RADIO
The PGA RotoBaller staff digs into their One and Done selections for the Sony Open. Here are some under-the-radar plays and picks for this week's event.
Here at RotoBaller, we are always searching for ways to give our readers the best fantasy sports content possible. With that goal in mind, we are very proud to announce the weekly PGA “One and Done” column will be back for the fourth season.
For an in-depth breakdown of the top DraftKings and FanDuel plays, check out Joe Nicely's weekly Horse For The Course which highlights the best fits for the week's course. And you can also find out who the smart money is on by checking out Spencer Aguiar's PGA DFS: Vegas Report every week.
Be sure to also read all of our other top-notch weekly PGA DFS and betting articles to help you win big!
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One and Done Selections - Sony Open
In this feature, our golf staff of Joe Nicely, Spencer Aguiar, Andrew Putters, Owen Vrabel, Matt Miller and Josh Bennett will provide their weekly golf picks every Wednesday. The purpose of this article is to present you with alternative options to consider and hopefully make your selection a much easier process weekly. With that plan in mind, let's get started!
Joe Nicely - Keith Mitchell
Alternate - Tom Kim
And…here…we…go. It’s great to be with all of you for another One and Done season. Our little OAD contest here at RotoBaller has evolved into one of my favorite parts of the golf year. I truly believe it is an invaluable little tool that helps the readers get inside the minds of our wonderful PGA staff and will hopefully help you in your own OAD journey.
Strategy is always an interesting hill to climb in these things. Do I “save” certain players for certain events? Go against the grain or play it straight? All good questions that I’m not sure there’s one true answer for. Personally, I’ve had my best OAD stretches when I’m sort of ignoring all the exterior noise, not worrying about what others are doing, and go with my instincts.
In the season opener those instincts are leading me to Keith Mitchell, a player that will likely fly in the face of most conventional OAD picks. He hasn’t yet teed it up this year, which is, admittedly, a little scary, but he’s shown the ability to get off to fast starts in previous editions of the Sony Open, logging four top-25 finishes in five career Sony starts. Mitchell was straight money with the driver last year and has always displayed an affection for Bermuda greens such as he’ll find at Waialae this week. While there are plenty of “safer” selections on the board this week, I like how Mitchell grew as a player last year and the consistent upside he displayed en route to six top-10 finishes in 2022. Let’s have a week!
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
Josh Bennett - Corey Conners
Alternate - Tom Hoge
An interesting start to the (full field) PGA season, the majority of courses they play on will favor the long hitter with good wedges, but that won’t be the case this week. Precision is the name of the game this week, particularly with irons. There will be a lot of non-drivers taken off the tees so I don’t think that’s very important, and as we know putting is a random guessing game so I’ll continue to not care about that. Of everyone in the field, there’s probably three names that I’d look to as elite ball strikers with their irons that are worthy of consideration for this pick. Corey Conners is one of those names and the one I’m going with, mostly because he’s already shown he can be successful here. Conners is one of the best iron players in the field, and to be honest, that’s really the only stat that’s important to me this week as I noted before. Conners finished 11th in this event last year, and has a 12th and a third his two tries prior to that. He’s right in that perfect zone where he’s been playing pretty solid tour golf for quite a while and gets a course he’s been good at before, I could easily see him putting everything together for 4 days and coming out with a victory this week.
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
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Spencer Aguiar - Keegan Bradley
Alternate - Corey Conners
The way I view this situation is that we have 30 picks that need to be made between the Sony Open and BMW Championship (not including secondary events that will come into play), and the biggest mistake we could make for this contest is finding ourselves going massively down the board in a one-pick event.
There is no reason for us to get that cute since we are dealing with a much softer distribution of players that won't allow us to run out of caliber options in the world, but the answer for me came down to three choices. Did I want to start with Sungjae Im or Corey Conners – two golfers that my model believed would have heightened win equities for this event but also tangible opportunities later or did I want to play things on the safer side with Keegan Bradley – a name I won't be itching to use as the week's progress?
Against some of what my model was dictating, I decided to go with Bradley because I believe it will provide me with a cleaner path in the future while still grabbing a top-25 golfer. The American has provided 16 consecutive rounds of shooting par or better, the sixth-best total in this field, and while the weighted birdie or better percentage will leave something to be desired, the course history has steadily improved over the years – to the point now where he has generated four top 40s in five attempts.
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
Byron Lindeque - Matt Kuchar
Alternate - Brendan Steele (MC, T4, 2nd MC here in his four starts)
Before I get into my pick, I am going to explain the road we are going to travel on this year. My current season-long OAD has gotten off to a putrid start and I will be needing to play catch up with some aggressive plays.
Matt Kuchar is going to be this week's pick. He has 7 top-13s in his last 9 starts here, including a win. He has also been showing reasonable form in the 2023 season with 3 of his four starts being top-30 finishes. Add that mediocre form from the old guy to a course history that is basically a rocket-boosted Zimmer Frame and we should hopefully sneak up the leaderboard with ol Kuch!
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
Andrew Putters - Sungjae Im
Alternate - Tom Kim
Sungjae Im is currently ranked in the top 10 on the PGA Tour and has had a successful season so far. He has also had a strong showing at the Sony Open Hawaii in the past, finishing in the top 10 in both 2018 and 2019. His strong performance and familiarity with the course make him a strong contender to win the Sony Open Hawaii.
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
Mia The Model - Tom Kim
Alternate - Sungjae Im
We took the top 20 names inside the models for Byron Lindeque and Spencer Aguiar and found the highest-rated golfers. All players in yellow were inside the top 20 of both sheets, and the weighted average can be found on the right for each golfer who qualified.
Any golfer that has already been used will be kept on the sheet for reference but is ineligible to be selected again.
Here is a link to this week's copy.
Yearly Earnings - $0
Yearly Cuts Made - 0/0
Running Totals
Follow along here on the OAD Spreadsheet!
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