Surprise, surprise: Scottie Scheffler ran away from yet another elite field on Sunday, capturing his third title of the season and second green jacket at just 27 years of age. This article hit on just how insane he’s been from a strokes-gained perspective in 2024, but as the highest-owned golfer of the week, he was hardly a differentiating piece. So it was really the contrarian Collin Morikawa iron-play talking points and the Lucas Glover value piece highlighted here that helped make it a moderately successful PGA DFS week. Here, though, we’re back to our PGA DFS model plays by looking at our RBC Heritage preview.
Let’s try to find a fresh batch of skill set fits for this week’s elevated event, the RBC Heritage. So using our PGA DFS model data, let’s look at how you might approach your RBC Heritage DFS picks.
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RBC Heritage Preview – PGA DFS Model Plays, RBC Heritage DFS Overview
The Course
The RBC Heritage makes its yearly pit stop this week at Harbour Town Golf Links, one of the more unique layouts on the PGA TOUR. It’s a short Pete Dye design sitting just shy of 7,200 yards, but plays exponentially more difficult than the length suggests for a multitude of reasons including skinny fairways, forced layups, penalty areas at seemingly every turn. This makes it quite easy to model out the best course fits, although finding exposure to a low-owned “bomber” that doesn’t fit the perfect billing for this track has the potential to pay dividends (see: Dustin Johnson pre-LIV).
Lindy’s Skill Set Priorities for The RBC Heritage (Ranked By Importance):
- Strokes-Gained: Approach
- Driving Accuracy
- Accuracy From Fairway: Proximity to the Hole
Strokes-Gained: Approach
Every year I feel like this is the most obvious place to build out the required skill sets, and every year I’m surprised when the ownership flips. Not positive that’ll be the case this time around with only 69 players in the field, but one can dream!
Anyways, the top five in in Strokes-Gained: Approach on the PGA TOUR this season are as obvious as they come. Scottie Scheffler ($13,100) sits at the top (duh), followed by iron-play extraordinare Tom Hoge ($7,000) who projects out as a fantastic punt option. He’s gained 1.8 strokes with the approach in eight consecutive events, and the putter’s been red hot as well with 5+ strokes gained on the greens in his past two events.
The question becomes this, however: the is no doubt Scheffler is the best player in the world by leaps and bounds at the moment, but with an exorbitant price tag, the rushed-in practice round on Wednesday morning after being in Dallas the past three days, and the baby withdrawal risk (Mrs. Scheffler is pregnant and nearly due with their first in case you watched zero of the Masters), what does his motivation to play well here look like? Or more importantly for our purposes, what does his ownership look like?
Welp, in the first run of the Stokastic Sims ran purely off our projections, it would appear I do not care:
Just like last week, he’s appearing in a hair north of 50% of my lineups, even at this inflated salary number. If you are risk averse, I’d recommend the ol’ ROI Boost decrease there, but I’ll happily take 50% of the best player in the world projected as just the 14th most-owned play in Stokastic projections (13.2%).
Also above comes the #1 play in my model relative to current ownership, Corey Conners ($8,300). He’s projected for 13.7% on the heels of a so-so 38th place finish at The Masters, but has four-straight Top 31 finishes at the RBC Heritage including a 4th-place finish in 2021. The putter is concerning of late, but accuracy is his forte and I’ll happily roll him out in hopes it flips.
And with Ryan Moore not in the field, Shane Lowry ($8,500) is the last talking point amongst SG:APP leaders. His ownership projection is identical to Conners at 13.7%, but due to recent form and near-identical salary to that of Conners, it’s likely to me that his ownership gets inflated as a result. Would keep a close eye on him in particular in single entry as chatter as him trending towards being an even more popular piece in those contests.
Driving Accuracy
Well, crap: it’s Shane Lowry again. Yeah, if he’s not actually going to be popular, I will be ROI Boosting him into the stratosphere. But I repeat: I think his ownership gets inflated and becomes a far chalkier piece than I would want.
Yet as good as Lowry projects to be on this layout, the chalkiest player currently on the board is Si Woo Kim ($8,000), who currently projects for 20% ownership at Stokastic. Hitting the fairway can be upwards of a half-stroke difference on number of holes at Harbour Town, and putting yourself in four-of-every-five fairways with Si Woo’s all-around game makes him one of the safer options in this no-cut event. Tommy Fleetwood ($9,800) isn’t far behind at 17.2% ownership, but I’m far more inclined to eat that chalk on the heels of his T3 last week knowing Ludvig Aberg ($10,400) will garner more of the ‘chase-y’ ownership than him.
Still, similar to last week, I’m in love with the contrarian Collin Morikawa ($10,000) play. He’s primed to take advantage of a layout like this due to his elite iron play that saw positive regression at Augusta National, but also due to the premium on accuracy over distance. I’m also in love with Sepp Straka ($7,200) just like I am most weeks, and think he’s a contrarian cheap option on the come up with the T16 he just put up at The Masters. Plus, getting back on his preferred bermuda surfaces could help his lackluster around the green and on the green play return to form.
Accuracy From Fairway: Proximity to the Hole
This might seem redundant to strokes-gained: approach, but I believe this stat demonstrates the potential upside of players who put the ball in play and then capitalize, which is sort of the name of the game to get around Harbour Town successfully. Plus, there are two very important names to discuss on this list, starting with Akshay Bhatia ($7,700).
The young lefty changed his life in recent weeks with a streak of form that’s been unrivaled by anyone-not-named-Scottie-Scheffler. He’s 10th SG:OTT amongst this field over his past 24 rounds, he’s been extremely accurate in that time frame as well, and so if that continues here with the hot putting, I think he’s a dark horse to win the event. Immense upside for just $7,700.
Also think Matthieu Pavon ($7,000) makes me feel better about my Scheffler exposure. He’s not unowned at 11.2% in our current Stokastic projections, but his strokes-gained: off the tee, approach, and putting are all top 25 relative to this field over his past 24 rounds. Simply put, he’s quietly been one of the better players on tour this season, and I’m happy to roll out the Frenchman in single entry at modest ownership.
The RBC Heritage DFS Picks and Model Top Plays
Below are my current top plays this week based on a heavier weighting towards the criteria above as well as ownership. All listed ranks next to the statistics are their overall rankings in that metric for the 2024 PGA TOUR season, not relative to the field.
$10,000+
Scottie Scheffler* ($13,100)
SG: App — 1st
Driving Accuracy — 14th
AFF: Proximity — 6th
*PLEASE make sure you check his status on Thursday morning to confirm he’s playing!
$9,000+
Tommy Fleetwood ($9,800)
SG: App — 165th
Driving Accuracy — 2nd
AFF: Proximity — 157th
$8,000+
Shane Lowry ($8,500)
SG: App — 3rd
Driving Accuracy — 1st
AFF: Proximity — 27th
$7,000+
Sepp Straka ($7,200)
SG: App — 137th
Driving Accuracy — 4th
AFF: Proximity — 114th
$6,000+
Emiliano Grillo ($6,900)
SG: App — 72nd
Driving Accuracy — 27th
AFF: Proximity — 44th
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