Value Report: CJ Cup

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how long a week can be. A standard PGA Tour week doesn’t get too much hype until the tournament tees off, so the discourse is normally minor on questions like course fit, weather, and preparation. But on a major week, that is flipped on its head. Kicking off with Rory McIlroy’s bomb-and-gouge comments to the 20-under-par predictions, the thought heading into lock on Thursday was that Aronimink looked to be the worst major championship course we’ve seen in forever, and boy, was that wrong. I personally was a massive fan, as I love to see golfers tested, and although it was in a different way than a lot of major championships, I still appreciate using their biggest weapon (the greens) as the primary defense. Tucking the pins, like Aronimink did, meant that almost any style of player could get to the green in two with a couple of good shots, but could they set themselves up for a two-putt par or, if they were lucky, a 20-foot birdie look and capitalize? It was a brutal, long, four-day slog, but ultimately a very deserving winner in Aaron Rai came out on top, and his clutch performance on his final 10 holes clearly out-dueled the rest of the field. It makes me even more excited for what’s ahead at next month’s U.S. Open too, as Shinnecock should be on steroids versus what we saw at the PGA Championship!

Whew, we go from the best Value Report of 2026 to far and away the worst. What a bad time to pretty much go 0-for on the picks, as we only get four swings at the major championship prize pools, so I’m left insanely frustrated from the bunch. There really wasn’t a single shining light, but we can at least discuss the two who did make the cut. Mikael Lindberg actually was sitting T7 after his first two holes on Sunday before completely falling apart; he did outscore where he finished slightly, which, all in all, for him was a decent major debut. Michael Brennan took advantage early Thursday morning, but he had already given it all back by the end of his round, then proceeded to lose six strokes on the greens on Sunday. Of the missed cuts, it’s hard not to be so disappointed by the trio of Keegan Bradley, Thomas Detry, and Harry Hall. All projected quite decent, especially the latter two; they didn’t pull a crazy amount of ownership in the flagship; and they all had good chances to make the cut on Friday and didn’t deliver. Bernd Wiesberger put up a decent fight Thursday, but I’ll wear the egg on my face for old man Stewart Cink. Despite his Champions Tour rival Padraig Harrington finishing inside the top 20, it’s just not worth it to be risking that level of competition disparity.

Now we move to the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, where Scottie Scheffler throws the biggest wrinkle of the DFS season into play. He’s as low in the outright market as he has ever been, and I do think DraftKings did as well as they could with pricing him at $14,800 and keeping to their normal $6K floor. With no other $10K golfers, it does leave a slight crack to be able to roster Si Woo Kim, Jordan Spieth, or Brooks Koepka with Scottie, but you’re without a doubt pushed down a path of stars and scrubs by rostering Scheffler. The other interesting tidbit of this year’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson is how the course renovations will factor in. Historically, TPC Craig Ranch is simply the least interesting course on the PGA Tour, offering zero course-fit benefit and basically requiring birdies on virtually every hole. It makes Scheffler’s eight-stroke win last year even more impressive, and with him 30+% to repeat that, it’s time to dive in to make those rosters work!