Daily Fantasy Golf Course Primer: WGC-Workday Championship
After wrapping up its West Coast trip, the PGA Tour ships off to Florida for the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship. Previously held at Trump National Doral, the WGC event was moved to Club de Chapultepec in Mexico City starting in 2017 but will be held at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida this year due to travel limitations.
The Concession is a co-design between Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin, so named for the famous putt Nicklaus conceded to accept a tie in the 1969 Ryder Cup rather than giving Jacklin a chance to miss under tremendous pressure. The course is one of the highest-rated in Florida but until recently has not attracted much buzz for Ryder Cup or major championship consideration. We can expect the course to be in tiptop shape as it takes a stand on the big stage.
What we do know about The Concession is that it is long and difficult, though those two characteristics go hand-in-hand with average joe's much more than PGA Tour professionals. We've seen that they really cannot make these courses long enough for that to be the sole obstacle for today's Tour, and luckily this 7,474-yard par 72 also features undulating greens, hugely sloped bunkers, and plenty of water hazards to keep scoring in check.
The shortest par 3 is the 183-yard sixth hole, and the other four are all over 200. The par 5s are all over 545 yards and should not be considered pushovers, with heavily bunkered greens offering interesting risk-reward scenarios for those looking to reach the green in two. The finishing stretch of the 590-yard par 5 17th and the 486-yard par 4 18th should add an element of unpredictability when it comes to winning time on Sunday afternoon.
Florida winds can really get kicking this time of year, and while sunny conditions are expected, keep an eye on the anticipated wind as we near the start of the tournament.
Let's dig into the courses and see what stats we can use to build our daily fantasy lineups this week.
Course and Tournament Info
Course: The Concession Golf Club
Par: 72
Distance: 7,474 yards
Fairways/Rough: TifEagle Bermudagrass
Greens: TifEagle Bermudagrass
We can't rely on any prior events' scoring or conditions, but we can at least glean Nicklaus' vast catalog of courses to find some comparisons.
PGA National (Honda Classic) comes to mind as a challenging bermuda track in Florida designed by Nicklaus. Danger lurks at every corner, and befitting a Golden Bear design elite iron play is absolutely crucial. Muirfield Village GC (The Memorial) is another Nicklaus design that features long par 3s and a wide range of looks off the tee.
Key Stats
These stats have proven vital to success at the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession Golf Club.
| Key Stats for the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession GC |
|---|
| Strokes Gained: Tee to Green |
| Strokes Gained: Approach |
| Birdies or Better Gained |
| Scrambling Gained |
| Strokes Gained: Putting (Bermuda) |
With so much unknown, we'll offer a mostly vanilla and balanced slate of stats here. Tee to green play with extra weight on approach will point us mostly to the best overall golfers, and oscillating between long-term form and more recent samples can get us a clearer picture of who we should back in our betting cards or DFS lineups.
Birdie-making and par-saving are important every week, and given how many bunkers are in play, it may be worth narrowing the scrambling even further to sand saves to differentiate this week, though we'll stick with the broader scrambling gained as our base stat.
Finally, the switch from the poa greens out West to the bermudagrass common to the Southeast is jarring for several players. We'll be looking not just for players who excel on bermuda tracks, but specifically at golfers who play the first few Florida events well each year as an indicator of benefitting extra not only from moving to their preferred surface but also for capitalizing on those who stumble with the transition.
Course History Studs
The only golfers with official history at The Concession are those who played in the 2015 NCAA Championships here. Bryson DeChambeau was the victor for Southern Methodist, though he's a vastly different golfer (and altogether a differently shaped human being) now.
Other top pros who were in the field that week include Jon Rahm (T19), Xander Schauffele (T42), and Scottie Scheffler (T51), but the really intriguing name is Thomas Detry, a 28-year-old Belgian who finished T3. Detry had six top 10s on the European Tour in 2020.
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.
