The finish line tape flickers like a white-hot flame in the breeze. From January’s Sony Open to this week’s Wyndham Championship, nearly seven months have elapsed between the first full-field event and the last. The bookends on the calendar are also courses of similar design and layout. One floats on Oahu, while the other is tucked back in the holler of North Carolina. The marathon culminates in a final dead-legged, gut-it-out sprint.
Only the top 70 in season-long points will make the FedEx Cup Playoffs next week and compete for many more millions of dollars. That’s barely half as many as in the past. The next 72 holes are lurking, not with peril, but with opportunities to either seize or let slip through calloused fingers.
PGA DFS: Wyndham Championship 2023 Breakdown
Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., hosts the Wyndham Championship. The par-70 track is devoid of treachery and instead offers itself to the players as a proving ground for exemplary shot-making and drawing circles on the scorecard. The Bermuda fairways and green complexes are ample and uncomplicated. The course only stretches to a touch over 7,100 yards, elevating the short-hitting and accurate archetype like carbon dioxide bubbles to the top of the leaderboard.
Metrics My Weighted Statistical Model Focused on This Week:
- Proximity on Approach (125-150 yards)
- Birdie-or-Better Percentage
- Par-4 Scoring
- Strokes Gained: Off the Tee
- Three-putt Avoidance (Bermuda)
Winning at PGA DFS carries plenty of caveats. Naturally, you want all six golfers on your roster to make the 36-hole cut (top 60 and ties after round two). After that, scoring is about making birdies and avoiding bogeys (or worse). Bonus points are awarded for higher standings and birdie streaks of three consecutive holes.
You’ll hear me say the word “leverage” a lot when speaking about PGA DFS. Leverage is about positioning. It isn’t so much who you play but rather who you don’t. It’s risky to roster a golfer who is also rostered heavily by opposing lineups. There’s almost no reward when that player succeeds, par at best, to use a golf analogy. To make money playing DFS, it requires taking chances and making birdies when others are settling for par.
A popular player is deemed “chalky.” Good chalk is a popular player who is nearly certain to succeed. Bad chalk is a risky player that too many people have hitched their wagons to. A profitable DFS lineup will have a nice blend of good chalk and successful leverage. A leverage play is a good play that isn’t rostered by many… “lifting” it above the field.
Here’s how I’m attacking PGA DFS for the Wyndham Championship.
PGA DFS: Wyndham Championship 2023 Picks
(Prices courtesy of DraftKings)
High-Priced ($9,000 & Higher)
Good Chalk: Si Woo Kim, Sungjae Im, Adam Scott
Bad Chalk: Hideki Matsuyama, Russell Henley, JT Poston
Leverage: Ludvig Aberg, Sam Burns, Justin Thomas
Mid-Priced ($7,600 – $8,900)
Good Chalk: Denny McCarthy, Akshay Bhatia, Eric Cole, Aaron Rai
Bad Chalk: Stephan Jaeger, Cameron Davis, Byeong-Hun An
Leverage: Adam Hadwin, Vincent Norrman, Billy Horschel
Value-Priced ($7,500 & Lower)
Good Chalk: Justin Suh, Nicholas Lindheim, Kevin Yu
Bad Chalk: Nicolai Hojgaard, Garrick Higgo, Ben Griffin
Leverage: Adam Schenk, Lucas Glover, Brandon Wu, Dylan Wu, Peter Kuest, Carson Young
Thanks for checking out my PGA DFS picks for The Wyndham Championship 2023! Find all my work on Twitter, @Bo_McBigTime, and check out my huge collection of decadence at BigTime FlavorCo.