Daily fantasy golf: FanDuel picks – The 2019 CJ Cup at Nine Bridges
Daily fantasy golf: FanDuel PGA – Mid-tier picks ($10,000-$11,000)
Tommy Fleetwood – $10,900 – (Cash)
While all of the focus last year throughout some of the lesser events was rightfully centered on which rookie was going to break through and get their first victory, let’s not forget that 28-year-old Englishman Tommy Fleetwood is also still seeking his first PGA Tour victory. Maybe a PGA sponsored event somewhere other than U.S. soil is what he needs to get that monkey off his back? Fleetwood has won four times in his career on the European Tour and also has a couple of runner-up finishes in major championships within the last couple of years.
While it will not come into play here as this is a no-cut event, Fleetwood currently has the longest streak of making the weekend by a mile, and it is rather impressive. Altogether, he has not missed a cut on any tour since July of 2018, and his last on the PGA was at the Wells Fargo Championship in May of 2018.
This season, Fleetwood is getting plenty of work in already on the European Tour, having played three events. He started with a T-8 at the Omega European Masters but struggled a bit in his next action with a T-60 at the BMW PGA Championship. He was then able to bounce back in his next action at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, aided by a final round of 64 which pushed him into a T-5 finish.
Rafa Cabrera Bello – $10,100 – (Cash/GPP)
There are so many good plays in this price range that making a balanced cash lineup could end up the way to go. However, the bad pricing on Thomas just trumps that fact for me. I love RCB this week, even though I understand they may be better plays on paper when it comes down to stats.
Gary Woodland, Sungjae Im, and Collin Morikawa all seem too cheap, and in going balanced you can certainly make an attractive DFS lineup. But in small field events like this, you obviously cannot play everyone, and you need to differentiate somewhere.
Woodland and Im will likely draw more ownership than Rafa this week, and while I contemplated working both of them in at points, I think this is where we pivot. I am playing Cabrera Bello in cash games as I love his recent form and history at the CJ Cup, but because there are other options in this range, I am just unsure how his ownership will shake out.
In the two years of this event, RCB started things off with a T-11 in 2017, and in 2018 a hot weekend pushed him up to a T-3 finish, as he shot back-to-back rounds of 65 to finish 15-under par. Recently, Cabrera Bello T-6 at the BMW PGA Championship, and he comes into this week off of a solo 2nd at the Open de Espana, where he just could not catch a red-hot Jon Rahm who held him off by five strokes.