The First Look: Travelers Championship

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From a world golf championship to a World Golf Championship. For many, the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational will feel like it’s on the other side of the planet. Because it is. TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee, is 14 hours behind Kasumigaseki County Club, host of last week’s Olympic Men’s Golf Competition where 19 golfers in this week’s field played for gold. Now they’re part of an exclusive field of 66 vying for 550 FedExCup points, a three-year PGA TOUR membership exemption and other perks. Scroll past the extended ranking of projected contenders for what TPC Southwind has in store in its third edition as host, the preferred strategy to prevail and more. RELATED: How the field qualified | The First Look POWER RANKINGS: WGC-FEDEX ST. JUDE INVITATIONAL Hideki Matsuyama, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Cantlay, Joaquin Niemann and Tony Finau will be among the notable reviewed in the Fantasy Insider. Just like last week’s Olympics, every golfer at the WGC-St. Jude is guaranteed 72 holes to give it everything he has. Unlike the Games, this week’s tournament is an official competition for PGA TOUR members and non-members alike. The WGC-St. Jude presents largely as a gathering of winners of tournaments with a strength-of-field rating of at least 115 as determined by the Official World Golf Ranking, as well as champions of designated events on the Japan Golf Tour, Asian Tour, Australasian Tour and Sunshine Tour. The top 50 of the latest two versions of the OWGR have filled the field. Jon Rahm (rest) and Christiaan Bezuidenhout (non-member maxed at 12 starts) are the only qualifiers who are not competing. Last year’s field of 78 was specially constructed because of playing time missed due to the pandemic. It included golfers outside the top 50 in the OWGR to fill the field, a one-time exception. After surrendering a scoring average of 69.504 in its debut as host in 2019, TPC Southwind stood taller last year, yielding 69.554, but that’s still easier than it played as host of the FedEx St. Jude Classic in the 30 years prior. As long as the strength of the field that generates the lower scoring assembles, futures averages should follow suit on the stock par 70, Mother Nature pending as always. On cue, textbook summertime conditions are on tap in the backyard of the title sponsor’s headquarters. In fact, it’ll be even more cooperative than how locals might define textbook because rain is not expected all week. Daytime highs will push and exceed a seasonable 90 degrees and wind might ripple a few of the international flags on the property by the weekend, but trousers should be spared. TPC Southwind tips at 7,233 yards. That’s 44 yards shorter than last year, entirely due to par-3 13th not playing longer than 195 yards this time. Champion bermudagrass greens could stretch to 12-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter, but putting isn’t the priority to consider contending. Putting surfaces average only 4,300 square feet. While the course is not unfamiliar to most – indicating that putting should matter more than when greens are foreign – the premium is on hitting greens in regulation, landing on them with precision and scrambling. Consider that en route to a three-stroke title last year, Justin Thomas finished T7 in greens hit, second in proximity, first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and sixth in scrambling, but he ranked 55th in Strokes Gained: Putting, giving away almost two strokes on the greens during the tournament. Of the 11 who recorded a top 10 in the event, four recorded negative SG: Putting totals, two of whom were worse than JT. Primary rough, also bermuda, is trimmed to two-and-a-half inches. This elevates the possibility for a shorter hitter to surprise, but the greater benefit will be to longer hitters for whom the pressure is relieved to take shorter irons from tighter lies. That’s always the case, but the smaller greens serve as a more formidable of a defense against the wayward off the tee. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings (WGC-St. Jude) TUESDAY*: Power Rankings (Barracuda), Sleepers (WGC-St. Jude), Fantasy Insider SUNDAY: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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The elites (minus Tiger Woods, Rickie Fowler, Francesco Molinari, Lee Westwood and Bernd Weisberger) are golfing in Memphis for the 2019 World Golf Championships- FedEx St. Jude Invitational. TPC Southwind, home of an abundance of water balls, is the host course, as it was for the FedEx St. Jude Classic since 1989. Known for its narrow fairways, water hazards and long par 4s (seven measure more than 450 yards), players will need to gain both off the tee and through their irons if they’re going to challenge the top of the leaderboard. Average Driving Accuracy (54%) and Greens in Regulation (58%) are almost 10 percentage points lower at TPC Southwind than the average course on TourTOUR, and in the past eight years, only one winner has finished worse than 16th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee for the event. On approaches, no champion has finished outside the top 20 the year they raised hoisted the novelty checkthe trophy. Two of the past three champs, Daniel Berger (2016) and Fabian Gomez (2015) topped the list for Strokes Gained: Approach that week; Dustin Johnson was second to only Robert Garrigus a year ago with his irons when he won by six strokes. Now, that WGC status hasn’t just elevated the field in terms of talent; it’s changed the way we need to approach this event from a DraftKings perspective. While getting all six golfers on your roster through the cut is the bare minimum required to compete for the biggest prizes every week, no cut events, like WGCs, are completely different. All players will accrue 72 holes of scoring, so you need to be cognizant of duplicated lineups with such a small field. Leave $200-$500 of your $50,000 DraftKings salary cap on the table and duplicate rosters should no longer be a problem. This safety net also allows for a myriad of roster constructions. Since the lowest priced players are guaranteed 72 holes, many might merely start at the bottom, save all the salary cap and splurge on the very top-end talent. That’s a viable strategy this week, but if you’re going to go cheap, make sure your players are prolific birdie makers. Since DraftKings scoring rewards a birdie/bogey stretch more than a par/par stretch, the top DraftKings scorers of the week might not resemble the actual leaderboard. Additionally, by going so low in the pricing, you give up win equity, as winners of WGC events are rarely long shots. If you can stomach avoiding the top three or four most expensive players in Memphis, the ability to build a strong, balanced squad is likely the better approach. Targets From The Range Justin Thomas ($10,700) A loser of Strokes Gained: Putting in his past seven measured events, maybe a return to Bermudagrass is exactly what JT needs to take advantage of his recent elite ball-striking. Despite the putting woes, Thomas remained a viable threat overseas with a top-10 finish at the Scottish Open and a T11 at The Open Championship, and this venue and setup play to a lot of his strengths: Bermuda greens, no cut and a par 70. Five of his nine TOUR wins have come at no-cut events. Hideki Matsuyama ($8,900) Like Thomas, Matsuyama is another player who does some good work at no-cut events. Already a winner of two WGC events, both in 2017 at the WGC-HSBC Champions and WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Matsuyama has been lingering on the precipice of a win for ages now. Before failing to see the weekend at The Open, he’d gone a full calendar year without a missed cut, and he enters Memphis with 20 consecutive events gaining strokes with his irons. An untrustworthy putter always has held Hideki back from consistent, elite results, but he’s in the midst of the best putting stretch of his career, having gained in six consecutive measured starts; all top-25 finishes. Bryson DeChambeau ($8,800) Bryson caught the early flight home from Royal Portrush after a mediocre Open, but no need to dwell on that too much. In his two starts previous, DeChambeau churned out consecutive top-6 finishes that saw his ball-striking return to elite levels. Hopefully that’s something that is consistent stateside. Quality results haven’t manifested themselves in his previous two turns at TPC Southwind, but those weren’t due to poor ball-striking. In each of his two starts, Bryson gained with his driver and irons; he just couldn’t put it together with the putter. Hopefully, this time around, with an extra few days of prep versus most in this field, and now at a value, DeChambeau can get his game together across the board. Max Homa ($6,400) While getting to greens and everything onward from there can be a mixed bag, Homa almost definitely will gain with his driver. He’s gained more than 2.5 strokes against the field off the tee in four of his past seven starts and actually had gained against the field with his irons in six straight before a calamity at the 3M Open. The results haven’t been inspiring since his breakthrough win at Quail Hollow in May, but this will be his first time back on Bermudagrass since that victory. Maybe that can cure his putting woes; it’s the only surface he’s been a positive putter on against the field in his career. Additionally, among the bottom quadrant of the field, it’s essentially him and Corey Conners who rate out in the top 25 in Birdies or Better gained and par 4s gained. With all four rounds to work with, expect an overflow of extra birdies versus the others in his range. Read more daily fantasy analysis from Pat Mayo and others on the DraftKings Playbook. I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is ThePME) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.

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