Welcome to another weekly rundown detailing what you need to know before crafting your PGA lineups this week on DRAFT. The next stop on the PGA rota is West Virginia, where five of the top 12 players in the FedEx Cup standings will tee it up at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier. And no, that is not a joke. That is the actual name of the tournament this season.
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Recap of last week
Before setting the table for this week’s tournament, I’d like to take a few moments to recap last week’s tournament, Quicken Loans National. If you took my advice and entered a few tournaments on DRAFT, you likely did very well. We had three recommended players finish in the top six, with four recommended players finishing in the top 12. Francesco Molinari tore apart TPC Potomac on Sunday en route to an eight-stroke victory over the next closest competitor. He fired a 62 in the last round, including a five-hole stretch on the back nine where he shot -6. Here’s to hoping some of the momentum gained from last week carries over to the Greenbrier.
Side-note: My love affair with Beau Hossler may no longer hold any value after last week. He’s coming off two top-six finishes and hasn’t missed a cut since mid-March. Unfortunately for all of us, Hossler will not be competing this week.
Storylines heading into this week
Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, Kevin Kisner, Tony Finau and Webb Simpson are the headliners, but there are a plethora of mid-level golfers making the journey to West Virginia this week. We won’t see many tournaments leading up to The Open with an overwhelming amount of star power, so fields like this will be the norm for a few weeks.
The Course
The Greenbrier will be played on Greenbrier’s first 18-hole golf course, The Old White TPC Course. The Old White was originally designed by Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor in 1914. Recently, the PGA TOUR has announced that The Old White Course has joined the TPC Network of clubs and is officially known as the Old White TPC Course. Following the inaugural event, The Old White Course went through some modifications. All 18 greens, as well as the practice putting and pitching greens, have been reconstructed with only minor tweaks to most. Changes include lengthening the course, narrowing fairways, expanding the lake on No. 16 and reseeding new greens on all 18 holes with Tyee Creeping Bentgrass. It stretches to 7,287 yards, scores as a Par 70 and is widely considered to be one of the easier courses on the schedule. The first thing you notice when examining The Old White is how wide the fairways are. Despite narrowing the fairways a few years ago, they are still enormous relative to other stops on Tour. Most players will not have much trouble finding the fairway this week, which means there will be an emphasis placed on other aspects of one’s game.
Previous champions (past five seasons)
- 2017: Xander Schauffele
- 2016: Cancelled due to flooding
- 2015: Danny Lee
- 2014: Angel Cabrera
- 2013: Jonas Blixt
Key Stats
- SG: Tee-to-Green
- Par 4 Birdie or Better Percentage
- Driving Distance
Golfers to target
Tony Finau
He is the prohibitive odds-on favorite to win at +1100 (although those odds seem a bit too rich for my blood) despite facing off against several higher-ranked players. His prowess off-the-tee has been well-documented, which means he will grant himself some excellent opportunities to score on the Par 4’s here. The Safeway Open is a comparable course and Finau finished second there back in October.
Joaquin Niemann
You probably wouldn’t select Niemann until the later rounds of your draft but he’s a great option to round out the back of your lineup. Since turning pro at the end of April, Niemann has carded three Top 10 finishes as well as a T17 at last week’s Quicken Loans National. It’s been a little while since we have seen a Latin-American golfer with as much raw talent as Niemann but it seems like only a matter of time before he ends up winning an event. He could reap the benefits of what is a very watered-down field.
Bubba Watson
Here’s a scalding hot take: You should probably target the third-ranked player in the FedEx Cup in your DRAFT lineup. Shocking, I know. Bubba has three victories already this season and is probably the front-runner for 2018 Tour Player of the Year. I would lean Finau over Bubba this week but it would be foolish to ignore a player of this caliber.
Keegan Bradley
I mentioned Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green as an important stat to target this week and Keegan ranks 12th in that regard. The problem with Bradley has always been his inconsistency with his putter. He ranks 200th on Tour when it comes to putting but ranks toward the top in nearly every other statistical category. He offers one of the safest floors of any golfer in the field and if he putts well, he should be put himself in contention to win.
Phil Mickelson
Phil’s biggest struggle in recent years has been his inability to find fairways with any sort of consistency. He sprays the ball off-the-tee and leaves himself with less-than-ideal approach shots. Thankfully for him, The Greenbrier offers the biggest fairways on Tour, so if he isn’t able to find the fairways here then there may be no hope for him. The rest of his game besides off-the-tee is elite, ranking 2nd in Strokes Gained: Putting and 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach. This course masks Phil’s biggest weakness, which means he should perform well here.
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Shane Davies is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Shane, check out his archive and follow him @SBDAVIES7.
