Cash Lineup Review: The Players Championship

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.

Each year, The Players is one of my favorite slates for cash because it emphasizes the skill sets that I already prioritize on a weekly basis in cash games: ball striking and consistency. The Players can also be a tricky slate, simply because it’s one of the strongest fields we see all season, and that means there are so many good golfers to choose from. This season, the slate was further complicated by strong winds forecasted for both Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, leaving the PM/AM wave of tee times at a significant disadvantage on paper. Despite the obstacles, this was a relatively straightforward slate with just a couple of key decisions to make.

MY MUST PLAYS

This week, I mapped out how I wanted to handle the slate before tee times were released so I would be able to rank my favorite plays without knowing how the weather was forecasted to impact each golfer. The first key decision was how to handle the expensive range. I wanted to have at least three golfers in the $8K range and above. My favorite cash options from this range were, in order of priority:

1. Collin Morikawa ($9,800)
2. Tommy Fleetwood ($10,300)
3. Si Woo Kim ($9,300)
4. Russell Henley ($9,000)
5. Matt Fitzpatrick ($8,900)
6. Cam Young ($8,100)

All of these golfers had been very consistent ball strikers and playing well with no more than one missed cut on the season. I hoped that at least three of the five golfers would have tee times in the AM/PM wave and I wouldn’t have to consider whether or not to move into the PM/AM wave at the top of the board. Once tee times were released, only Young was in the PM/AM wave, which meant I wouldn’t have the salary available to play both Fleetwood and Morikawa together. Had all six golfers been in the AM/PM wave, it would have been a close decision between Morikawa-Fleetwood-Young and Morikawa-Kim-Henley.

MY WANT PLAYS