SG: Off-the-Tee – 32nd
• SG: Approach – 49th

Low-Tier Pick

Keith Mitchell (Odds: 60/1, FPPG: 72.8, Salary: $7,400)

Keith Mitchell drives the ball well everywhere he goes, that’s a given, but he’s started to add green numbers on approach and when putting too.

Armed with a reliable short game, Mitchell is therefore becoming the finished article, and it will be interesting to see how far he can ride this heater.

A winner in Florida at the Honda Classic, Mitchell was T13 here last year and has recorded two top-five finishes and a pair of other top-25s in just six starts in 2023.

Key Stats:

• SG: Tee-to-Green – 15th
• Scoring Average – 19th
• Scrambling – 67th

Sleeper Pick for the PLAYERS Championship

Jhonattan Vegas (Odds: 180/1, FPPG: 70.6, Salary: $6,800)

Load up the top-10 on the PGA TOUR this season for SG: Tee-to-Green and all the usual suspects are in place: McIlroy, Scheffler, Rahm etc.

But sitting in sixth place is Jhonattan Vegas, who has started to hit his irons and wedges better to go with this elite driving game. 

The Venezuelan is setting up stacks of birdie looks right now, and while he hasn’t always had the expertise with the flat stick to take them, look at his return on the greens last time out at the PGA National: +1.23.

The stats confirm Vegas’ preference for fast Bermuda greens, and with another strong putting show at Sawgrass he could achieve excellent things.

Key Stats:

• SG: Off-the-Tee – 6th
• SG: Approach – 27th
• Scoring Average – 35th

Alternative Sleeper Pick for the PLAYERS Championship

Justin Suh (Odds: 200/1, FPPG: 57.9, Salary: $6,600)

If this young man can continue his rich vein of form into weaker-field events later in the year, he will surely contend for a maiden PGA TOUR title.

Suh continues to play well in his first look at difficult golf courses, with T5 at the Honda Classic backed by a respectable T24 at the Arnold Palmer.

It would be a seismic shock if he were to win this week, but from a salary position of $6,600 we can have confidence that Suh will far outperform expectations.

Key Stats:

• SG: Putting – 52nd
• SG: Approach – 80th
• SG: Off-the-Tee – 85th

This Week’s Sample Fantasy Lineup

Note: Sample lineups provided as examples only.  Be sure to mix-and-match players to best fit individual contests.

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Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2023)

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