DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Helper: Charles Schwab Challenge

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 the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club.

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

Justin Thomas (DraftKings Price: $11,000 | Golf odds Win Odds: +1300) - We'll start off pivoting off favorite Jordan Spieth ($11,300 | +1000), an easy decision in a vacuum given the talent of Thomas and what we expect to be incredible popularity for Spieth. As a raw play, it's hard to argue with Spieth -- he's won here before and finished worse than 14th just once -- and has been back to playing golf like one of the best players in the world. Instead, we'll opt for his good buddy Thomas, who liked Colonial just fine with a T10 finish in his debut last year and figures to fit just fine himself. Neither hits the fairway as much as we'd like, but Thomas gets the edge in birdies or better gained (1st vs. 2nd) and strokes gained: approach (3rd vs. 10th) while trailing Spieth only in strokes gained: around the green (9th vs. 4th). You can't go wrong up here, but we will go to Thomas purely by game theory.

Collin Morikawa ($10,500 | +1200) - If we aren't playing Thomas it's hard to pass on Morikawa who ranks 1st in approach 7th in fairways gained, 9th in birdies or better gained, and 36th around the green. He put up a Sunday 68 to tie for eighth place, a terrific result that underlines just how high Morikawa's floor is right now. He did not play particularly well all week but still banked another top 10. He finished 7th at both the RBC Heritage and Sony Open earlier this season, two courses we consider instructive for performance at Colonial. Considering he was runner up here last year after losing in a playoff, the connections are already clear and Morikawa's straight driving and field-leading approach game are the main reasons he can contend at these tracks that demand accuracy.

Abraham Ancer ($9,700 | +2100) - Ancer posted the round of the day on Sunday at Kiawah Island, an incredible 65 on a day when the three golfers at the top failed to even shoot par. Closing strong is becoming the norm for Ancer, whose 66 moved him into a solo second at the Wells Fargo Championship a few weeks back. A T5 at the Valspar means he's posted three straight top 10s and will be popular this week, but the course sets up so well right now for how Ancer is playing that he's hard to pass on. He ranks 3rd in fairways gained, 155th in strokes gained: approach, and 29th in birdies or better gained. The peripheral stats are even better, as he ranks first in bogeys avoided and fourth in greens in regulation gained.

Mid-Salaried Options

Corey Conners ($9,400 | +2300) - If Conners keeps putting up good numbers we'll keep backing him, and last week's first-round leader looks the part again for Colonial, where he was 19th last year. The recent finishes have been excellent, with a T17 at the PGA preceded by finishes of T43, T21, T4, T8, T14, 7th, and 3rd. Some of the best finishes of his career have come at this course or our correlated tracks. He picked up his only career victory at the Valero Texas Open, was 3rd at the Sony Open in 2019, and the T4 mentioned earlier is at his year's RBC Heritage. Conners keeps it rolling this week, and at this price, he's still close to a lock for cash games.

Sungjae Im ($9,100 | +2800) - Sungjae is tough to fit at this price point if we want to play one of the top three plus either Ancer or Conners, a construction we expect to be pretty popular this week. That leaves Im, who was hanging around last weekend before stumbling coming home and finished T17. He's made all but three cuts this season but as been short on elite finishes, but at a course that minimizes his distance disadvantage this could be the week he posts a spike finish.

Charley Hoffman ($8,700 | +3200) - Hoffman missed the cut here last year after making the weekend at Colonial every year since 2012. He was 13th in 2019 and more importantly has been playing some great golf recently. a T17 at the PGA Championship gives him top 20s in seven of his last nine events, a stretch in which he's made every cut. He ranks 3rd in birdies or better gained and 6th in strokes gained: approach, and while his around the green stats aren't great (64th in this field just a shade below average), he is 12th in bogeys avoided.

Cameron Tringale ($8,100 | +8000) - Tringale missed the cut last week at the PGA and the time out before that, but the loaded fields and massive courses a Kiawah Island and Quail Hollow worked against him, and a more strategic layout should serve him well. He was 13th at the Honda Classic, 9th at the Valero Texas Open, and 3rd at the Valspar Championship before those two MC's, and the stats show the form has been good for a while -- Tringale is 6th in birdies or better gained, 15th in strokes gained: around the greens, 19th in strokes gained: approach, and 35th in fairways gained.

Low-Salaried Options

Emiliano Grillo ($7,900 | +4100) - Grillo should be popular this week and his betting odds have dropped throughout the week, but for cash games especially he fits well into just about any construction. Before a missed cut last year, he had finished T19, 3rd, and T24 in the three prior editions at Colonial. He has put together a solid stretch of events since February, with finishes of 22nd, MC, 11th, 21st, MC, 6th, 2nd, MC, and 14th before a 38th place finish last week at the PGA. He's gained at least 7.1 strokes on approaches in three of his last four events, and long term he is 7th in approach, 14th in birdies or better gained, and 28th in fairways gained.

Chris Kirk ($7,600 | +7000) - Kirk is solid across the board, ranking 17th in birdies or better gained, 18th in strokes gained: around the green, 24th in strokes gained: approach, and 31st in fairways gained. With four top 10s so far this year he may end up being popular on DraftKings even coming off two missed cuts. He's another fine cash play, but along with Grillo and a few other $7k options there's some potential for groupthink leading to some fringy golfers becoming way too popular and we'll want to either pivot off them in tournaments or at least differentiate elsewhere.

Lucas Glover ($7,300 | +13000) - Glover would be one of those pivots, a quietly reliable cutmaker with a few interesting finishes lately. At the Honda Classic, he gained 6.6 strokes putting and finished 19th; at the Valero Texas Open he gained 7.1 strokes on approaches and finished 4th, and at the Valspar Championship he gained 6.2 strokes around the green and finished 48th. An ability to pick up strokes where you can in order to stay in play when the rest of your game builds confidence, and if everything comes together you end up with a week like his last time in Texas and a top-five finish.

Russell Knox ($7,300 | +7500) - Knox has been prone to wild swings in his performance over the years, and he appears to be trending upward at the moment strokes gained via approaches in seven straight events. He also has a good track record at Colonial aside from a missed cut last year, which was the first event out of the COVID layoff and had probably the strongest field ever assembled here. Before that he was 8th in 2019, 20th in 2018, 24th in 2015, and 21st in 2014. Knox ranks 12th in strokes gained: approach, 17th in fairways gained, and 18th in bogeys avoided (44th in strokes gained: around the green).

Bargain Basement

Henrik Norlander ($6,700 | +24000) - After starting 2021 with a stretch of four straight events with finishes inside the top 26, Norlander has been abominable on the greens and lost more than 2.0 strokes putting in six of his last nine events, including two where he lost more than 8.0 strokes putting. His splits aren't exactly better on bentgrass, but he can't possibly be worse than he was on bermuda. If he can find some measure of confidence on the greens it can spread to the rest of this game and pick up that ballstriking form from January and February.

Mackenzie Hughes ($6,600 | +18000) - Hughes was 8th here in 2019, and this is a great buy-low opportunity for a golfer who advanced all the way to the TOUR Championship at the end of last season. His strengths are around and on the green, but he's lost strokes putting in consecutive events and lost around the green the week before that. He's long overdue for a pop-up and should have confidence he can do it this week as he's done it at Colonial before.

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.