The Core and More: PGA DFS Notes for the 2025 PGA Championship

The season’s second major is upon us with the PGA Championship being hosted by Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. This is a regular Tour stop so there is plenty of data on the course, but the PGA of America will make some adjustments to toughen it up the best they can.

They have gone away from overprotecting par, though. They are not going out of their way to make courses tough just to keep scores close to par. This is evidenced by four of the last 11 PGA Championships being won at -16 or better. For Quail Hollow it hosted the 2017 PGA Championship and was won by Justin Thomas at 8-under. Given the pre-tournament rain to soften the fairways and overseeded turf compared to pure bermuda in the 2017 edition and I can’t imagine this playing tougher. So, I think 12-under is probably a good target score with realistic ranges of winning scores falling within four shots in either direction of that. Still a tough test by normal week-to-week tournament standards.

Enough jabbering, let’s talk about the DFS plays that stand out.

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Core Target

Joaquin Niemann

When I look at baseline skill this week there are four golfers that eclipse the plus-2 strokes gained per round marker. They are Scheffler, McIlroy, DeChambeau and Niemann. The first three are priced over $11k and attracting a ton of rostership. Then you have Niemann who is priced under $10k and projected at less than 10% rostership. Historically over my last few years of tracking when a golfer is greater than 2 strokes in the baseline department, they go on to post top-five finishes in full-field events more than 35% of the time. That is too good to pass up with Jaco. The knock on Niemann is his lack of big finishes in majors over the course of his career but my counter to that is that we’ve never seen him play at this elite level. He’s so undervalued by the market in my opinion, making him my favorite play of the week.

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The Core and More: PGA DFS Notes for the 2025 PGA Championship

Core Target

Joaquin Niemann

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