Quail Hollow may be most famous for being one of the longest courses on the Tour, at just over 7,500 yards, but maybe we should be looking at the opportunities the course presents young golfers. With no event last year due to the pandemic, four of the last ten champions here were first time winners on the PGA Tour, including Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, and defending champion Max Homa.
A long course means long holes. For metrics this week, we will be targeting strokes gained off the tee, ball striking, par 4 efficiency, par 5 efficiency, and, our most important metric to focus on, bogey avoidance. Finally, weather reports seem to be in our favor, with temperatures expected to be in the 70s, no expected rainfall, and little wind, we will be leaving weather related metrics out of models for the first time in a few weeks.
In this post, we want to take this data and highlight some of our favorite golfers competing this week:
First, let’s get Justin Thomas out of the way. Thomas is available for $11,300 on Draft Kings and at +1000 to win in most sportsbook, making him most expensive fantasy golfer and the favorite to win this week. Thomas will certainly be in play. He was the first golfer to win a PGA event at Quail Hollow after a renovation in 2016. He has been in decent form lately, finished 13th last week, and is worth a mention, but we prefer some of the other guys below at better numbers.
John Rahm is one of our favorite plays this week, both in DFS and to win the event. He is available for $10,800 on DK and +1000 to win. Interestingly, he is tied for the best odds to win the event, but third in salary on DK. We will jump on that kind of fantasy value as our top golfer. Rahm has been in excellent form lately, with eight top-10 finishes in his last ten event. He also checks a few of our other boxes, shooting long off the tee and has excellent par 5 efficiency.
Since his runner-up finish at the Masters, Will Zalatoris took some personal time to celebrate his recent engagement with his now fiancé, but he should definitely be on your radar here. Zalatoris is a local golfer, who will likely know the course well, not to mention the excellent course fit and form Zalatoris has shown all season. He is available on DK at $9,400 and at +2600 to win the event.
Defending champ Max Homa, another local golfer, is worth a look as well. Homa is only $9,000 on DK and +3500 to defend his title. Homa recently won this year’s event at The Riviera, marking his second win at the course. Notably, success at The Riviera often translates well to success here at Quail Hollow. Homa is coming of a top 10 finish and seems more than capable of being in the mix late this weekend.
Our top DFS value this weekend is Cameron Tringale, who is available on DK for $8,400. We would not bet Tringale to win, but for him to finish top 10 at +350 is interesting. Tringale has shown excelling form all season and ranks high in our model for ball striking. For DFS players, Tringale continues to be our favorite cash game option.
Digging deeper, we see value in Matt Jones this week. Jones is only $7,400 on DK and +8500 to win. When pulling together the stats for this week, no golfer shows up in more metrics than Matt Jones. Jones is in great form and recently won the Honda Classic. He also has made the cut five out of seven times playing Quail Hollow. We will have some exposure to Jones over the weekend.
*This preview does not represent our final picks for this event. For our full set of picks, check out our Game Picks section!
**Odds accurate at time of posting.