Another PGA tournament in 2024 and another week of Mother Nature poking her head into the plot. We’ve seen more soft courses this year than I can ever remember.
Augusta National has the benefit of SubAir to dry out the greens, but the start of this week’s Masters is still looking shaky. The current forecast calls for overnight rains that turn into thunderstorms Thursday morning with precipitation not letting up until 11 a.m. or so.
If I were a betting man, I would bet that we see a delay to start the week and this thing may not even start until noon (or later). If that forecast holds true, then the p.m./a.m. wave would get hit with heavy winds in their opening round but have ideal, calm winds on Saturday morning when finishing up round two. Whereas the other side of the draw would battle heavy winds all day on Friday.
Overall, there may be a slight benefit to starting with an early tee time and finishing up on Saturday. Of course, if the storm shifts or the timing moves a few hours in either direction, and we could see a different picture.
Let’s hop into my favorite options this week…
Core Targets
Scottie Scheffler
There is just no true comp in the DFS era for what Scheffler is doing in terms of consistency. He’s gained at least 10 adjusted strokes in 15 of his last 22 starts and 10 adjusted strokes in this field lands him a top 10. He’s going to be the most popular pick this week but his rostership will likely stay at reasonable levels since DraftKings returned to their normal salary ranges with no $5K golfers to offset his big price tag.
Denny McCarthy
My preferred lineup construction this week is very top-heavy. Not just Scottie and balanced from there, but I like the idea of using Scottie plus one of the other superstars and then going value hunting. Denny is a key salary saver that unlocks that kind of build. I have him 21st in weighted baseline performance and he’s coming off a near-win at Valero, gaining 21 strokes to the field on a tough course. Despite those positive, there are just 11 golfers priced below him this week.
Other Notes
Jon Rahm
He’s the defending champ and he arrives with steady form. He has eight straight top 10s in the lead-up so despite not winning yet on LIV, he’s still keeping his game sharp. He’s my favorite high-priced pairing with Scottie, if you can afford him.
Adrian Meronk
Speaking of steady, Meronk has a DP World Tour win and seven other top 15s over his last 12 lead-in starts. The 30-year-old could be classified as a late bloomer and whenever I see late bloomers I like to tag along until there is a few signs of regression and then I hop off the train quickly. Meronk is still booming, making him a solid salary-saver option at $6,500.
Xander Schauffele
If Rahm doesn’t float your boat, or you just can’t squeeze in the salary, then Schauffele presents himself as another strong option in Tier 2, just behind Scottie. For Xander, he arrives with top-fives in three of his last four starts and boasts top 10s in three of his last five Masters trips.
Adam Hadwin
This is where things start to get fun. Hadwin ranks just 55th in my expected made cut rate this week but he’s 33rd in expected top 10 rate. That is what I love to see when looking for GPP-winning value options. He’s boom-or-bust but his good weeks are really good.
Rory McIlroy
Rounding out my Tier 2 preferences alongside Rahm and Xander, it’s Rory who is still searching for the final piece of his grand slam. What appeals to me with Rory is that he sits in the same tier as Scottie when looking at top-10 worthy performances over the last two years when isolating events with similar split stats (bentgrass, hard courses, fast greens, windy). I like the idea of running a lot of two-star lineups with at least two of Scottie, Xander, Rahm and Rory.
Keegan Bradley
The putter has gone cold in recent weeks and now people have lost all interest in playing Keegan. There could be relief in that form if the split stat percentages work in his favor this week. Bradley ranks just 50th in top-10 worthy weeks over the last year but he’s 21st when isolating events with similar splits. Buy the dip here.
Brian Harman
Similar to Hadwin, his range outcomes skew more toward the big finishes than his baseline metrics would indicate. He ranks 28th in two-year baseline performance but he’s 14th in the FTN Model’s top-five odds. If you’re looking to win GPPs (who isn’t) then it’s ideal to have that kind of ability to outperform your median skill level at a high clip.
Course Horse-tory
Looking beyond finish positions, good-round to bad-round ratios often paint a better picture.
The good rounds (monsters) are top-25 percentile rounds while the bad rounds (duds) are lower 25th percentile rounds.
Here are the top performers in that regard at Augusta National:
+11
Jon Rahm (12 Monsters, 1 Dud)
+9
Xander Schauffele (10 Monsters, 1 Dud)
+7
Cameron Smith (10 Monsters, 3 Duds) Patrick Reed (9 Monsters, 2 Duds)
What stands out is that you don’t want to be leaning on putting skill at Augusta as most of these names are either elite with their driver or irons and almost all of them are tidy around-the-green.
Course Fit Value
DraftKings went back to their regular salary ranges, but I still like the idea of top-heavy builds this week. If you want to make that work, you then some overperforming salary savers. My favorite way to find over-performance equity is through course fit.
My fit ranking looks at lead-in stats, correlated course performance, and split stat performance to spit out names that are likely to outperform their baseline expectations.
Here are the top value names in each price tier this week based solely on that fit score:
Under $8K
Sahith Theegala Stephan Jaeger Matt Fitzpatrick Corey Conners Akshay Bhatia Si Woo Kim Adam Scott
Under $7K
Kurt Kitayama Chris Kirk Erik van Rooyen Taylor Moore Byeong Hun An Jake Knapp Austin Eckroat
Most of these names from the sub-$8k range are getting a lot of love and show a negative GPP score this week. Adam Scott would be my favorite from that top list. As for the sub-$7k range, I wouldn’t make any of them my core focus, but I would sprinkle them throughout an MME portfolio.
