Welcome back to Golf News Net's weekly fantasy golf picks. Each week of the PGA Tour season, we'll present our top picks for that week's tournament and make recommendations for DraftKings' one-week fantasy leagues.
Have you ever played one-week fantasy leagues? Give them a try with a free entry this week with your first deposit. (Be aware of the risks in playing daily fantasy sports tournaments.) You could take down our expert picks and win some big bucks.
This week is the final stop of the 2016 Florida Swing, as the PGA Tour heads to Orlando for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Mr. Palmer's Bay Hill Club & Lodge. Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott headline the field as Matt Every is the two-time defending champion.
Last week, you're loving us if you paid attention to our Ryan Moore and Bill Haas tips.
For GNN Plus subscribers, you can access our top-15 finish chart and season-long trends on DraftKings valuations. They'll be available at your disposal as part of a growing set of tools to help in your research. Going forward, GNN Plus subscribers will also get access to the last five years of leaderboards for an event, namely the top 15 and ties from 2011-2015, the data that we use to define our horses for courses each week.
Now, on to the picks!
1. Adam Scott -- Best player on the planet right now and winner of his last two starts. He shot 62 here in 2014 to give himself a 54-hole lead, but he came up short.
2. Henrik Stenson -- Stenson loves himself some Bay Hill. He's been in the top 15 here in four of the last five years. Pretty close to automatic.
3. Justin Rose -- Rose is close to Stenson-level automatic. He has three top-15s in the last three years and hasn't finished outside the top 17 in the last five.
4. Rory McIlroy -- McIlroy has a Sunday problem, as in he can't figure out how to break 70 in his last two final rounds. However, he contended in both those thud finishes. T-11 here in last year's debut.
5. Ryan Moore -- Moore should have won the Valspar Championship, if only he could've made a mid-range putt. Has a good record here, including a T-4 in 2012.
6. Matt Kuchar -- Kuchar plays well in this event, and he's starting to come around. Top 11 finishes at Riviera and Innisbrook suggest his ballstriking is on point.
7. Brandt Snedeker -- Sneds had to pull out of Doral with a rib problem, so we're keen to that this week. However, the Torrey Pines winner has a friendly record here, with two top-15s in the last five years.
8. Jason Day -- Although Day hasn't come out of the gate how he'd like or how he ended 2015, he still has the ideal game for Bay Hill: length to manhandle some of the par 5s and great putting numbers.
9. Zach Johnson -- Johnson is ideal for Bay Hill because of his short game, which lets him hang around on the scorable par 5s. Two top-15s here in the last five years. He also made an albatross here.
10. Scott Brown -- Yeah, Scott Brown. He has a pair of top-15s in his Florida Swing starts and he finished T-13 here in 2013.
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My DraftKings team for this week:
1. Henrik Stenson -- $11,100
2. Ryan Moore -- $9,800
3. Zach Johnson -- $8,300
4. William McGirt -- $7,700
5. Scott Brown -- $7,400
6. Trevor Immelman -- $5,700
If you want to win at DraftKings daily fantasy golf, you have to figure out a way to find six golfers that play all 72 holes and earn roughly 85 points each.
You likely have to identify a couple of players in the top five, at least the top seven, and you'd ideally not have a player finish outside the top 20.
Doing that takes research, looking at a variety of factors, including:
- Finish trends, both in recent weeks on the PGA Tour and at that week's event,
- Salary trends, deciphering which players are showing value based on their performance, and
- Statistical trends, identifying the common threads among winners in that week's event
That's what Golf News Net will deliver each week to GNN Plus members in this space, offering a complete research package which dives into these three areas to find the players that should be in your lineup for this week's Valspar Championship.
To access this research hidden below and MANY more fantasy golf tools, sign up for GNN Plus to gain access to the analysis!
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