The PGA Tour returns with a small but loaded field at the Sentry Tournament of Champions! Time to get back into the swing of things with some DFS strategies and plays to consider!

By: @Ryan_Humphries on Twitter & LineStar Chat

Tournament & Field 🏆

The PGA is back from its brief holiday season hiatus and we are set to tee off the Tour’s first event of 2023! I hope everyone had a great time bringing in the New Year and here’s to this being a prosperous year, both in DFS and elsewhere in your life. This week will take golfers out to the Plantation Course at Kapalua in Maui, Hawaii for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. For those unaware, the only two ways to gain an invitation to this event are to have won a PGA tournament in the previous calendar year (hence “Tournament of Champions”) or to have finished inside the top 30 in FedEx Cup points during the 2021-22 season. As you might expect from the invitation requirements, this 39-man field is loaded with star power. 20 of the top 25 ranked players in the world will be teeing it up this week and only two players in the field are ranked outside of the top 130 in the OWGR. This is a no-cut event, so hey, a guaranteed paycheck for everyone along with a nice trip to Maui to begin the New Year… must be nice!

Note: First tee for this event is at 2:30 pm ET on Thursday, January 5th. DFS contests will lock at that time as well.

With a small field and no cut, I typically advise people to go light on their bankrolls. Many of these golfers haven’t played a competitive round in two months or more so “current form” really is more of an assumption based on how guys competed in their last significant starts. But regardless, it’s always nice to get your feet wet by playing these early-season events. Whether you are new to PGA DFS or you’re a PGA veteran, you can play simply some lineups this week to get back into the swing of things. As a reminder, when it comes to lineup construction in these sorts of tournaments, the best way to try to land a unique GPP lineup will be to leave some salary on the table. Very few optimal PGA lineups end up using 96+% of the available salary, especially in smaller field events, so keep that in mind for this week!

The Course Preview ⛳

The Plantation Course is a Par 73 set-up that extends 7,600 yards and stands out as a very unique PGA Tour venue. Not only is it the only Par 73 course on Tour but the course is also built onto the side of a mountain near the coastline. Because of its location, this course can be affected pretty dramatically by winds. The Plantation Course at Kapalua still routinely produces winning scores well into the 20-under range and scores have even hit 30-under on multiple occasions, including last year when Cameron Smith won with an insanely low 34-under score. Some renovations were made to the course a couple of years ago to make it a more difficult venue but, unless the winds cause some trouble, golfers should be posting some very low scores once again this year.

In general, this course won’t play as long as the advertised 7,600 yardages would indicate. There are a plethora of drastic elevation changes that will shorten the course and there are only three Par 3s as well. Golfers will see wide-open fairways off of the tee with very little rough coming into play. Very errant tee shots can find some super problematic rough, but for the most part, we can expect over 70% of tee shots to find the short grass. When golfers step up to make their approach shots, they’ll be targeting some of the largest green complexes on Tour. The large Bermudagrass greens have moderate amounts of undulation and should run fairly firm – around 11 on the stimpmeter. At first glance, bombers would seem to have the advantage here due to the course length and wide open layout, but I’m putting my preference towards the elite iron players who will be able to go pin-seeking this week.

Weather & Tee Times ⛅

Weather Verdict: The winds will be noticeable but are far from brutal this week. Thursday AM will draw the lightest winds of the first two rounds but it’s not a huge advantage. Sustained wind speeds should hover around 10-15 for much of the week with slightly stronger gusts. Outside of single-round DFS contests on Thursday (where AM golfers would be preferred), I would not recommend factoring in weather/tee time draw into your decision-making much, if at all, this week. Compared to a normal field size, tee times are much closer together to begin with this week with only 39 players in attendance.

Sentry Tournament of Champions Tee Times

Key Stats to Consider 📊

1. Strokes Gained: Approach | 25%

2. Birdie or Better % | 25%

3. Par 4 Average | 20%

4. Par 5 Birdie or Better % | 10%

5. Strokes Gained: Off the Tee | 10%

6. Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermuda) | 10%

PGA Tour Stats Page

🆕 Sentry ToC PGA Cheat Sheet 🆕

DFS Model Rank: A golfer’s ranking (within the current field) in my personal model, which weighs all of the key stats listed above in this newsletter, as well as things like course history, recent form, recent average fantasy scoring results, leverage, and odds to win.

Key Stat Rank: Provides a golfer’s overall rank (in relation to the field) in my "key stats only" model, which considers only the key stats listed above in this newsletter with the specified percentage weights allocated towards each statistic.

Alternative Cheat Sheet Direct Image Link

That will do it for our PGA preview! Best of luck this week and, once again, feel free to hit me up in the LineStar chat or on Twitter @Ryan_Humphries with any questions.

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