DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Helper: Shriners Hospitals for Children Open

Daily fantasy golf requires a new approach for each and every event.

The course and field change week after week, making no two contests alike. That means you need to refine your approach for each PGA Tour event to try to find golfers who are primed to excel for your daily fantasy golf lineups.

Each week, we have a course primer, and our daily fantasy golf projections and lineup builder can help you get started, but these golfers stand out specifically on DraftKings for Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.

Key Stats

Let's get to the picks. For details on why these stats stand out this week, check out the course primer.

Stats are from Fantasy National Golf Club and are for golfers in the field over the last 50 rounds.

High-Salaried Studs

Bryson DeChambeau (DraftKings Salary: $11,800 | FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds: +800) - The U.S. Open champion is in the field this week after a couple of weeks off, and as a former winner at the Shrinerss it's no surprise. He was a different golfer back in the fall of 2018 when he shot 66-66-65-66 en route to a one-shot victory. Since then he's allegedly broken the game, winning at a birdie-fest in Detroit and a grind-it-out at the U.S. Open. But those wins were more than two months apart, and aside from a fourth-place finish at the PGA in the middle, he was actually quite bad between them.

In his other five events, he failed to finish higher than T25, and even that was at the TOUR Championship and close to last place. Coming off a win as one of the biggest stories in golf, Bryson is sure to be popular this week, and why not? He's first in birdies or better gained as well as both the key par 4 range and par 4s overall, he's second in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and fifth in greens in regulation gained. He needs to win to return value at this price, and while that's well within reason there is merit to fading him in tournaments this week.

Webb Simpson ($11,000 | +1000) - The top tier is quite confounding this week, with both Patrick Cantlay ($10,400 | +1600) and Tony Finau ($10,200 | +1800) sporting terrific course form and elite tee-to-green games. Cantlay especially sticks out, with finishes of 2nd, 2nd, and 1st the past three years, but with just one top 20 in the past three months and always coming in at high ownership, we'll gladly pivot to Simpson. Webb's is every bit the tee-to-green player as the other two, ranking 8th compared to 7th for Finau and 10th for Cantlay. He's also the owner of four straight top-12 finishes, most recently T8 at the U.S. Open, and he's no slouch in the course history department himself. He's finished T7, T15, and T20 the past three years.

Collin Morikawa ($9,800 | +2000) - After missing just one cut over his first 25 starts as a professional and racking up three wins, Morikawa has missed two weekends in his past four, including last time out at the U.S. Open. Rising to the top of the sport has its pressures, and few young talents have risen as fast as Morikawa. He's currently the fifth-ranked player in the world, the highest in the field (Bryson and Webb are sixth and seventh, respectively), and he is top-three in the field in strokes gained: tee-to-green, strokes gained: approach, birdies or better gained, and greens in regulation gained. Already one of the top iron players alive and straight as an arrow off the tee, Morikawa can contend just about anywhere. As he showed at TPC Harding Park, if he putts well, you can expect to see him lift a trophy at the end of the weekend.

Mid-Salaried Options

Scottie Scheffler ($9,400 | +2900) - Scheffler bounced back from a poor start at the Sanderson Farms Championship to make the cut and grind to a T37 finish. It was his first time out since the TOUR Championship, and the rust showed as he lost 3.4 strokes with approaches. He hadn't lost ground with his irons since the Workday Charity Open in July, and in fact had posted six straight top 25s to close the season, including top-5 finishes in three of his last four events. A positive COVID test kept him out of the U.S. Open, and we can expect better form from him back at another course that should play to his strengths. He ranks 4th in birdies or better gained, 6th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and 22nd in greens in regulation gained. He should excel on these par 4s, as he ranks 7th overall and 8th in our key range of 400-450 yards.

Russell Henley $8,400 | +5000) - The $8k range is typically a ripe bastion of value on DraftKings, but this week we find it pretty barren. If we're in the $9k's we can probably find the cash to get up to Morikawa or a few others on the high end, and the $7k range is full of quality ballstrikers seeing a dip in price thanks to the big names at the top. So we will have to see how popular Henley is, notably ranking first in strokes gained: approach, fourth in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and fourth in GIRs gained. He ended his season with a T25 at the BMW Championship after back to back top 10s where he finally figured out the putter. Typically a strength, the flat stick had been the missing piece for most of his season.

Joaquin Niemann ($8,100 | +5000) - Tee-to-green stud? Check. Signs of life on bentgrass greens? Check. Niemann is 13th in strokes gained: approach and 26th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and in truth, he's been very inconsistent since the restart post-COVID. For example, he's gained strokes tee to green in just one of his past four events, but in that one, he led the field in that category en route to a third-place finish at the BMW Championship. An outlier putting performance carried him to a T23 at the U.S. Open, but the pieces are there if he can put them together as he did in his breakout win just over a year ago at the Greenbrier. He's solid on the par 4s, ranking 20th overall but 11th in the key range.

Low-Salaried Options

Doc Redman ($7,900 | +7000) - Redman's T28 last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship was his 7th top 30 in his past 10 events, with the other three being missed cuts. At this price, he's returning cash game value 70% of the time, more than good enough for us to plug him in again this week. He ranks 4th in approach, 7th in greens in regulation gained, 16th in birdies or better gained, and 27th in strokes gained: tee-to-green. His par 4 numbers look great as well, ranking 13th overall and 6th in the 400-450 yard range. Redman has the pedigree of a former U.S. Amateur winner and is back on his best putting surface, and we can expect him to draw a fair bit of interest from DFS-ers.

Harold Varner ($7,500 | +8000) - Like Redman, Varner offers a clear path to cash game value and will doubtless be popular this week. In his 10 starts since the restart beginning at the Charles Schwab Invitational, Varner has finishes of T19, MC, T32, T30, MC, MC, T29, T7, MC, and T29. He gained strokes on approaches in all six made cuts plus one other, but only gained with the putter in two of those events. Over his last 50, he ranks 2nd in GIRs gained, 5th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, 7th in strokes gained: approach, and 30th in birdies or better gained. He fits the par 4s as well, ranking 5th overall on 13th on par 4s between 400-450 yards.

Brendan Steele ($7,200 | +8000) - We can divide Steele's season into thirds and get a good picture of how he played in the 2019-20 season. His Fall Swing was mostly unremarkable, with a T29 at this event the high mark. He started 2020 by basically giving away the Sony Open, going on to lose in a playoff. He was remarkably inconsistent for the next few months, finishing T43, MC, MC, T4, MC before the pandemic put the season on hold. And then he found that consistency once the season restarted. A missed cut in June at Colonial is the last time he's failed to make the weekend, a streak of eight straight events that is his longest since a missed cut at the 2018 Masters snapped a 10-event streak. He ranks 6th in strokes gained: approach, 19th in strokes gained: tee-to-green, 23rd in GIRs gained, and 25th in birdies or better gained.

Kevin Streelman ($7,000 | +10000) - Streelman is even better than Steele statistically, ranking 9th in birdies or better gained, 14th in tee-to-green and birdies or better gained, and 18th in approach. A missed cut at the U.S. Open snapped his own eight-event made cut streak that was bracketed by a runner up at the Travelers Championship and a T3 at the Safeway Open. A second-round 76 where nothing went right ended his week early last year, but he was runner up here in 2014.

Bargain Basement

Henrik Norlander ($6,900 | +10000) - A T4 after three straight missed cuts highlights the wide range of outcomes that Norlander presents, but at $6,900 there is merit to differentiating your tournament lineups with a flier with top 10 potential. He had made six straight cuts before the string of MCs, so there's no reason to think he'll backslide this week.

Matthew NeSmith ($6,600 | +12000) - Nesmith was 18th at the Shriners last year, and coming off a T17 at the Sanderson Farms last week in which he gained in all facets is encouraging that he's returning to the form he flashed at the end of 2019 into early 2020. He ranks 9th in strokes gained: approach, 16th in GIRs gained, and 25th on par 4s between 400-450 yards.

Mike Rodden is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Mike Rodden also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username mike_rodden. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.