Value Report: Biltmore Championship

Well, well, well, the PGA Tour is back in the blink of an eye. And although there was just a couple-week break and many DFS players jumped right into the NFL, there’s meaningful golf to be played during the fall swing. We won’t get the star-studded fields we had all summer long, but for the true golf sickos, there are still very strong DFS opportunities, as DraftKings will continue to offer at least $50K first-place prizes across multiple contests each event. I’m a sucker for a good story too, and the Top 100 FedEx Cup cut line always provides plenty of tension. Especially now with the future two-tour system the PGA Tour has rolled out, the pressure is even more palpable. Multiple mid-tier names are deciding to skip the DP World Tour’s flagship event at Wentworth this week so they can stay stateside and fight their way inside the FedEx Cup bubble for status in 2027, so the renovation of the PGA Tour is already showing dividends. For us at ETR, we’ll be here covering and grinding the fall swing no differently than if it were a regular-season event, and we’re incredibly appreciative of the support from the golf community we’ve built here.

If it wasn’t enough that a majority of this field has had roughly six weeks off, we’re introducing a brand-new golf course and event into the mix. The Presidents Cup roster apparently decided it didn’t need a tune-up before Medinah next week, leaving just Jackson Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman to represent Team USA in Asheville. But the Cliffs at Walnut Cove should provide some incredible visuals as Asheville welcomes its first PGA Tour event in quite some time. McKinley’s preview broke down how we’re slightly adjusting for course fit this week, and with elevation at play, this course should play much shorter than it looks on paper. For most of the fall swing, though, I doubt we’ll have to lean too heavily into course fit for the Value Report. The strength of these fields is simply much weaker relative to the regular season, so we’ll look for unique ways to get onto players who are trending in one direction or another. The extended break makes that a little more difficult this week, but there are players who have popped over to Europe or played well on the Korn Ferry Tour in recent weeks. That recent competitive golf could provide an edge as we search for potential corollary success at the Biltmore. Our content schedule will stay the same as it was during the regular season, so please stay active in the Discord. AMAs will continue to be held at 9:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday nights, and I’m happy to answer questions you may have for golf this fall. Let’s bring it on, Asheville!

Nico Echavarria, $7,400 — It was a year lived at the tails for Nico Echavarria in 2026. He picked up a win early in the season at the Cognizant Classic and added four other top-12 finishes. At the same time, he missed as many cuts as he had top 40s. When zooming out, though, it’s the simple fact that when Echavarria is on, he’s really good. In a stacked field in Memphis in the playoffs, Echavarria finished 12th after sitting fifth at the halfway point, but the following week at the BMW Championship, he finished DFL. The Biltmore isn’t anywhere close to the playoffs, though, which makes the price so baffling. When focusing on GPPs, we need to embrace that volatility, and Echavarria is a three-time PGA Tour winner over the past four years. The course setup should also favor his style of play. I’d shade toward players who are more precise than powerful, so Nico can sit back, find fairways, then let his irons do the work. My only fear with Echavarria this week is that the thesis feels a little obvious. He has never been much of a projection darling throughout his PGA Tour career, though, so I’ll let the first event of the fall swing play its cards out and give us a better idea of how tuned in the field is to these pricing inefficiencies.