GOLF

Daily Fantasy Golf Helper: Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship

The PGA Tour heads back to the Dominican Republic for the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship. Who can we trust on our FanDuel rosters?

By now, you've probably dabbled in daily fantasy sports, but if not, don't worry. Now is a great time to start, especially with FanDuel now offering a revamped version of PGA golf.

Golf can be one of the most exciting DFS sports to follow, as tournaments span four days and allow ample time to prepare each week, so be sure to familiarize yourself with the basics of building a lineup on FanDuel, the scoring setup, and advanced stats to know about the PGA.

But whether you're brand new to the PGA or daily fantasy sports in general, we have you covered -- and we have daily fantasy golf projections and lineup building tools, too.

Let's take a look at some golfers to target this week.

Key Stats

Key Stats for the Corales Puntacana at Corales Golf Club
Strokes Gained: Approach
Proximity Gained from 200+ Yards
Par 5 Scoring
Greens in Regulation
Scrambling


Data on this course is sparse, as we have just the 2018 version of this event (with limited data) and two Web.Com events, so it's tough to figure out what exactly drives success here, but we can still have a few takeaways. For starters, we know that the fairways are wide and easy to hit, so that helps mitigate a need for accuracy off the tee. Wind can be an issue for the coastal course, but it wasn't really an issue in 2018, so the course played pretty easily last year.

There's probably a distance angle we can play here. Three of the top-seven in distance last year finished top-five in the tournament, but Brice Garnett, last year's winner, finished 87th in distance. Kelly Kraft was 72nd in distance and finished 3rd. Denny McCarthy was 54th in distance and finished 4th.

Approach play matters still. Golfers with good ball-striking form entering the event fared well last season, according to the time machine on FantasyNational. That doesn't mean that approach mattered a lot in-event (though it almost always does). The par 3s are long (all 200-plus yards), which helps us buy into golfers with good proximity on the long irons and long approach shots.

The par 5s are scorable, as we should expect, meaning that taking advantage of them is pretty key to scoring fantasy points and moving up the leaderboard to make the cut.

Greens in regulation and scrambling also popped as important last year, though that's a bit obvious. Hitting greens in reg and avoiding disaster is going to show a relationship with gaining strokes on the field.

In all, it's probably a week to target good ball-strikers who won't be disasters on the green. It's a lopsided field, and maximizing good overall golfers is likely a good angle (which is somewhat obvious).

Stats cited below come from FantasyNational and include the past 100 rounds on the PGA Tour unless noted. Ranks are among the field.

Best of the Best

Jhonattan Vegas (FanDuel Price: $11,400 | FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds: 15/1) - Vegas is a little overpriced, but he is one of four golfers in the field ranked inside the top 100 of the Official World Golf Rankings. Vegas is 80th. By datagolf's rankings, he's 59th. Either way, Vegas sits 8th in strokes gained: off the tee and 21st in greens in regulation gained over the past 100 rounds. He's a big cut above most of the field and is a co-favorite, putting him firmly in play near the top.

Sungjae Im ($11,300 | 15/1) - Im is the main building block this week. He has been hanging with the top tier of the PGA Tour, finishing with three top-10s in his past seven starts and two top-fives in his past three. The odds-on favorite to win, Im grades out top-10 in all three tee-to-green stats (10th off the tee, 6th in approach, and 7th around the greens) over the past 100 rounds (a 61-round sample for Sungjae). He's close to a cash-game lock, even with his recent missed cuts.

Nate Lashley ($10,800 | 31/1) - Lashley leads the field in proximity from 200-plus yards over the past 100 rounds (73 rounds for Lashley) and grades out 9th on par 5s, as well as 24th in scrambling. Lashley won on the Web.com Tour here in 2017 and finished 28th last year on the PGA Tour, ranking second in strokes gained on the par 5s but just 96th on the par 3s.

Joaquin Niemann ($10,700 | 29/1) - Niemann is first in approach and second off the tee among the field. He's one of the best ball-strikers on the Tour and really stands out in this weak field. There are short-game concerns still, and that aspect matters, but he could still cash in with a strong finish if that area is even average this weekend.

Mid-Range Options

Dylan Frittelli ($10,200 | 44/1) - Frittelli grades out 5th off the tee and 43rd in approach over his 67 measured rounds. The South African also ranks 10th in strokes gained on par 5s in that span. He's never played here.

Joel Dahmen ($9,900 | 34/1) - The Day Man ranks 150th by the OWGR but is 89th via datagolf's ranks, making him an important mid-range focal point. The bucket-hat wielding Dahmen can strike the ball (12th off the tee and 9th in approach) and also finished 11th here in 2016 on the Web.com Tour and was 13th a year ago.

Corey Conners ($9,600 | 37/1) - Conners leads the field in greens in regulation gained and is 36th on par 5s, to pair with top-four rankings in off-the-tee and approach play. Conners finished 53rd here in 2017 and 13th last year, adjusting his game to rank 7th in fairways hit (76th in distance).

Adam Schenk ($9,400 | 50/1) - Schenk ranks 4th in greens in regulation gained and 52nd in approach over a full 100-round sample and has played this course three times: 41st in 2016, 12th in 2017, and 35th in 2018.

Low-Priced Picks

There are a lot of low-priced picks with solid-enough profiles for this field and good win odds. It's probably a week to hone in on key pieces at the top and cycle in some of these types in hopes that they can come through.

Hudson Swafford ($8,900 | 55/1) - Swafford ranks 33rd in approach and 22nd off the tee. He's got a rough short game but can make up for it in long proximity (fifth) and par 5s (eighth).

Adam Svensson ($8,600 | 75/1) - Svensson ranks 112th in putting over his 53 measured rounds but is 31st off the tee, 10th in approach, and 37th around the green. If he can be even baseline or a little worse on the greens, he could break through here. He missed the cut in 2016 but was sixth in 2017.

Hank Lebioda ($8,600 | 120/1) - Lebioda is top-35 in all three tee-to-green stats over a 33-round sample and has scored well on par 5s while putting himself in good position to score (measured by opportunities gained).

Sepp Straka ($8,300 | 75/1) - Straka showed up well last week for a bit before fading to a 48th at the Valspar. In all, he lost 0.8 strokes via approach shots. That's uncharacteristic, as he's averaged 0.3 over his 30 rounds. The Austrian missed the cut here in 2017.

Shawn Stefani ($8,200 | 55/1) - Stefani notched a 13th here a year ago and ranks 28th in approach over the past 100 rounds. He was 9th in strokes gained on the par 5s a year ago.

Rafael Campos ($8,000 | 70/1) - Campos has played here thrice (cut, 3rd, cut) but has a good approach profile to his name (12th) over the past 100 rounds -- plus 15th in greens in regulation. His Web.Com finishes are 32nd, 1st, 25th, 65th, cut, and 13th in 2019, to go along with a 49th at the Puerto Rico Open.