Welcome to my weekly fantasy golf model for the 2025 John Deere Classic!
Since March 2020, I've shared a weekly model which offers a clear-cut ranking system based on data points weighted in a formula. It's been a tremendous success. Winners typically rank inside the top 15 of our model, though, like any model, sometimes there are outlier champions.
Let me walk you through this week's results and how I get to them. You'll see our top 10 for free, and the rest of the model, including potential sleepers and value picks, is available for GNN members.
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How the rubric works
The biggest chunk of my rubric relies on strokes gained, as well our derivative, Quality Strokes Gained, which weights a player's strokes gained against the depth of field they face. The rubric looks at this data over the longer term and medium term to derive a player's quality across the tour and across different fields. I include specific weighting of strokes gained and Quality Strokes Gained against the field strength that week, creating a range of comparison to see how players do against particular competition.
Next, the rubric accounts for two factors I look at every week: current form in the last 10 PGA Tour events played and their average strokes gained on the host course in the last three years.
All told, the model is designed to point out quality players and boost those middling players who have good current form or good course history.
While I think a long-term view of a player's performance is the best way to measure their potential, there's no doubt that short-term heaters happen. To that end, for GNN members, I also have a short-term model that compares a player's performance to his peers over the last 10 PGA Tour events.
2025 John Deere Classic rankings: Top 10
| POS | PLAYER | PTS | DK PRICE | ODDS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Griffin, Ben | 1.225 | 10400 | 1400 |
| 2 | Mitchell, Keith | 1.011 | 7800 | 5000 |
| 3 | Clanton, Luke | 0.994 | 8700 | 4000 |
| 4 | McCarthy, Denny | 0.887 | 9900 | 2500 |
| 5 | Smalley, Alex | 0.877 | 7900 | 4500 |
| 6 | Kim, Si Woo | 0.852 | 9700 | 3000 |
| 7 | Im, Sungjae | 0.773 | 9200 | 3500 |
| 8 | Perez, Victor | 0.741 | 7500 | 6500 |
| 9 | Putnam, Andrew | 0.719 | 7600 | 6500 |
| 10 | Bezuidenhout, Christiaan | 0.714 | 7600 | 7000 |
To see our hidden picks and weekly model, join GNN!
For just $40 for 12 months, GNN members get access to our winning weekly PGA Tour event model, in-depth DraftKings picks, searchable database of PGA Tour results from 2011-present and top-15 PGA Tour trends, as well exclusive members-only content.
You'll also have access to our course fit modeling, Quality Stokes Gained data, course demand insights, as well individual access to fantasy expert Ryan Ballengee for your unique questions.
