PGA DFS Preview: 2021 WGC- FedEx St. Jude Invitational

4 years ago by Andy Lack

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Hi RotoBallers! I'm Andy Lack and I'm very excited to be with you as a new member of the RB PGA team! In our ongoing attempt to expand and improve our PGA coverage, I will be dropping a 'Tournament Preview' every Monday morning.

I hope this preview will give you a head start on your WGC- FedEx St. Jude Invitational research and I'd also like to encourage you to check out my Pick The Pup podcast to hear more of my thoughts on TPC Southwind and this week's tournament. If you aren't already utilizing RotoBaller's amazing weekly PGA content, fix that right now by joining us this week and throughout the rest of the PGA Tour season.

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RotoBaller Weekly PGA Article Schedule

Monday

You can find out all you need to know about this week's layout with Josh Bennett's Course Breakdown (Premium) and learn which golfers have thrived at this course in the past with Joe Nicely's Horse For The Course.

Tuesday

We kick your DFS research into high gear with articles from Spencer Aguiar! Spencer will highlight his favorite DraftKings Plays of the week - an article that also includes his popular PGA DFS Rankings Wizard Model - and offer great tips with his Head-To-Head Betting Preview, while Joe Nicely drops some salary savers in his DraftKings Value Plays (Premium) article. We also have you FanDuel fans covered with free PGA DFS picks for every tournament.

Wednesday

Things start getting intense on Wednesday and we've got you covered! You can check out RotoBaller Staff One And Done selections and get inside the mind of our team with our PGA DFS Expert Roundtable (Premium). We also have two of the most popular articles in the PGA DFS industry with Spencer Aguiar's Vegas Report (Premium) and Joe Nicely's DraftKings Core Four (Premium). You can also check out Josh Bennett's DFS Cheat Sheet (Premium) for a quick cram session!

Tournament Overview

2021 WGC- FedEx St. Jude Invitational

Recent Winners

2020: Justin Thomas (-13)
2019: Brooks Koepka (-16)
2018: Dustin Johnson (-19)
2017: Daniel Berger (-10)
2016: Daniel Berger (-13)

Event Details

Purse: $10,250,000 ($1,745,000 to winner)
FedEx Cup Points: 550 (Winner)
Field: 66 Players

The PGA Tour travels to Memphis, Tennessee this week for the WGC- FedEx St. Jude Invitational. The Tour has been coming to Memphis since 1959, but this tournament has only been an elevated status event for the past two years. The "WGC" at the beginning of the title sponsor stands for World Golf Championships. Essentially, there are only four of these a year, and they feature more FedEx cup points (550 instead of 500), larger purses, and a much smaller field. This week, only 66 players are making the trip to Memphis, and typical of WGC events, there will be no cut and thus all players are guaranteed four rounds of action.

The benefit of a WGC event for fantasy managers is two-fold. Firstly, WGCs are loaded with top-end talent. Outside of Jon Rahm, every single of the world's top-30 players will be in attendance. Any event flush with many of the best players in the world tends to be synonymous with the term, "soft pricing," as there will certainly be no shortage of talent in the field this week for fantasy managers to consider. The other main deliberation is that there will be no cut sweat this week! There are multiple theories on how that could change lineup building strategy. Some believe it is more conducive to a "stars and scrubs," approach, as the cheaper options aren't as much of a risk with no cut. While that certainly makes sense on paper, consistently solid players also possess a higher chance of producing when guaranteed four rounds. On the other hand, worse players tend to show their true colors in a larger guaranteed sample size as well. Let's get into the course breakdown, key statistics, and three players that are worthy of further attention.

Course Breakdown

TPC Southwind - Memphis, TN

TPC Southwind was designed by Ron Pritchard in 1987, and renovated by the Tour in 2004. Regular readers of this preview are certainly aware of my belief that TPC courses all feature similar design elements, often bordering on gimmicky. Yet TPC Southwind does not totally fit that criteria in my opinion. It's a lot more TPC Sawgrass than it is TPC Twin Cities. The Pritchard design plays as a Par 70, tipping out to only 7,244 yards. The fairways are zoysia grass and the greens are Bermuda-grass. Water comes into play on eight different holes, and the greens measure 5,420 square feet on average.

As I alluded to with the TPC Sawgrass comparison, TPC Southwind is a real course. In eight of the last ten years, 13-under par or higher has been the winning score. There are multiple reasons that TPC Southwind is able to challenge the world's best. Firstly, it can get windy this time of year in Memphis. TPC Southwind is an extremely exposed course with very little trees, so wind often plays a factor. Secondly, two and a half foot Bermuda rough is enough for players to take notice. This is not a U.S. Open, but the best chance to attack this course is from the fairway. The greens are difficult to hit to begin with, as pros only hit 59% of the greens at TPC Southwind, compared to the Tour average of 65%. It's not as if the fairways are particularly easy to hit either. Pros hit only 56% of the fairways at TPC Southwind compared to the Tour average of 62%. Those are pretty sizable differences, so it should not come as a surprise that elite ball-strikers such as Daniel Berger, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, and Justin Thomas have all experienced loads of success here.

I was able to find some interesting quotes from past champions that highlight the challenges that TPC Southwind present. Here's one from Ben Crane, "I'll tell you what, this is no golf course to play from the rough. It makes it so difficult. You get a lot of fliers, hard to control the ball." Lee Westwood also emphasized the importance of keeping the ball in the short grass. "It's quite tight. You need to drive the ball straight, although, you know, it does give you opportunities, where it's not driver on every hole as well. But there is a massive premium on hitting the fairways here." Here's one more from Retief Goosen. "It's not a golf course that you can just blast away at, a lot of holes have doglegs and you pretty much have no chance of stopping it on these greens with the rough." All of these sentiments line up with the numbers I have found, as there is a positive correlation between fairways gained and players who have finished highly here, and an even greater correlation between greens in regulation gained and players who have finished highly here as well.

While all of that information is useful, ball-striking, and especially iron play, is of upmost importance every week on the PGA Tour! How can we differentiate and attempt to hone in on what specific skillsets really help at TPC Southwind? One thing that really stood out to me was the dispersion of approach shots. Almost 50% of all approach shots at TPC Southwind come from between 150-200 yards. 50 yards may sounds like a big range, but for professional golfers, it is often just the difference between a 7 iron and a 9 iron. For context, only 37% of iron shots come from that range at other Tour courses. If we add 125-150 into the mix, 67% of all approach shots come from that 75 yard window. Again, that may sound like a giant range, but we are really just attempting to hone in on who is consistently the best with a gap-wedge to a 7 iron in their hands. Over the last 100 rounds, the answer to that question is Collin Morikawa, by an extremely wide margin. Yet right behind him are the likes of Justin Thomas, Daniel Berger, and Brooks Koepka. All are elite from 125-200 yards, and it is no coincidence that they have all won at TPC Southwind.

Outside of wedge to middle iron play, it's also important to find players that are both accurate off the tee and have some prior success on bermuda-grass greens. TPC Southwind features champion bermuda-grass, the same exact grass type that we see at courses such as Quail Hollow, Sedgefield, and the Country Club of Jackson. It would certainly not be a terrible idea to target players that have putted well at any of these courses. Outside of those statistical indicators, it might be worth factoring in motivation this week as well. The FedEx Cup playoffs is only two weeks away, and there are multiple players in this field, such as Adam Scott and Justin Rose, that are right on the bubble. There is also a 10 million bonus for the top 10 players in the FedEx Cup standings at the end of the regular season, so it might be worth keeping an eye on who is the on that bubble as well. Let's dig into the metrics!

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Key Statistics

Outside of the obvious four major statistical categories (strokes gained off the tee, strokes gained approach, strokes gained around the green, and strokes gained putting), here are a few ancillary statistics that should prove pivotal, as well as the top-5 players in the field in these metrics over their last 24 rounds.

Proximity from 150-175 yards
1. Daniel Berger
2. Collin Morikawa
3. Paul Casey
4. Hideki Matsuyama
5. Lucas Glover
Greens in regulation gained
1. Collin Morikawa
2. Louis Oosthuizen
3. Patrick Cantlay
4. Corey Conners
5. Paul Casey
Strokes gained putting: Bermuda-grass greens
1. Matthew Fitzpatrick
2. Louis Oosthuizen
3. Patrick Reed
4. Brian Harman
5. Carlos Ortiz
Fairways Gained
1. Jim Herman
2. Corey Conners
3. Brian Harman
4. Abraham Ancer
5. Collin Morikawa
Bogey Avoidance
1. Louis Oosthuizen
2. Collin Morikawa
3. Patrick Cantlay
4. Daniel Berger
5. Justin Thomas

While those five statistics are a great place to start, I am also looking at strokes gained: par four scoring (450-500 yards), proximity from 125-150 yards, proximity from 175-200 yards, and scrambling.

Players To Target

High-Price Tier

Brooks Koepka

It will be hard for me to escape Brooks Koepka this week. I know it's not a major, but Koepka owns this place. In seven appearances at TPC Southwind, the four-time major champion has four top-threes, including a win and a runner-up in his two most recent appearances. Koepka is always formidable at TPC Southwind because he is an excellent wedge player and he pounds greens in regulation at an elite clip. Over his last 36 rounds, the Florida native ranks top-12 in strokes gained approach, proximity from 125-150 yards, and greens in regulation gained.

While Koepka has played far less golf this year than many of the other elite players, he's been outstanding when he has played, with six top-sixes, two runner-ups, and a win in his last 10 starts. While the sample size with him is relatively small, his game seems to be in an incredible place right now. He continues to dominate off the tee, the irons have been great, and the putter has been okay. With that being said, he now returns to Bermuda greens, far and away his best surface. Koepka also currently sits 12th in the FedEx Cup standings, only two spots away outside of the Comcast Business Top 10. If we've learned anything about Koepka over the past few months, we know he loves himself an incentivized bonus.

Mid-Price Tier

Scottie Scheffler

Scottie Scheffler will win soon. I don't find that to be a particularly hot take, and I'm comfortable riding his recent form and hoping this is the week he can put it all together. Scheffler has only played TPC Southwind three times, finishing a modest MC-43rd-15th, yet he has been improving in every go. While it might be more logical to predict breakouts for rising stars in lesser events, Scheffler always does his best work on the biggest stage. Dating back to last August, the University of Texas product finished fourth at the PGA Championship at Harding Park, 19th at the November Masts, fifth at the WGC- Concession, 18th at the April Masters, third at the Memorial, seventh at the U.S. Open, and eighth at the British Open.

There's no reason to believe that he can't succeed at TPC Southwind either. The Dallas native ranks better than field average in nearly every single metric I am weighing this week (he is just below field average in scrambling and bogey avoidance). He's been excellent off the tee, and while the irons have been a little more volatile, they can still really pop. Most of all, he's just playing confidently right now. In his last five starts, Scheffler has finished third, seventh, 47th, 12th, and eighth. I expect him to be relevant this week in Memphis as well.

Value-Price Tier

Martin Laird

Here's where we begin to encounter one of the draw-backs of a WGC field. There just aren't a lot of inexpensive players to choose from. I could be more conservative and call a player like Billy Horschel or Justin Rose a value play, but that feels like cheating. The point of this article is to provide readers with three playable options that can be the foundation of a fantasy lineup. My assumption is that Koepka will be the highest priced player in this field, as he should be. I am firmly of the belief that it is worth paying up for Koepka, and maybe a few other top-tier players, yet this also means we have to save elsewhere.

My prediction is that Martin Laird will be close to the minimum pricing. He is only in this field because he won the Shriner's Hospitals for Children Open in October. In fairness, he does feel a bit out of place here. Yet with that being said, he's quietly been hitting the ball incredibly well. The four-time PGA Tour winner has gained strokes both off the tee and on approach in four consecutive starts. The putter has certainly failed him, but he may have found something in his most recent start, as he gained 2.8 strokes putting at the John Deere Classic. Laird is in the midst of an impressive ball-striking run, and we are still talking about a player who gained 11.7 strokes on approach at the PGA Championship! We know he can get absurdly hot with the irons, and he also ranks eighth in this field in fairways gained. Laird is a far better ball-striker than his similarly priced peers, and I'm confident he'll be able to compete this week.

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