PGA DFS Hot Takes for the 2025 Players Championship

For the first time this year, all of the best players are teeing it up in an event with a tough cut to make. That’s sort of the theme of the week here — if you can get all six through the cut, you’ll be in great shape. Easier said than done, though! This is a week to lean even further into game theory than usual, but it’s also a week for our proprietary strokes gained: driving accuracy metric to shine.

Course Fit: The 2025 Players Championship

This is a massive increase in accuracy’s predictive value. It’s so big that it’s preventing the other categories from being super predictive. For example, great iron players won’t be able to take advantage of that aspect of their game unless they’re able to drive it accurately to begin with.

But this isn’t just about being in position off the tee. It’s also about avoiding big mistakes. There may not be a single tee shot on this course where guys can aim down the middle of the fairway — they always have to shade their targets away from a penalizing miss. That, and the ability to curve the ball in both directions, is why this course is so demanding of accuracy off the tee.

Last but not least, there’s also an element of accuracy being predictive of distance here. We’ve talked about the opposite in the past — distance is sometimes predictive of accuracy when distance lets the long hitters take certain bunkers/hazards/etc out of play. Here, accuracy can be predictive of distance because the more confident guys off the tee can take driver on holes where others take 3-wood or long irons to try extra hard just to get the ball in play. Scottie has done this a ton here in the last two years.

Everyone I play this week will be accurate off the tee by our measure of accuracy.

Hot Takes for the 2025 Players Championship

1. It’s finally Taylor Pendrith week (yes, I said this last week, too — before the pivot to the late-early stack)

I think we got robbed of a potential Pendrith week at the API when the weather resulted in a significant advantage for the late — early wave. Fortunately, I posted that thought in Discord Wednesday night: