Fortinet Championship DFS Golf Picks: Corey Conners and Justin Suh Project as Best Value Plays on DraftKings

It’s the start of the new PGA Tour season this week, kicking off with the Fortinet Championship. The field only has three top-25 players from the OWGR, but there are plenty of mid-tier targets. This column will use the Stokastic projections below to highlight who the best PGA DFS picks are this week at the Fortinet Championship.

Fortinet Championship DFS Golf Picks & Projections

The course this week is Silverado Country Club. It’s an older venue that was redesigned a couple of times, once by prominent architect Robert Trent Jones in 1966 and then again by Johnny Miller in 2011. Miller has talked at length about making the greens fast like Augusta’s, and it has typically been the case that Silverado greens play as some of the fastest on the PGA Tour. That’s good because the venue is quite short for a par 72, by PGA standards.

There are seven par 4’s that measure between 400 and 450 yards, and while fairways are tight, the shorter holes make it a good bomb-and-gouge venue for longer hitters because the rough here doesn’t tend to be overly penal. The fast poa greens also tend to attract West Coast specialists, and last season Max Homa and Maverick McNealy went one-two at this event.

Silverado Resort Stats and Info

Par 72, 7,166 yards; plays as a traditional West Coast design that features poa blends on the greens and four short par 5’s that act as the best scoring opportunities.
Driving accuracy numbers are typically lower than the tour average, but the rough is not overly penal; big hitters have prospered here and are able to score well on the short par 4’s and par 5’s. The last six winners have averaged 307 yards off the tee (Stewart Cink averaged 315 yards in 2020 and Homa 310 yards last year).
Strokes gained off the tee have been a strong indicator here, as the last four winners have all gained 1.5 strokes or more off the tee for the week — Homa ranked sixth in strokes gained off the tee last season.

Fortinet Championship 2022 DFS Golf Picks

Corey Conners

Total Points Projection: 77.7 | Top 6 percentage: 25.57%

It was very close at the top of the Stokastic projections this week, as both Corey Conners and Homa are projecting as solid upper-echelon plays. While Homa has proven to be a serious upside target for DFS purposes, with four career wins over the past three seasons, it’s worth noting the great finish to the year that Conners had. He reached the Tour Championship with a solid fifth-place finish at the BMW and was on fire with his ball striking through the months of July and August — for the most part.

Conners comes into this field ranked first in strokes gained on approach over the last 50 rounds and second off the tee over that same timeframe. Any venue that places a premium on good placement power off the tee should appeal to Conners right now, as he was one of the most consistent players with his driver on tour last summer. The short game and putter are always a concern with Conners, but this will be his fourth time seeing Silverado and his last visit here yielded a 13th-place finish with 10.9 strokes gained ball striking alone. His floor for PGA DFS seems extremely high from that perspective, and his ceiling is only reliant on whether or not he can find an above-average putting week. For GPPs, Conners should also come in slightly lower owned than Homa as well.

Projected PGA DFS Ownership: DraftKings 27.2% | FanDuel 35.4%

The Stats:

Leads the field in strokes gained ball striking over the last 50 rounds.
Ranks second in efficiency on par 4’s from 400 to 450 yards over the last 50 rounds (Silverado has seven holes of that distance).

Justin Suh

Total Points Projection: 63.9 | Top 6 percentage: 10.45%

This one is interesting. Justin Suh won the Korn Ferry Tour finals a few weeks ago and was trending for a lot of potential career upside before hitting a few road bumps on his first go-around as a professional. Now Suh comes to his first official start as a full-time PGA Tour member, and he gets a West Coast venue to boot. Suh is a California native, and while home venues tend to bring in more nerves for golfers, the varied green types out west in golf also can mean a slight advantage to those familiar with poa grass.

The big shock here is that the Stokastic projections have gotten on board with Suh rather quickly. They project him for the best points projection on the slate of any golfer under $9,000 on DraftKings and as one of the best values above $7,500. And given that he defeated a lot of the players in this field a few weeks ago, getting on board with Suh makes sense. His ownership should rise a little into Wednesday, but he should still be somewhat contrarian in most DFS contests for the first week of the new season.

Projected PGA DFS Ownership: DraftKings 5.5% | FanDuel 1.2%

The Stats:

Finished ninth and first in his last two Korn Ferry Tour starts.
First in greens in regulation and fourth in scrambling at the Korn Ferry Tour finals — which he won by two strokes.

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Low-Owned PGA DFS GPP Flier

Jason Day

Total Points Projection: 63.8 | Top 6 percentage: 10.5%

Don’t shoot the messenger, but Stokastic likes them Jason Day this week. He is trending for really strong projections and sets up as the golfer with the top value score on DraftKings. Day had a somewhat inauspicious end to his 2021-22 season when he missed the cut at the FedEx St. Jude, but he was showing some form prior to that. Day has gained over a stroke off the tee now in three of his last four starts and will welcome this move to the West Coast and fast poa greens, which he’s tended to dominate over the course of his career.

The truth is, Day’s return from several injury-plagued seasons has made him nearly impossible to predict. That fact can help from a game theory perspective, though, as his ownership on Stokastic has also been floating well below 10% this week on both major sites as a result. He’s as high variance as they come, but with a few weeks of rest under his belt and a West Coast venue to begin the new season, there is no issue inserting him into a GPP pool.

Projected PGA DFS Ownership: DraftKings: 8.5% | FanDuel 7.8%

Top 2 Under 5% in DraftKings Fantasy Golf This Week

This section will target players that should end up under or close to 5% ownership in larger DraftKings Golf GPPs. These picks are boom/bust PGA DFS players with an almost 100% focus on the upside.

Brandon Wu ($7,000)

Brandon Wu was one younger player who really didn’t get much notice towards the end of last year — despite improved play. He posted top-10 finishes in two of his last five PGA Tour starts in 2022 and ranks in the top 25 off the tee over the last 24 rounds. Wu showed some serious upside at points last season and was very consistent with his driver in the back half of the year. He’s trending well below 5% ownership this week, as DFS players have yet to catch on to what was a very consistent DFS producer last summer.

Michael Gligic ($7,400)

Rostering good off-tee players will be a good strategy wherever possible. Michael Gligic doesn’t pop in a ton of different categories, but he hits it far and played well to end last season. He made eight of his last nine cuts to end last year and ranks in the top 30 for strokes gained off the tee and around the green over the last 24 rounds. Add in three made cuts at Silverado, with a 14th-place finish here in 2020, and this is a solid lower-owned sleeper in the making.

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