Daily Fantasy Golf Course Primer: The Honda Classic

After a finish worthy of the hype for THE PLAYERS Championship, the PGA Tour heads down the Florida coast to Palm Beach where the beast that is PGA National awaits for the Honda Classic. The Champion course is one of the most demanding on Tour, and unfortunately, that challenge will be a hard pass for many golfers who have had a WGC event plus Sawgrass on the schedule the past few weeks, many of whom also played in either the California capstone at Riviera or the sandwiched Arnold Palmer Invitational.

This full-field event is noticeably thin on star power, with defending champion Sungjae Im and Palm Beach resident Daniel Berger the highest-ranked players in the field and the only players in the top 20 in the Official World Golf Ranking teeing it up this week. [Editor's note: Daniel Berger has withdrawn.] A deeper field on a challenging course ratchets up the variance in an already tricky game of speculation in PGA Tour golf. Im and recent PLAYERS Champion Justin Thomas class up the leaderboards the past few years, but Sungjae's victory was by a single stroke and Thomas prevailed in a playoff, and we could very well be walking into a tournament whose last three champions were Mackenzie Hughes, Keith Mitchell, and Luke List.

Things can change quickly on the back nine, as the leaders must survive the famed Bear Trap -- holes 15, 16, and 17, so named after the course architect Jack Nicklaus -- if they want to hang on. Likewise, would-be challengers can see their comeback hopes go up in smoke with a water ball or two on what is perennially among the most difficult three-hole stretches on the entire Tour.

As we've seen at other coastal Florida courses the past few weeks, wind is the real variable at PGA National and can throw a wrench in any round even if it only affects a few holes. There does appear to be some rain in the forecast for Friday, and with plenty of time to monitor, we can look for any possible wave advantages later in the week. A washout is unlikely, but if one group plays their second round on a course softened a bit by rain, that could be a huge advantage.

Let's dig into the course and see what stats we can use to build our daily fantasy lineups this week.

Course and Tournament Info

Course: Champion Course at PGA National
Par: 70
Distance: 7,125 yards
Fairways/Rough: Celebration Bermudagrass
Greens: TifEagle Bermudagrass

Just to drive the point home -- PGA National is hard. The 2017 champion Rickie Fowler is the only man to finish the week double-digits under par since 2012. Water is in play on 15 holes (including each of the Bear Trap holes), and even with the renovation a couple of years ago to expand the size of the putting surfaces, these are still tough greens to hit. The course features more than twice as much acreage of "rough" than fairway, though some of that is native areas that is even worse than thick rough because it's essentially unplayable. The field will also contend with 67 sand bunkers lining just about every fairway and green.

The layout is well balanced this week, with three par 4s are under 400 yards and really tough par 3s. The front nine includes two par 3s over 215 yards and the back nine's par 3s are part of the Bear Trap. Both par 5s are plenty long at 538 and 556 yards, the latter being the closing hole as a comeback birdie opportunity coming off the Trap.

We've brought up PGA National when talking about TPC Sawgrass and Bay Hill Club & Lodge the past two weeks, and while Thomas can win anywhere, it's notable that he now joins Fowler and Adam Scott with wins at both the Honda Classic and THE PLAYERS. Sungjae and Mitchell are former winners and were both top five at last year's API as well. Fast and firm Florida courses are the low-hanging fruit, but if we wanted to venture outside the panhandle we could do worse than eyeing Colonial Country Club (Charles Schwab Challenge) as a par 70 with similar yardage and an eclectic mix of former champions/contenders.

Key Stats

These stats will be the keys to success in the Honda Classic at the Champion Course at PGA National.

Ballstriking and scoring are the recipe here. We know this won't be a shootout and there are plenty of bogeys out there, which makes birdies all the more important. The interesting one here is strokes gained: off the tee, as driving has been very important here even without the eye-popping yardages we sometimes see on Tour. Sungjae is the model here, high up in the off-the-tee ranks without cartoonish distance and consistently near the top in birdie-making.

The play off the tee and on approach will give us a high floor, but we'll need golfers to play well around and on the greens if we want to maximize our ceiling in daily fantasy contests or on our betting card. As Thomas showed this week at Sawgrass, tee to green play is essential to climb the leaderboard, but the tournament sometimes comes down to a 19-footer on 11, a 3-footer on 14, and a 6-footer on 17. Fast greens can bring the best putters back toward the field, but Byeong-Hun An's record here notwithstanding, PGA National is a tough sell for Team No Putt.

Course History Studs

Fowler is the one to watch there, with four top 10s to his name including the aforementioned victory in 2017, but the recent form is so questionable and his two missed cuts in the past three years cast enough doubt on Rickie to keep expectations tempered.

Scott has three top 15s in addition to his 2016 win, but missed cuts in 2011 and 2019. Berger was T4 here last year and runner up in 2015, though the theme here is largely that everyone succumbs if they play here enough and Berger has two missed cuts in six tries. [Editor's note: Daniel Berger has withdrawn.]

It's an interesting group with multiple top 10s here, a list that includes An, Gary Woodland, Luke List, Russell Henley, Lucas Glover, Lee Westwood, and Vijay Singh(!).

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.