Euro trashed: U.S. crushed in Ryder Cup

The last tournament of the season and the final stop of the FedExCup Playoffs is here. The TOUR Championship will be at East Lake in Atlanta, Georgia. The course will play as a par 70, measuring 7,346 yards and will be putt on Bermuda greens. This course is a Donald Ross design. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $1M Flop Shot [$250K to 1st] STRATEGY The top 30 in FedExCup standings will be playing for a chance to win $15 million. After his six-hole playoff win over Bryson DeChambeau (+550, $12,300), Patrick Cantlay (+400, $13,400) has moved into first place in the FedExCup standings. The new scoring system implemented two years ago, which the PGA TOUR refers to as a “strokes-based bonus,” correlates to the FedExCup standings heading into The TOUR Championship. With the most points, Cantlay starts at 10-under, with second place starting two back at eight-under and descending by a stroke to fifth place. Head to the FedExCup page on the PGATOUR.COM for a complete list of where the golfers will start. Ross courses are about position golf off the tee and hitting elite approaches from the correct angles into these Bermuda greens. Speaking of which, they should play lighting fast, recording 12 to 12.5 on the stimpmeter over the past few years. While iron play is paramount on a Ross design, Strokes Gained: Putting has proved almost twice as crucial over Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green for the winners over the previous five years. Par 4 efficiency from 450 to 500 yards and long iron (175-200-plus yards) proximity will be important this week, with five par 4s measuring between 450 to 500 yards and one at 520 yards (no. 14). Fading some of the golfers high on the leaderboard could prove prudent when filling out rosters. The golfers will be starting with their “finishing” position points on DraftKings, but as we’ve seen in the previous two years, those points can go away fast if or when the leaders are no longer where they started. The top of the leaderboard golfers only come in with their starting points, not the birdies or better points they usually get on the path to their victory. Note: These odds are with the players’ starting strokes position. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Tony Finau (+700 to Win, $11,800 on DraftKings) A strong Sunday should put Finau in the right mindset heading into the TOUR Championship. Finau will be in second place, and while he doesn’t seem like a value, he could potentially go lower rostered given the names around him. Finau didn’t start great last week, but as mentioned earlier, his Sunday was stellar, shooting 9-under par (63), which was the lowest round of the day. A win at THE NORTHERN TRUST and a great weekend at Caves Valley GC have Finau right in the mix to win the FedEx Cup. Xander Schauffele (+2500 to Win, $8,900 on DraftKings) Few players dominate no-cut events like Scahuffele, ranking fourth in Strokes Gained: Total, and DraftKings points gained over the previous 24 rounds in the format. Schauffele has a scoring average of just under 67.4 to go with his two runner-up finishes and a win back in 2017 in his four starts at East Lake. On Ross designs, Xander is only second to Rory McIlroy (+2500, $9,300) in Strokes Gained Total over the previous 50 rounds and ranks second in putting on Ross courses over the same timeframe. He’s starting in 17th place, so we should expect a lot of aggressive iron play from him this week. Scottie Scheffler (+6500 to Win, $6,800 on DraftKings) Scheffler’s 22nd-place finish last week should not deter you from rostering him this week at such a low price. He’s starting in 25th place, so he’s most likely not winning the tournament. Still, Scheffler ranked seventh in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green over the weekend at the BMW Championship and shot three rounds in the 60s last year at East Lake, with his final round being the low score of the day (65). We should also consider Erik Van Rooyen (+40000, $5,000) at the minimum price this week. He was in the final group at THE NORTHERN TRUST and just finished top 5 last week, gaining 6.5 strokes with his irons and shooting the second-lowest round on Sunday, a 7-under 65. He also ranked first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green last week. Van Rooyen should only be considered for DFS. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $1M Flop Shot [$250K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests. 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NAPA, Calif. – Tony Romo didn’t come close to making the cut in his first three PGA TOUR starts, twice at the Corales Punta Cana Resort & Club Championship and once at the AT&T Byron Nelson. Still, as was the case when he quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys, he was undeterred by a little adversity. “Same thing I did in football,� Romo said after birdies on his last two holes for a 2-under 70 at Silverado, his best round on TOUR by four shots. “You just start from the beginning. You’re not very good, not very good, and then all of a sudden you make the leap somewhere and all of a sudden you can be more efficient and you can do things a little bit better.� With the afternoon wave still out on the course, Romo was tied for 24th place and squarely in contention to make his first cut. He made 122 feet of putts and beat his playing partners Beau Hossler (74) and Michael Gellerman (76) with ease. Related: Leaderboard “He played well, so that was fun to watch, and he’s a good guy,� said Gellerman, who calls himself a fan of the Minnesota Vikings. That’s the team that will play the Chicago Bears in Chicago on Sunday, a game Romo is scheduled to call for CBS, his day job. If he makes the cut, he has said he will stay at Silverado to finish out the tournament. Few observers gave Romo much of a chance to make the cut. When he shot 79-80 at the Corales last season, he missed the cut by a wide margin and beat only one pro who did not withdraw. He shot 77-82 there the year before. His best result came at the AT&T Byron Nelson on his home course, but scores of 76-74 weren’t even close to good enough to play into the weekend. “It’s embarrassing to stink,� Romo said after his five-birdie, three-birdie round at Silverado on Thursday. “I stunk a lot, so just trying to continue to improve and get better.� His highly public failures told him what he wasn’t good at, especially putting, but he worked hard with instructor Chris O’Connell on every aspect of his game. He’d seen that hard work pay off in his scores at home in Dallas, but executing in a TOUR event is another matter. “Just the scoring back home and in practice sessions have shown that I’ve done things a little better,� Romo said. “So that makes you excited to come out and test your game. I think it’s rewarding on a tough golf course to come out here and do that.�

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