Cash Lineup Review: John Deere Classic

Our Adam Levitan devised a tried and true method for reviewing his NFL DFS cash lineups every week. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. My goal here is simply to apply Adam’s structure to PGA DFS cash lineups.

To steal directly from Adam, I play around 50-75% of my action each week in “cash games”. Cash games refer to any contest in which roughly 50% of the field gets paid out, such as head-to-heads, double-ups, or 50/50s.

Each week, I’ll review my cash-game lineup in this space. Sometimes I’ll lose, but hopefully I’ll win more often. Either way, I’ll post it here and give you my thought process. For more on PGA cash-game strategy, see my How to Beat PGA DFS Cash Games article.

Of the three lower-tier events played over the PGA Tour’s “midwest swing,” the John Deere is my favorite, especially for cash games. In comparison to last week’s Rocket Classic, which didn’t particularly reward strong ball striking, accuracy off the tee, or generally well-rounded games, the John Deere has typically rewarded these profiles over time. I still expected the very top of the leaderboard to be decided by who could get hot with the putter, but I thought this event set up very well for cash games.

MY MUST PLAYS

• There were only two golfers on the entire board who I felt extremely comfortable with for cash: Ben Griffin ($10,400) and Denny McCarthy ($9,900). Griffin had been a little inconsistent early in the season, but he had arguably been the second-best golfer in the world over the last two months and his game had been incredibly well-rounded. I was also impressed that Griffin had finished T5 last year in his debut at the John Deere when he was certainly a worse golfer than he is now. McCarthy has been one of the most consistent golfers on the entire Tour this season and hadn’t missed a cut since last year’s Open Championship. His game is also very well-rounded, and he had finished T6, T6, and T7 in his three previous starts at the John Deere. Ideally, I wanted to play both Griffin and McCarthy in my lineup if I could make it work, but I knew I would definitely play at least one of them. With Griffin projecting as the clear best option across the industry, I was not going to pass on him in this spot.