The TOUR Championship DFS Golf Picks
Make the most of the data, predictions, and insights from this article to help with your fantasy golf picks for the TOUR Championship. Check out our PGA Optimizer to make more informed player selections for your DFS DraftKings lineups. Best of luck this week!
The TOUR Championship
Preview for the TOUR Championship: Everything boils down to this week in the final event of the 2021-2022 campaign with the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup in action. It’s a tricky week too since players start with different scores depending on their ranking coming into this tournament, so there’s lots to look at. I would highly recommend that you watch this video to get a great breakdown from Rick at RickRunGood as it’s a complicated week to figure out. This event has been around since 1987, and it has been a playoff tournament since 2007 when the PGA Tour first went into this format. The record is held by Tiger Woods who shot an insane -23 in 2007 to win by a ridiculous 8 shots. Over the last five years, winners of the TOUR Championship include Patrick Cantlay in 2021, Dustin Johnson in 2020, Rory McIlroy in 2019, Tiger Woods in 2018, and Xander Schauffele in 2017.
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Tournament purse: The prize money for this week’s event is a massive $75M and the winner collects a whopping $18M. The 30th place aka last place player this week still earns $500K.
Course and key stats: East Lake Golf Club is 7,346 yards in length, is a par 70, and the greens are Bermudagrass. The winning score at this tournament over the last five years ranges from -11 to -13 excluding starting strokes, so expect something similar this week. The key stats to focus on this week in order are driving accuracy, strokes gained: approach, strokes gained: off the tee, strokes gained: tee to green, and driving distance.
The field: We have the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings in action this week, even Cameron Smith draws back in after missing last week’s BMW Championship. On a scale ranging from A to D, I rank the field strength to be an A+.
Three questions that are relevant to the TOUR Championship this week:
1. What are the top 10 players in my custom model? Tony Finau, Scottie Scheffler, Scott Stallings, Rory McIlroy, Corey Conners, Will Zalatoris, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Sungjae Im, and Jon Rahm.
2. Which 10 players have gained the most strokes on approach over their last 24 rounds? Approach is almost always my top stat to look at, the best recently are Scottie Scheffler, Joaquin Niemann, Will Zalatoris, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Hideki Matsuyama, Scott Stallings, Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau, and Patrick Cantlay.
3. Which 10 players have gained the most strokes total over their last 24 rounds? Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Smith, Patrick Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Will Zalatoris, Tony Finau, and Adam Scott.
DraftKings lineup construction strategy this week: It’s a tricky one this week with different starting positions, so be sure to watch the video above, and pay close attention to projected player ownership if you have the tools at your disposal. I recommend going in a balanced direction this week since the field is quite talented, and you’ll likely want one of the top dogs at the top since Scottie Scheffler starts at -10, and a few others start quite low as well, so one of the top handful of players will likely win this week. The players who started at -10 have won the last two editions, that being Patrick Cantlay and Dustin Johnson. Rory McIlroy started at -5 in 2019 and managed to win by 4 strokes, but he’s an outlier case.
Ranking Each Player From 1st to 30th – excluding starting positions… sort of
- Patrick Cantlay (Salary: DraftKings – $13.0K) – He has been a beast between last year’s playoffs and this year’s, especially after his win last week – watch out for him as he’s only two strokes down to Scheffler and could defend his FedEx Cup title.
- Xander Schauffele (Salary: DraftKings – $12.3K) – Schauffele has an amazing record at East Lake and comes in with momentum from last week with a top 3 finish.
- Scottie Scheffler (Salary: DraftKings – $13.6K) – Scheffler was flailing a bit but had a solid T3 last week and wasn’t even at his best, the pressure is on him to win with the best starting score of -10 this week, will he come through?!
- Jon Rahm (Salary: DraftKings – $10.9K) – He’s trending over the last two weeks with two top 8’s and he has been good at this venue, but winning will be tough as he starts 7 strokes back of Scheffler.
- Rory McIlroy (Salary: DraftKings – $10.8K) – Rory had a solid T8 last week and we know he has the potential to light up this course, so he comes in with very little pressure starting at -4 and could easily finish in the top 3 when all is said and done.
- Tony Finau (Salary: DraftKings – $9.6K) – Finau has been scorching hot with two wins over his last four starts, had a T5 two weeks ago, and was a bit cold last week but should put in a solid finish this week in Georgia.
- Adam Scott (Salary: DraftKings – $6.6K) – He has two top 5’s in both playoff events and will be hungry to perform this week as he hasn’t played this tournament since 2019.
- Will Zalatoris (Salary: DraftKings – $11.5K) – An injury forced him to withdraw last week after winning the first leg of the playoffs, so keep an eye on his status this week. If he’s healthy, he should do well as his game is solid.
- Cameron Smith (Salary: DraftKings – $10.4K) – Here’s another injury-plagued player who could go either way this week but has big upside. I may have ranked him a bit high but he has really shone this season when the lights were the brightest.
- Scott Stallings (Salary: DraftKings – $7.4K) – Stallings has been on fire over the last few weeks and after his runner-up finish last week, he could keep the momentum going – he’s playing with house money at this point.
- Joaquin Niemann (Salary: DraftKings – $8.3K) – He’s a great approach player and it has led to a T13 and a T8 over the first two playoff events. He hasn’t been great at this track, but should have enough experience under his belt to break out this time around.
- Justin Thomas (Salary: DraftKings – $9.4K) – I likely have JT too low based on his big upside and his outstanding results at East Lake, but he hasn’t been himself for a while.
- Sungjae Im (Salary: DraftKings – $9.1K) – Im puts up consistently good results and should top his best finish here which is a T11 from two years ago.
- Matt Fitzpatrick (Salary: DraftKings – $8.8K) – Here’s another player that I’m likely ranking too low this week, but that T48 from last week left a bad taste in my mouth. He starts at -3 this week and should be in the mix to finish top 10.
- Cameron Young (Salary: DraftKings – $9.0K) – After he had two top 2’s he has gone T31-T23, so maybe he’s fading a bit down the stretch but he’s in a good starting position this week and the pressure is off.
- Corey Conners (Salary: DraftKings – $8.0K) – He really popped last week with a T5 and we know how strong of a ball-striker he is, the only knock against him is his -1 to start score, but he should improve on his starting position and finish top 15.
- Collin Morikawa (Salary: DraftKings – $7.9K) – Ranking players is so hard to do this week, and Morikawa likely was given the short end of the stick by me, we know he can rack up the birdies and score well, so he could finish top 5.
- Jordan Spieth (Salary: DraftKings – $7.8K) – He hasn’t done too much just yet in the playoffs and I don’t expect a ton from him this week, but he’s certainly capable.
- Viktor Hovland (Salary: DraftKings – $8.5K) – Hovland hasn’t been on his A-game since The Open Championship, but he did have a top 5 here last year, so he can manage East Lake effectively.
- Sam Burns (Salary: DraftKings – $9.9K) – He has been fine in the playoffs but not spectacular, he starts fairly high this week at -5 and we have seen that it’s possible to win it all from this position – McIlroy circa 2019.
- Sahith Theegala (Salary: DraftKings – $6.7K) – Two top 15’s in the playoffs show us that he has potential for the future, and could pull off something notable this week.
- Brian Harman (Salary: DraftKings – $5.7K) – After a top 3 two weeks ago I was thinking we may see another top 10 last week, but he was merely average to finish T35. He has the potential to pop, and is well priced.
- Hideki Matsuyama (Salary: DraftKings – $8.1K) – He doesn’t deserve to be ranked very high this week as he has been hurting and had a T35 last week, but maybe he will pull off something big like he did in 2018 when he had a top 5.
- Max Homa (Salary: DraftKings – $7.5K) – Homa hasn’t been at his best in recent weeks, but we know he’s capable of getting on a roll and should be fired up in his first TOUR Championship appearance.
- KH Lee (Salary: DraftKings – $6.0K) – I could have easily put him higher than this based on his top 5 from last week, but he will likely come back down to earth this week.
- Aaron Wise (Salary: DraftKings – $5.4K) – I like his style and price point this week, he’s a solid value play this week and could be a great option in stars and scrubs and hybrid lineups this week.
- Sepp Straka (Salary: DraftKings – $7.2K) – He was due for regression after his 2nd in the first leg of the playoffs, but he was better than average last week with a T28.
- JT Poston (Salary: DraftKings – $5.1K) – He has had a great run to get here and should continue to play above his baseline this week.
- Billy Horschel (Salary: DraftKings – $6.9K) – I likely have Billy-Ho too low but he hasn’t shown us much for a while now, but has won this event before and has played well here over the years aside from his 30th two years ago.
- Tom Hoge (Salary: DraftKings – $6.3K) – How did he make it here, what’s going on?! Expect him to finish bottom five this week, but he will still be happy to cash a $500K+ check.
