Value Report: Valero Texas Open

First off, I want to say thank you for all the welcomes on joining the ETR golf team! I’ve been a subscriber since inception and truly appreciate the efforts that Adam, Cody, Jeremy, Rufus, Tom, and Sam provide. My goal is to add a twist to the traditional content we offer and leverage the experience I’ve had in the golf space for the last decade to provide unique analysis of each event.

My love for the game of golf really revolves around storytelling. As fractured as the global game is on the surface, what it has provided is opportunities unlike ever before for talented golfers to rise to the occasion. With professional tours on every continent and the amateur game providing immediate challengers, I live for the golfers who haven’t found the traditional route to stardom. Whether that be the emergence of a DP World Tour grinder, a Korn Ferry Tour graduate jump-starting his rookie year, a Monday qualifier battling for a made cut, or a sponsor’s exemption looking for a permanent home, these are the players who make a difference week in and week out. From a DFS perspective, they are typically golfers who also fly well under the radar. This could be due to a variety of reasons — lack of experience on major tours, middling results in the spot starts, unknown context to the courses played from their previous tours, and all cumulating to, more often than not, a poor projection. But as we dig into large-field tournaments or even rounding out hand builds that are leaning into chalk, the uniqueness and upside that these types of golfers can bring is the foundation to how I approach my lineups.

My goal of the Value Report every Tuesday is to highlight a handful of golfers $7,500 and below that fit the benchmark of what I described above. Depending on the field size, this could range between eight and a dozen players, all golfers who I plan to have exposure to for that week. I’m typically an MME player on DraftKings and will dabble across the higher-dollar contests depending on the slate. FanDuel comes more into play on larger events when contest sizes ramp up, so I will be happy to highlight mispriced players there, especially with how top-end golfers are needed in their format. With this piece coming out prior to projections and ownership, there are absolutely going to be disagreements from what is released on Wednesday morning. As I walk through the reasoning for each player below, it really ends up being the risk tolerance you’d like to take in your portfolio on how to mix in these types of plays.

Austin Eckroat, $7,200 (DK) – Until his breakthrough win at the Cognizant Classic in early March, Eckroat was given the narrative of an elite Division I talent who was still getting his feet settled in the professional game. Eckroat played third fiddle on a dream Oklahoma State roster, where Matthew Wolff and Viktor Hovland separated themselves. But at just 25 years old and with a PGA Tour card now secured for years to come, Eckroat’s top-end ball-striking skills will thrive at courses which demand an iron test, as PGA National and LACC (2023 U.S. Open) showed. A hangover was to be expected in his last two events, but what has taken no time off is his lights-out approach game, which has now ranked fifth, fifth, eighth, and 28th in his last four appearances. At a course that has starkly shown Strokes Gained Approach parallels to top finishes and prior Texas success, this lines up perfectly for Eckroat at a more reduced price than expected.