FedEx St. Jude Championship 2026 PGA DFS Picks At TPC Southwind

The playoffs shrink golf little by little, and these FedEx St Jude Championship DFS picks are built for the first squeeze: a 69-man, no-cut field at TPC Southwind with every big name back at once. When everybody left is a good player, the edge stops being about finding a sleeper nobody knows. It becomes a structure problem: with a value band this strong in the $6,600 to $6,900 range, paying all the way up to Scottie Scheffler at $13,500 is easier than it looks, and placement points matter as much as raw ceiling. That structural read comes from this week's Stokastic PGA Strategy Show, where Ben Rasa walked the entire field tier by tier, and we will pressure-test it at the end with three live builds through the single-lineup simulator.

For the board updated through lock, see our PGA DFS picks hub. The construction fundamentals this piece assumes live in the PGA DFS strategy guide.

The Quick Answer

The best FedEx St. Jude Championship DFS picks start with a healthy dose of Scottie Scheffler at $13,500, with Xander Schauffele at $10,000 as the pivot when you skip him. Hideki Matsuyama leads the next tier ahead of Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland are the core plays of the week, and Jordan Spieth at $6,900 is the low-owned dart in a value band where Aaron Rai, Alex Fitzpatrick, Sungjae Im and Corey Conners all feel underpriced. The full tier-by-tier board, the ownership notes, and the three simulator builds are below.

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Ben Rasa goes tier by tier through the DraftKings salaries and builds lineups live in the show above.

The Field: 69 Golfers, No Cut, Nobody Bad

Start with the structure, because it drives every decision this week. The playoff field began at 70 golfers and sits at 69, there is no cut, and the big names who skipped last week are all back: Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Young and Sam Burns. Of those seven, only Young teed it up at the Wyndham Championship, and he barely made the cut there. Everyone else arrives rested and unseen for at least a week.

A no-cut field of 69 does two things to your lineups. First, six of six golfers score all four rounds, so placement points pile up and a lineup can cash without a winner in it. Second, with nobody in the field you can call a bad player, the "this guy sucks" filter is gone; the honest phrasing from the show is that everyone here, if they play well, is going to play well. That is why the sections below spend less time selling you on talent and more time on price, form and ownership, which are the only separators left.

The Course: TPC Southwind Pays Precision, Not Power

TPC Southwind in Memphis is a course the Tour has seen many times, the familiar home of this event, and it is a technical test rather than a bomber's paradise. Driver is usable, but there is water everywhere and the layout punishes loose golf; August heat in Memphis means scoring is there if you attack with precision. Recent winners fit a crafty ball-striker and scrambler mold — the show name-checks Justin Rose and Hideki Matsuyama as the recent examples of it — and that profile is a real input: approach numbers are the first filter this week, with scrambling a real factor behind them.

One warning against over-fitting, though. Southwind is not a gimmick course, especially with this few players remaining, so the winner-archetype angle is a tiebreaker between similar profiles, not a thesis. Lean on the approach numbers first, treat scrambling as the secondary signal, and never force a bad price into your pool just because the profile fits.

The Top: What To Do With Scheffler At $13,500

The first question of the week answers itself faster than usual. Scheffler at $13,500 is not the most extreme number we have seen on him, he sits around 5-to-1 in the betting markets as the overwhelming favorite, and in a deep, no-cut field he is far easier to roster than at most stops. The show's plan is a healthy amount of Scheffler exposure, and the value band below is the reason the builds stay easy even at that price; hold that thought for the worked example.

When you are not paying all the way up, Xander Schauffele at a flat $10,000 is the pivot. There are no problems with McIlroy or Fleetwood either, but Schauffele is the preference at the price. The ownership note in this tier is Sam Burns: he projects as very popular, both as an aggressive second man in and as the balanced first man in, and while nothing is wrong with his game, Schauffele, Scheffler and Fleetwood all rate ahead of him here. Being lighter than the field on Burns is the free leverage at the top of the board. The cleanest expression of all of it: either pay all the way up, or hit the next range down.

The Next Tier: Matsuyama First, Then Morikawa And Cantlay

The next band down is stacked with names — Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg, Matsuyama, Chris Gotterup, Cantlay, Si Woo Kim, Russell Henley — and the order matters more than the inclusion. Hideki Matsuyama is first: seventh at the Wyndham, fifth at the Rocket Classic, third at the 3M Open, an elite around-the-green player with irons that spike to elite, and only the putter comes and goes. He is not winning tournaments right now, but he is doing everything else, and he already owns a title at this course. Collin Morikawa is second: at his best he is one of the best iron players alive, the putter is on a legitimately nice run, and the only caution is a thin recent schedule that makes the signal noisy. Patrick Cantlay is third, groans and all: eighth at the Rocket Classic with beautiful ball-striking, a runner-up at this event a couple of years ago, and a fit for the course. The build rule with Cantlay is about win equity: never your first man in, comfortably your second or third.

The rest of the tier sorts by archetype. Want aggression off the tee, take Aberg or Gotterup; want pure iron play, take Si Woo Kim or Henley. Nobody here is a mistake, which is exactly the point of the week.

The Core: Justin Thomas And Viktor Hovland

One range down is where the show plants its flag, and the causal chain runs straight from the course section. Southwind asks for precise, scoring golf, and Justin Thomas fits what this course wants: 14th at the Wyndham with legitimately good driving, an around-the-green game that is always there, a pure scorer's profile, and a putter that has not shown up yet, which is the gap in the results and the opportunity in the price. Tom Kim will be the popular name in this neighborhood, and the case is real, fifth at the Wyndham despite a poor Sunday, and he has gained strokes on approach in every event since early April. But Thomas is the preference over him, which is a leverage call as much as a talent call: you get the trending profile while the field chases the one that just cashed. Viktor Hovland is the other core play. He is on the Morikawa schedule, mostly majors, and the major results have been missed cuts, but the ball-striking underneath has been fantastic and his approach play is the strength this course pays. He has had success at Southwind before, and the fair way to hold him is as a player whose floor worries you a little and whose fit is too good to pass. Thomas and Hovland together are the spine of the mid-priced builds this week.

The Value Band: Five Underpriced Names And One Dart

Here is where the Scheffler promise from the top of the board gets paid off. The reason you can afford $13,500 is that the $6,600-to-$6,900 range is unusually strong, and the show rattled off five names in one breath, all playing consistent golf, all strong with the irons, all feeling underpriced:

The row that matters most is the top one. Jordan Spieth at $6,900 is the most aggressive play on the board, and the setup is specific: our projections have him around 3.5% ownership, and the number may drift to 3.8%, for a player who made the Wyndham cut on the number and then climbed to 19th while quietly gaining distance off the tee. He is erratic now rather than the putting wizard of memory, and that is exactly what a sub-4% price-tag dart should look like in a no-cut field where his bad week still scores four rounds. Alex Fitzpatrick is the favorite of the band on a closer read: his Saturday at the Wyndham was ugly, but it was the greens and the chipping that failed, not the ball-striking, and he steadied on Sunday apart from a triple bogey after driving it onto a road. Just above the band, Alex Noren at $7,100 is the bridge price: seventh at the Wyndham, 18th at the Open Championship, a good putter with a crafty short game, and irons that are navigable at a course like this even if they are not the weapon.

Two quick notes below the band. Bud Cauley is about as low as the pool should go, a 54th last week inside a consistent season, honest salary relief. Harry Hall is the one watch-list name under him, a pure scorer who was pouring in birdies by the weekend at the Wyndham; the Brian Harman and J.T. Poston range below that is best left alone unless a mass-multi-entry approach forces tiny exposures everywhere.

The Middle Tiers: Fowler Rises, Thorbjornsen Brings The Heat

Between the core and the value band sits the range where the field's depth honestly thins: J.J. Spaun, Ben Griffin, Min Woo Lee, Maverick McNealy, Kurt Kitayama. Fine players, a clear notch below the tiers above, and the interest concentrates in three names. Rickie Fowler is the priority: eighth at the Rocket Classic, top-20s at the Open Championship and the John Deere Classic, and gains off the tee, on approach and with the putter over that run. There is no big opportunity cost at his price, and the course fits. Michael Thorbjornsen is the aggressive option, a young gun coming off a win that was neither gimmick nor fluke. Ryan Gerard is the buy-the-dip: he missed the Wyndham cut right on the number on a putting-centric miss, and that specific kind of failure is the least predictive one.

Akshay Bhatia projects as the popular pick in this range, and the read is calm: his off-the-tee meltdown at the Rocket Classic was such an outlier that it is probably nothing, though if you believe otherwise, the play is to run, not to trim. Jacob Bridgeman offers the quieter good-irons-good-putter combination that always translates, and McNealy is the toughest sell of the group: a really strong putter cannot offset irons that have been leaky at best lately.

Worked Example: Three Builds Through The Single-Lineup Simulator

Everything above is a player pool; the single-lineup simulator is how it becomes rosters, and the show built three live. If you have not used the tool, the Stokastic PGA Sims guide covers the mechanics and how to build PGA DFS lineups covers the theory.

Build one, the core four: seed Cantlay, Hovland, Schauffele and Thomas, and let the tool fill the last two spots with a touch of randomness. It returned Ryan Gerard and Aaron Rai with $500 still on the table, both names straight from the tiers above. The simulator graded the finished product lower than expected, which is worth being honest about: small fields are tricky on the grades — the later builds came back close without clearing the bar either — and a build with the right structure can be worth entering even when the grade is lukewarm, because the callback rule applies: in this field, everyone who plays well was going to play well.

Build two, jam the favorite: lock Scheffler at $13,500 and ask for affordable completions. The tool built around Spaun, Griffin and McNealy in the 8K range plus Tom Kim, whose $7,900 price sits a full $5,600 below Scheffler's. That gap is the week's structure in one number: the board is so top-heavy that rostering the favorite forces you into the exact value band this article just spent a section endorsing, which is why the Scheffler builds stay playable instead of collapsing into junk.

Build three, hand-tuned: let the simulator generate freely, keep a value spine including Alex Smalley and Jacob Bridgeman, kick two auto-picks out, and insert Fleetwood and Cameron Young as a two-by-two block. The sim liked it least of the three, and that is fine; the point of the exercise is the workflow. Lock the players you believe in, clear the rest, and cycle permutations until the structure and the grade agree. On a small slate, re-run it late, because ownership will keep moving toward Thursday lock; once the tournament is underway, golf DFS shifts to single-round Showdown slates, a different game covered in our PGA DFS Showdown strategy guide.

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FAQ

Who are the best FedEx St. Jude Championship DFS picks this week? Scottie Scheffler at $13,500 headlines with healthy exposure, Xander Schauffele at $10,000 is the pivot at the top, and Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland are the core plays of the mid-range. The tier below them starts with Hideki Matsuyama after finishes of seventh, fifth and third in his last three starts. The ownership move at the top is staying lighter than the field on Sam Burns, who projects as both a popular first man in and second man in.

Who are the best TPC Southwind DFS value plays this week? Aaron Rai ($6,800), Alex Fitzpatrick ($6,800), Sungjae Im ($6,700), Corey Conners ($6,700) and Jordan Smith ($6,600) form an unusually strong value band, with Alex Noren ($7,100) just above it. Jordan Spieth ($6,900) is the aggressive dart at roughly 3.5% projected ownership: he made the Wyndham cut on the number, climbed to 19th by Sunday, and has quietly been gaining distance off the tee.

How does TPC Southwind change FedEx St. Jude Championship DFS strategy? Southwind is a technical, water-lined course in Memphis that rewards approach play and scrambling over raw distance, which is why iron-first profiles like Matsuyama, Thomas and the value band rate up. With only 69 elite players in the field, course fit is a tiebreaker, not a thesis.

Should I pay up for Scottie Scheffler in a no-cut field? Yes, more easily than at most events: no cut means his floor is four full rounds of scoring, and the strength of the $6,600-to-$6,900 value band means a $13,500 spend still leaves playable rosters. The scale of the pay-up is real, though; the gap between Scheffler and Tom Kim at $7,900 is $5,600, so a Scheffler build commits you to the value band. The alternative structure is skipping the top entirely and spreading salary across the Thomas-Hovland core with the next tier.

The Bottom Line At TPC Southwind

Zoom back out and the whole week follows from one fact: 69 good players, no cut, a course that pays precision, and a salary structure whose top and bottom feed each other. Scheffler exposure works because Rai, Fitzpatrick, Im and Conners exist; the Thomas-Hovland core works because the course asks for exactly what they do well; and the Spieth dart works because sub-4% ownership on a player who banks all four rounds regardless is the kind of leverage a no-cut week hands you for free. Build the pool now, then let the simulator argue with you Wednesday night once ownership matures, because on a slate where every lineup grades close together, the last few percentage points of leverage are the whole game.

The full tools stack behind this breakdown comes with any Stokastic PGA package, from projections through the Sims, and code PGASTRATEGY takes 10% off.

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Source: the Stokastic PGA Strategy Show with Ben Rasa for the 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship.