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

With a windy forecast ahead, the final stop of the PGA Tour’s Florida Swing should be a fun one as far as DFS golf goes. What does that on-site weather forecast say at the moment?

“A weakening cold front is forecast to move through the area between 3 p.m.-5 p.m. Thursday afternoon producing isolated showers as it passes. The wind is expected to increase between 11 a.m.-1 p.m. to 15-20 G30 and shifting WNW after the front passes. Much cooler air returns behind the front on Friday with highs in the 60s. The wind will be breezy to start the day and decrease to 5-10 mph in the afternoon.”

This just screams “early starters Thursday.” They are set to get a few hours of calmer conditions to start the week and then also set to get lower wind speeds Friday afternoon. If the Thursday storms hit the area and cause a delay, then the Thursday early starters would play part of their second-round action Saturday morning, which is also a calm forecast. A lot of times with weather we have possible wave edges with scenarios that it could break to either wave. This time around for the Valspar it looks like a case where the Thursday a.m. wave will have a massive advantage and the chances of that flipping to the inverse are very low.

I would advise six-man stacks using all early starters, and I would need to be up to around 25 MME entries before I considered any contrarian p.m. stacks. So, let’s go through my core plays, focusing on the early wave while trying to dodge the over-clicked options as much as possible.

Core Targets

Sam Burns

I talk about this a lot, but my preferred way to use course history is to only make minor adjustments and generally only care about it when you see outlier level performance at a course. For Burns, he easily leads the field in course monster score this week (+9) thanks to a pair of wins and a T6 within his last four trips to Innisbrook. His irons have looked ugly the last two weeks which is why we get reasonable rostership this week. With a lot fewer high-leverage shots at Innisbrook compared to the last few weeks, I like Burns to bounce back into contention.