Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various salary ranges for this week’s tournament. Who should you be building around? Find out below.

The PGA TOUR stays in Hawaii this week, albeit on a different island. The Sony Open is held at the Waialae Country Club, which is in Honolulu. This will be the first full-field event of the year and the first with a cut. We didn’t get as much primetime golf as I was hoping for last week, with the event rolling out threesomes off the front and back tees, but we should get to watch some golf in primetime this week. I already have about four inches of snow at my house, and there’s nothing but snow in the forecast for the next few days, so watching some warm weather golf on television sounds amazing.

Waialae is a much different golf course than the one last week. For starters, it’s a par 70 that measures just over 7,000 yards. Rather than having 80-yard wide fairways that are extremely sloped, this course features tree-lined fairways that are quite flat. The course has several doglegs, and most holes have overhanging tree limbs, which really negates distance off the tee. Even though the fairways are fairly generous in width, they are tough to hit on average. The field hit just above 54% of fairways at this event last year. While playing from the short grass is always a benefit, we’ve seen winners with low driving accuracy rates here in the past.

Noto’s PGA Model Download & Video for the Sony Open

I’m not focusing too much of my attention on off-the-tee metrics. This is a course where plodders have had a lot of success over the years. And by plodders, I am talking about golfers that are good with wedges, good with short irons, good around the green, and good putters. We usually see around 70% of approach shots hit from 125-200 yards at this event. The greens are fairly easy to hit in regulation, but around the green play has still been important over the years. The greens are average in size and feature bermudagrass if you want to look at putting splits this week.

While this course is generally on the easier side compared to the TOUR average, that all depends on the weather. It sounds like there have been some major storms in the area early this week, and the early forecast is calling for significant wind on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If that holds, I think it will only benefit the accurate players and short-game specialists. For comps this week, I am looking at strokes gained on bermuda courses, strokes gained on short par-70 courses, and strokes gained at both Harbour Town and Colonial Country Club. If you are interested in these metrics, you can download my model or watch the field breakdown video. The link is just above.

PGA DFS Picks: DraftKings & FanDuel Core Plays for the Sony Open

Field Size:

• 144 golfers

Cut Rule:

• Top 65 and ties

Weather Forecasts

Golf Courses

• Waialae Country Club
• Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
• Par 70 — 7,044 yards
• Difficulty: 2023 (34th), 2022 (41st), 2021 (45th), 2020 (9th), 2019 (32nd)
• Fairway width in landing areas: 36.6 yards wide on average
• Green size: 7,100 square feet
• Green type: bermudagrass
• Water is in play on 5 holes
• 2023 stats: driving accuracy (55%), driving distance (293 yards), greens in reg (72%)

Event Notes

• Second week in a row in Hawaii, but the courses are very different
• Waialae is a short par 70, while Kapalua was a long par 73
• This is a very flat course with much smaller greens than last week
• Fairways here are generous yet still tough to hit each year
• Driving accuracy hasn’t been all that important though
• High greens in regulation rate here, even from the rough
• Scoring on this course all depends on the wind
• Only two par 5s on the course, 70% of approach shots from 125-200 yards
• Comp courses: Harbour Town and Colonial Country Club

What to Look For

• Strokes gained approach
• Strokes gained putting (emphasis on bermuda)
• Strokes gained around the green
• Bogey avoidance
• Total driving

Core Plays

Russell Henley

DraftKings — $9,600 / pOWN: 17.2%
FanDuel — $11,600 / pOWN: 17.1%
Total Driving — 54
SG: APP — 7
Bogey Avoidance — 7
SG: ATG — 13
SG: Putting (Bermuda) — 83
Stat Rank — 7
Noto Rating — 85.8

Henley didn’t play very well last week at The Sentry, but we shouldn’t be concerned. He now gets to play a course that fits his strengths much better, and hopefully, he was able to knock some rust off his game. In this field, he’s top 10 in Strokes Gained: Approach, proximity from 125-200 yards, and bogey avoidance. He’s won this event in the past and finished in a tie for 2nd here in 2021. He grades out as the 3rd-best play in my model, yet he’s the 8th-most expensive on DraftKings and 4th-most expensive on FanDuel. He is a safe play with the upside to potentially win this event.

J.T. Poston

DraftKings — $9,100 / pOWN: 20.9%
FanDuel — $10,400 / pOWN: 18.1%
Total Driving — 106
SG: APP — 27
Bogey Avoidance — 21
SG: ATG — 40
SG: Putting (Bermuda) — 36
Stat Rank — 4
Noto Rating — 84.8

Poston is one of my favorite players on the PGA TOUR. A large part of that has to do with the fact that he tends to play well when I expect him to play well. I would appreciate it if the rest of the field would follow his lead. He’s always been known as a short-game specialist, but he has quietly turned into a very good ball striker. Over the last 6 months, he’s top 5 in this field in Strokes Gained: Approach and in birdie or better percentage. He has top-10 finishes in 6 of his last 10 starts, including The Sentry last week. His course history here is mixed, but he finished T21 here last year, and I would argue that he’s a better golfer now than he has been at any point in his career.

Andrew Putnam

DraftKings — $7,500 / pOWN: 15.5%
FanDuel — $9,400 / pOWN: 13.9%
Total Driving — 80
SG: APP — 18
Bogey Avoidance — 23
SG: ATG — 72
SG: Putting (Bermuda) — 6
Stat Rank — 20
Noto Rating — 74.2

You know it’s one of my favorite weeks when I can play my favorites in Poston, Putnam, and Todd. There’s nothing that stands out from a T40 finish at The Sentry last week until you look at the round-by-round numbers. He was 15-under par on the weekend, including a 9-under par round on Sunday. Hopefully, he can carry some of that momentum into this event, where he has had plenty of success over the years. He’s finished T4 or better in 2 of his last 5 appearances here. His strengths fit the course well, as he’s accurate off the tee, a good iron/wedge player, and an elite putter.