THE PLAYERS Championship is one of the most beloved events of the year! TPC Sawgrass is one of the most beautiful and iconic courses on Tour. However, it is as treacherous as it is beautiful.
Pete Dye brilliantly designed this course to be a true test of the physical and mental game. The course is gettable by the best players, but you must be on your game and able to navigate your entire bag. Missteps can snowball in a hurry here. Cool heads and calculated play are as important as being handy with the sticks this week.
(Odds and salaries courtesy of DraftKings)
Can Tommy Fleetwood Finally Get a Win? | 2025 THE PLAYERS Championship Picks
Course Layout
THE PLAYERS Championship is at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The course’s par is 72, with 7,275 yards of Bermuda fairways and greens.
This is set up to be a good all-around test for the field. There is plenty of trouble to be found here, with water in play on almost every hole. The off-the-tee game has proven to be a main differentiator. The fairways are wider than average but require accuracy to help set up longer-than-average approach shots. We will see the majority of second shots coming from beyond 200 yards. The greens here tend to be exceedingly difficult to hit.
Scrambling and recovery stats are strongly correlated to success at TPC Sawgrass. Accuracy matters here and even the most accurate of players will need to be good at getting up and down and recovering from trouble.
If being elite through the entire bag wasn’t prerequisite enough, you must also factor in that this is a Pete Dye design. Dye has a way of creating illusions throughout his courses that can play havoc with players. Specialists in his course design tend to fare far better than inexperienced players.
Building Our Betting Model
- Shots Gained Tee-to-Green
- Shots Gained Approach
- Shots Gained Putting
- Scrambling
- Bogey Avoidance/ Double Bogey Avoidance
- Par-5 Scoring
- Approach from 200+
- Putting on Bermuda (fast to very fast)
- 3-putt Avoidance
- Course History/Pete Dye Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green
Players Our Model Target for THE PLAYERS Championship 2025:
Tommy Fleetwood (+2800) | ($9,800)
Tommy Fleetwood and I are on a journey together. I believe he can and will win this year, yet he continues to knock at the door and linger around the T10 without closing the deal. Fleetwood is surrounded by the widely accepted narrative that he can’t win in the U.S., and while that has been true thus far, this could be another prime chance for him to break through. Looking at the top golfers in the field, Fleetwood has been playing some of the most consistent golf and gaining strokes in every category week by week.
Fleetwood rates out seventh in this field for strokes gained tee-to-green, and that rank crests into the top five when looking at Pete Dye courses. He is adept at avoiding bogeys and not giving strokes back, which may prove important at The PLAYERS, as the course can play tougher than a birdie-or-better rate might imply. It’s truly tough to poke a hole in Fleetwood’s game this season. I will keep riding the train for another week because I can feel that he’s close!
Daniel Berger (+6000) | ($9,600)
Daniel Berger is another player onto whom I have hitched my wagon. He rates second overall for me this week. Berger is third in strokes gained off the tee and seventh in scrambling percentage, which happens to be two of the most highly correlated stats to success at TPC Sawgrass. He also rated 10th in overall strokes gained tee-to-green on Florida courses. This is a near-perfect fit for Berger. In his last four starts, he had four T25s, plus a runner-up finish at the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
He comes into the tournament in great form after finishing 15th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week. If the form and the stats aren’t enough, Berger also has an excellent course history at TPC Sawgrass, with a T13 and T9 in his last two starts here. Somehow, this number seems long for the player that Berger is and can be.
Michael Kim (+6500) | ($5,900)
I’m riding a lot of hot hands for this tournament, and no one is hotter than Michael Kim. He has been playing out of his mind this season. In his last five starts, he has no worse than a 13th-place finish and has three T10s during that span. He finished fourth last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and I see no reason that his skillset and form won’t continue this week.
He’s a bit of an exception to my course history rule. Historically, he has not played well on Pete Dye tracks and has two missed cuts here. That said, the 2025 version of Kim is a different player. It’s tough to overlook a golfer who rates out on the top in my model and is playing nuclear hot right now.
Outrights to Consider:
- Rory McIlroy (+1000): It’s Rory McIlroy and he has won here before, which should be enough to bet on him again. We know he can turn it on at a moment’s notice and is sitting at double-digit odds. Sign me up!
- Justin Thomas (+2200): Justin Thomas (JT) is playing great golf, and as long as he keeps his off-the-tee game in check, we all know he is elite with irons and around the green.
- Hideki Matsuyama (+3000): There are some players getting respect and short numbers based on course history. Hideki Matsuyama is a bit disrespected here, given that in his last four starts, he has a T6, T5 and a T8. Hideki is one of the best scramblers in golf and even though he has a slightly unreliable putter, he is the top in this field for strokes gained around the green.
- Karl Vilips (+17000): I’m dumbfounded by this number. Vilips just won in Puerto Rico and put on an absolute clinic. Hopefully, you tailed us and got the 65-1 outright we had last week! This is outrageous value for a future Tour star, fresh off a win. Vilips is the real deal, so learn the name because it will be hanging around the top of the leaderboard for the upcoming years!
Bonus Prop Bets to Consider:
- Tommy Fleetwood: Top 10 Finish (+240)
- Daniel Berger: Top 5 Finish (+900), Top 10 Finish (+450)
- Karl Vilips: Top 10 Finish (+1100)
DFS Plays for THE PLAYERS Championship 2025:
High-Tier Plays ($9,000+)
- Scottie Scheffler ($12,800)
- Rory McIlroy ($11,500)
- Xander Schauffele ($11,100)
- Justin Thomas ($10,100)
- Hideki Matsuyama ($9,900)
- Tommy Fleetwood ($9,800)
- Daniel Berger ($9,600)
High-Tier Fades ($9,000+)
- Collin Morikawa ($10,500)
- Ludvig Aberg ($10,200)
- Patrick Cantlay ($10,000)
- Wyndham Clark ($9,400)
- Tony Finau ($9,200)
- Viktor Hovland ($9,000)
Mid-Tier Plays ($8,900 to $7,000)
- Will Zalatoris ($8,700)
- Sepp Straka ($8,600)
- Si Woo Kim ($8,200)
- Min Woo Lee ($8,000)
- Denny McCarthy ($7,700)
- Keith Mitchell ($7,000)
Mid-Tier Fades ($8,900 to $7,000)
- Jordan Spieth ($8,800)
- Tom Kim ($8,500)
- Corey Conners ($7,900)
- Cam Young ($7,600)
- Matt Fitzpatrick ($7,500)
- Akshay Bhatia ($7,000)
Low-Tier Plays (Below $6,900)
- Billy Horschel ($6,800)
- Brian Campbell ($6,500)
- Michael Kim ($5,900)
- Nicolai Hojgaard ($5,700)
- Kevin Roy ($5,700)
- Andrew Novak ($5,700)
- Karl Vilips ($5,600)
- Patrick Fishburn ($5,400)
Low-Tier Fades (Below $6,900)
- Kurt Kitayama ($6,900)
- JT Poston ($6,900)
- Max Homa ($6,600)
- Jake Knapp ($5,900)
- Mark Hubbard ($5,700)
- Adam Hadwin ($5,600)
- Luke List ($5,000)
Good luck this week! Thanks for checking out our PGA Tour picks & predictions for who wins THE PLAYERS Championship 2025
Be sure to check out our golf crew every week on the 19th Hole for more golf betting and DFS analysis. Plus, follow me on Twitter/X at @CoughDFS for more content!
*Photo Credit: Jim Dedmon – USA Today Sports*
