DraftKings PGA: 2019 AT&T Byron Nelson Championship Picks

DraftKings PGA: 2019 AT&T Byron Nelson Championship

The 2019 Wells Fargo Championship was entertaining. Big names made charges on Sunday. Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose both got within grasp of the lead, but the steadiness of Max Homa was too much. And with that we have another long-shot first-time victor on the PGA Tour in Max Homa. That is back-to-back long-shots, as CT Pan captured his first PGA Tour victory at the RBC Heritage.  We will see if we can make it 3 straight first-timers as the PGA Tour travels to Texas for the AT&T Byron Nelson.

Trinity Forest will host this event for the second year in a row. The unique aspect of this course is that it was built on a landfill. The Par-71 course plays 7,380 yards and was one of the easiest courses in the PGA rotation last year. Despite the name Trinity Forest, there are no trees on the course (athough the course is lined by trees). The links style course is wide open. The fairways are large, the greens are large, and the fescue is small. The grass-types this week are Zoysia fairways and Bermuda greens. The wind will be one of the main challenges on this relatively easy set-up. That is unless the tournament officials have made it more challenging than 2018.

Speaking of first time PGA Tour winners, the AT&T Byron Nelson featured a first-timer in Aaron Wise. Marc Leishman held the lead for the first 36-holes, shared the lead with Wise after 54-holes, but Wise’s 6-under final round was too much for Leishman. Last year, 31 golfers finished the tournament at 10-under or better, with Wise posting a -23.

Key Stats

Approach Gained

Trinity Forest Gained

DK Scoring Gained

Birdie or Better Gained

Short Game Gained

Windy Conditions Gained

As always, you should be building your own models. FantasyNational.com and FutureOfFantasy.com are great tools to use.

DraftKings PGA: 2019 AT&T Byron Nelson Championship – Picks

$11,000 Hideki Matsuyama

Matsuyama is striking the ball pure, but continues to struggle mightily with his putter. I am surprised that Hideki is not taking the week off to prepare for next weekend’s PGA Championship. However, he played in the event last year and finished 16th.

Hideki ranks 2nd overall in my model. In this field, Hideki-bot ranks 1st in approach gained L36 rounds, 2nd in approach over his L12 rounds, 4th in opportunities gained, 4th in DK scoring and 1st in wind gained. He is lights out in every stat in my model except putting.

$10,300 Henrik Stenson

Stenson has been very inconsistent this year for his standards He has not posted a top-20 in a regular format event since the API back in March, and his only top-10 this year was at the Hero World Challenge (Tiger’s invitational event). Stenson is still a world class player, and I like the price. Although he may be looking ahead to next week, he also may be searching for momentum.

In this field, Stenson ranks 3rd in approach gained L12 rounds, 2nd in approach over his L12 rounds, and 4th in wind gained. His L12 numbers rank better than his L36 numbers, which means the Swede is trending up.

$8,800 Ryan Moore

The statistical form for Ryan Moore has been popping. He is striking the ball well (5th and 4th in approach over last 12 and 36 rounds) and ranks 1st in DK scoring and 2nd in SG:TOT over his last 12 rounds. Moore also ranks 2nd in wind gained.

Ryan Moore finished 3rd in the Valero Texas Open less than a month ago, so lets hope that he finds what he left in Texas. Moore did not play in this tournament last year.

DraftKings PGA: 2019 AT&T Byron Nelson Championship – Values

$8,000 Russell Knox

Knox is another golfer who plays his best golf in the wind. Knox has not tee’d it up since the RBC Heritage 3 weeks ago, missing the cut. He burned over 18% of DK DFSers that tournament. Most of those have forgotten, but I am hoping that a lot have not forgotten.

Knox leads the field in SG:Approach, he is 2nd in Opportunities Gained, and ranks top-10 in Wind Gained. If his putter can be okay for one week, he can contend at this tournament. Knox finished T18 at Trinity Forest in 2018.

$7,400 Brian Stuard

To be entirely honest, I do not know much about Brian Stuard. All I know is that my model absolutely adores Brian Stuard. He ranks 3rd overall, ranking in the top-10 on approach, SG:TOT, and Opportunities Gained. So I do a quick pgatour.com stalking and I see that he went to college at Oakland University in Detroit Michigan. It just so happens that I live 15 minutes from the Oakland University campus. That is a coincidence that I cannot help but exploit. So, its easy to see that I will be overweight on Stuard this week and for the foreseeable future.

$6,300 Nate Lashley

I had never used Lashley before, until last week. I went 90% on Lashley and the guy made the cut at 6,200. My model loves him (for good reason, his approaches are fire recently top 10 in the field in SG:Approach), ranking 12th in the field. At this price all he needs to do is make the cut. He made the cut last year, finishing 32nd. And he is playing better golf this year than he was last year.

Check out more articles by the author and make sure to follow @Mystery_Main for up-to-date injuries, withdrawals, and ownership projections up until the tournament. Also, follow @FantasyCPR for your daily fantasy fix.