Half a season is in the books, and for those of you looking for a fresh start in DFS or Fantasy Leagues, this week’s article contains a few fresh faces. Three of my recommended players this week are first timers in the article, as the Tour travels to San Antonio this week for the Valero Texas Open. TPC San Antonio has been known as one of the tougher courses on tour year in and year out, and while a lot of that has to do with the stingy Greg Norman design, the weather also plays a significant role. This time of year, Texas is always home to windy conditions, and if past tournaments are any indication, gusts will be consistent throughout all four rounds. Par is always a good score on the AT&T Oaks Course, and because of that, bogey avoidance on the difficult holes (like the Par-4 Fourth hole) is of the utmost importance. Before tackling this week’s recommendations, let’s examine last week’s results from Harbour Town.
Paul Casey: MC
Matt Kuchar: T-23
Cameron Smith: T-32
Kevin Kisner: T-7
Charley Hoffman: T-23
I picked Kisner in my one-and-done league, so I was pleased with his result. Casey missing the cut is about as likely as Jordan Spieth playing a round without shouting “Jordan!” It just doesn’t happen. The other three posted respectable finishes, but disappointing given that both Kuchar and Smith were each near the top of the leaderboard at some point during the tournament but weren’t able to avoid fading. Hopefully the trip to Texas this week brings some good fortune.
Top-Tier Recommendation
Charley Hoffman ($9,700)
Last week’s sleeper for cheaper is now the third most expensive option on the slate this week. Usually, when that happens, it means either the player is a horse for the course, or he won his last start. In this case, it’s the former, as Hoffman is the all-time earning’s leader here. He has three top-3 finishes since 2011, including a win just two years ago. He also has four additional top-15 finishes, which includes a T-11 in 2015. He’s never missed a cut on this course. When Hoffman plays on TPC San Antonio, you put him in your lineup, it’s as simple as that. He’s finished in the top-25 in four of his last five stroke play events, two of which were top 15s. His solid play at the Masters over the years has given him momentum going into the following few weeks, and with his T-12 finish at Augusta this year, look for him to quite literally keep the ball rolling at the Valero this week.
Mid-Priced Plays
Ryan Moore ($9,000)
Moore is the guy that is never seriously in contention, but you never have to scroll down far to find his name on leaderboards. He’s finished in the top-20 in each of his last two visits to San Antonio, including a T-18 finish last year. He also finished T-16 last week in the RBC Heritage. In his two stroke play events prior to that, Moore finished T-5 at Bay Hill and T-28 at the Masters. Reading this may not particularly excite you, but these are exactly the types of trends we are looking for in a player at a mid-level price range. The field isn’t great this week, so don’t feel bad about using names that you typically wouldn’t feel great about. There honestly aren’t too many other golfers I’d feel more comfortable using than Moore this week.
Billy Horschel ($8,500)
Throughout his career, Horschel has been known to come out of nowhere to catch fire. It happened in 2014 when he won in back to back weeks during the playoffs and ended up taking home the FedEx Cup. Although he has struggled this year, he posted a T-5 finish last week in Hilton Head, which was his best finish of the season by far. If there was ever a course for him to continue his little bit of momentum, it would be the one he is playing this week. He has three top-5s at TPC San Antonio since 2013, his most recent being a T-4 finish two years ago. Normally, I would want to see a player put more than one good week together before I really feel comfortable using him, but it’s a limited field and he’s coming off his best finish of the year. If you aren’t gonna use Horschel this week, are you really ever going to?
Sleepers for Cheaper
Chesson Hadley ($8,400)
As I mentioned earlier, this week’s field isn’t the strongest, so I decided to recommend two sleepers this week who I think have a decent shot at returning lots of value. Chesson Hadley has never really been a player who’s caught my attention, but when I looked at his numbers, I was pleasantly surprised, as he’s in the mix far more than I thought. He turned in three rounds in the 60s last week at Harbour Town en route to a T-7 finish, which followed a T-18 finish at the Houston Open in his previous start. On a course like TPC San Antonio, par or better on all four days will usually lead you to a high finish, and Hadley turned in exactly that in 2015 when he finished T-4 in this event. It’s a good price for someone who is trending in the right direction, and he is as much as anyone else in the field this week.
Si Woo Kim ($8,300)
If you watched the final round of the RBC Heritage last week, you’d know that Si Woo Kim should have won that tournament. He was in complete control and had multiple chances on the back nine to really put the tournament away. Instead, he left the door open for Satoshi Kodaira from Japan to claim his first PGA Tour victory in the third hole of a playoff. Usually, a player in that situation can respond one of two ways. Either it deflates them, and their game will appear flat the next week, or it motivates them, and they use it as a learning experience for the next time they are in that situation. For a price this cheap, I’m willing to bank on the latter. Prior to his devastating loss last week, he finished T-24 at the Masters, and before that finished T-9 at the Match Play. Last year in San Antonio, he placed T-22, giving him four days of solid golf for the memory bank to look back on when he tackles the course this year. I may be recommending him simply because I feel for him, and I think he deserves to win a tournament, but the trends are there. If he won last week he’d probably be close to $1,000 dollars more expensive, so in my opinion, this price is too good to pass up.
Nick Swantek is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Nick, check out his archive and follow him @nick_swantek.
