Here are our lineup tips for the Quicken Loans National this weekend as part of the PGA Tour:
The Course:
TPC Potomac in Potomac, Maryland is a par 70 course that plays about 7150 yards. This course features 5 gettable par 5’s and a driveable par 4 but played like one of the hardest courses on Tour last year. Kyle Stanley won at a score of -7 par, which is pretty low for the PGA Tour at a standard event. This course emphasizes driving accuracy and the second shot. Last year, hitting the ball into the rough off the tee hurt golfers on average about a third of a stroke. This course isn’t particularly long and will allow longer hitters here to club down to a long iron or 3-wood off the tee, which may give them an advantage in terms of accuracy goes. Kyle Stanley won the golf tournament last year with negative strokes gained putting, which didn’t happen anywhere else on tour. I am not sure exactly what that means, but I am leaning towards putting not being as important this week.
The Golfers:
Rickie Fowler’s odds to win are almost twice as good as any other golfer in the tournament and he is the class of the field. Rickie has no clear flaws in his game and performed well in his debut here last year. This course seems to benefit a golfer that can grind out pars and piece together a solid round and I believe Rickie should be able to do that just fine. With the weakness of the field, Rickie is a great play in all formats as there are not a ton of names at any level that you can feel extremely comfortable with.
Tiger Woods is in his first weak field tournament since coming back and this is his best chance to win so far. Tiger has shown brilliance in all facets of his game but has yet to piece it together for 4 rounds. The putter kept him alive for a couple of months while the rest of his game wasn’t up to par. Now, the putter is the biggest thing keeping him from climbing the leaderboard. Tiger showed up this week with 2 putters in the bag and is using the new putter in the Pro-Am to test it out. I think he will switch it up and if a few putts drop, the confidence could pick up. Tiger is coming off of a missed cut at the U.S. Open, but that tournament was a dumpster fire that I am completely disregarding. Hopefully, the missed cut scares people off in GPP and lets me get Tiger at lower owned than Rickie.
Two years ago, J.B. Holmes was one of my guys. He always had the ability to pop and just kept putting up solid performances no matter what. It seems as though J.B. has locked back into form coming off of a 13th, 3rd and 2nd place in his last 3 tournaments. This course isn’t a typical Holmes course, but he’s been performing at courses like this recently and I love him paired with another top guy in GPP’s.
Charles Howell has been solid all year and this is a tournament where I’ll take solid. I think scoring points will be down and the placement points will really carry people to victory in DFS this week. Howell flirts with T20 or better almost every week and is just so consistent in a tournament full of unknowns that I am really looking at him in all formats.
Beau Hossler and Joaquin Niemann are both great tournament plays this week. Both young, talented golfers have yet to win on the tour, but they have been knocking on the door with 5 combined top 10’s since March. Niemann seems more inconsistent with 3 top 10’s and 4 missed cuts in 7 starts while Hossler seems to perform better week-to-week making the cut in all of his last 10 tournaments. I love both in GPP’s and I think Hossler is viable in cash if you have the money to spend.
Gary Woodland and Jamie Lovemark are two golfers that fit this course better than most people would think. Both can struggle with the putter, which seemed to be mitigated at this tournament last year, and both are long hitters, which will allow them to club down and become much more accurate than they are when they are bombing drivers all day. Both are in play in both formats for me but Lovemark is a safer cash play as Woodland has lacked consistency recently.
Adam Hadwin is mini-Jordan Spieth. Popped at points because of his elite putting, but has seemingly lost the putter this year, but gained a lot in his tee-to-green game. Hadwin has improved in every aspect of his game, but without his putting, he has struggled. At any point, that putter stroke can come back and he showed signs in his last performance that it may be coming. Hadwin is way too cheap on DraftKings especially and will be a lock in my cash games and popular in GPP’s.
This field is terrible, but I think to counter that, I want two top-end guys to anchor my team. Everyone besides maybe Rickie and Tiger is overpriced, in my opinion. I want at least one of them on almost every team paired with possibly each other or another golfer that has a clear path to the win. I think 5/6 will be less costly this week, because of the lack of scoring on the golf course, so I am a bit more willing to punt to anyone with some hope to play well. None of these guys are tremendous plays, but I will be sprinkling them in and will provide them in a list so you don’t feel like you are COMPLETELY (you kind of are anyway) throwing darts at the bottom of the board.
Maybe they can pop:
Stephan Jaeger
Tom Hoge
J.J. Spaun
Brandon Harkins
“Undervalued”: Most of these guys down here are bad but some aren’t AS BAD as others
James Hanh
John Huh
Fabian Gomez
Scott Stallings
Tyrone Van Aswegen