Value Report: Zurich Classic

I love golf for the stories it tells through players’ trials and tribulations, which often come through my lens via unheralded golfers fighting for status on mini tours. But there’s still plenty of room for those successes at the top end of the game, and for a guy like Matt Fitzpatrick, that rings true. I love getting to watch and root for Fitz, as he takes on the game in a different way than most of his peers. A nerd to his core, charting every shot, finding angles to get 1% better, and even after winning a major championship, he found himself struggling once again. The fight back by Fitz to be a legit top-five player in the world has been remarkable, and you could see that battle in him the way he took down Scottie Scheffler in the playoff. Even after making the bogey on 18, bouncing back with the birdie in the playoff on the impossible 18th while the crowd was heavily rooting against him was epic. I’m looking forward to seeing what we get out of Fitz in these next three majors, as now the expectation is to win one again!

With a field of just 83 golfers and Scheffler steaming as he did, finding the route to five values all under double-digit ownership felt like a strong start. Especially when one like Keegan Bradley steamed upwards of 20+% in small-field contests. Keegan and Wyndham Clark were the two strong ones of the bunch, both returning top-20 finishes, with Wyndham doing it via a barrage of scoring. Karl Vilips was a bit speculative with his results in 2026, and didn’t turn in the worst week, which keeps him on the list at shorter courses moving forward despite being more powerful. The massive duds, though, were from Austin Smotherman and Brian Campbell. Campbell, of course, has been the hardest player to get right on the PGA Tour, with his two wins coming at insane odds. Outside of randomly popping again at Augusta, he has not shown any promise anywhere else. Then, Smotherman actually carried over far more love than expected, being decently popular for his range. And, despite the course fit, there wasn’t anything to write home about. Overall, though, there were definite paths for GPP-winning lineups via Wyndham and Keegan, so we will take the performance.

Now on to one of the wildest weeks of the calendar year and an underappreciated DFS event, the Zurich Classic! For those new to the PGA Tour, this is the only tournament of the year where players will compete in two-man teams, with Thursday and Saturday being best ball, and Friday and Sunday alternate shot. It’s a super cool wrinkle to the schedule, and for DraftKings purposes, each partner is priced at the same salary. So, you can only roster one of the 78 teams, and 6/6 rates have been hard to come by due to the top 33 teams and ties making the weekend. We have definitely seen some long shots come through over the years, but I actually think it’s one where the field may overthink things, and we can find success keeping it quite close to a normal process. The prize pools are still quite large for an event that most of the industry takes off, so an opportunity definitely presents itself to cash in big!