After the exciting and eventful finish to the Travelers Championship last week, we have now entered the doldrums of the PGA Tour calendar. With the elevated events done for the season, and the year’s final major a full three weeks away, many of the game’s best use this time to recharge. Thus, we end up with fields like we have this week for the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
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Without further ado, let’s breakdown this course.
2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic Core Plays
2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic PGA DFS Course & Tournament Preview
Detroit Golf Club will host this week’s event, as it has done for each of the last five years. The 7,400 yard par 72 is one of the easiest courses on tour. With minimal trouble lurking off tee boxes, golfers can bomb and gouge their way around with relative ease. The rough is advertised at 4 inches, but videos circulating around the internet beg to differ. It’s basically set up like a tree-lined municipal course. The winning score will be somewhere in the low to mid 20 under par range, which means birdies will reign supreme.
I’ll be targeting bombers this week, who are good on approach shots from 150 yards and in. This style has been the formula for success here, with the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Davis, and Tony Finau winning this event in years past.
Tom Kim gets the Scottie Scheffler treatment this week (which points to the strength of this field). He’s the favorite to win, and the highest projected golfer in the field. For those reasons he is going to be a popular play. How you handle him is a strategic preference that I can’t answer for you, so he will not be making the list of core plays this week. Outside of Kim, I have identified three core players, along with a GPP flier I’ll be building my lineups around this week.
2024 Rocket Mortgage PGA DFS Core Plays
Min Woo Lee – $10,500
With an average driving distance of 315 yards this season, Lee is one of the longest hitters on the PGA Tour. This elite distance has led to a streak of five consecutive finishes inside the top 26, most of which came in very strong fields.
He now gets the opportunity to come to a course that favors bombers, in a field that is likely one of the weakest we’ll see all year. He’ll be anchoring a lot of my lineups at the top of the price range this week.
Maverick McNealy – $8,900
McNealy has quietly been playing some excellent golf in 2024. He’s only missed one cut on the entire season, and is currently on a streak of twelve made cuts in a row. Over this stretch he has five finishes inside the top 17, including his most recent start that resulted in 7th place finish at the RBC Canadian Open earlier this month. In three career starts in Detroit, he has two finishes inside the top 21, including an 8th place finish in 2020.
His game is set up very nicely for the layout and style of golf that this course demands. He ranks 5th in this field in birdie or better percentage, and 6th in strokes gained on par 5’s where a lot of the scoring will be had this week. He’s one of my favorite plays on the entire slate.
Davis Thompson – $8,300
Coming off a very impressive top 10 finish at the U.S. Open, it’s clear Davis Thompson is really starting to hit his stride. He now has 3 finishes inside the top 18 over his last six starts. Over this time period he ranks 14th in this field in strokes gained off the tee, along with top 25 rankings in both birdie or better percentage and bogey avoidance.
With an average driving distance north of 308 yards, he heads into this week as an excellent course fit in a soft field. I love the value he presents in the low $8k range on DraftKings this week.
GPP Flier: Luke Clanton – $7,000
Clanton is far from a house hold name at this point in his career, but this kid has serious game. As the number 1 ranked college golfer, and the 4th ranked amateur in the world, it’s only a matter of time before we see Clanton as a regular on the PGA Tour. In his first start amongst the best players in the world, he gained over five strokes ball striking on his way to an impressive 41st place finish at the U.S. Open a couple weeks ago.
Why can’t he compete this week on a much easier course, against a much softer field? Through the first two rounds at Pinehurst, only Bryson and Cam Young had a longer average driving distance than Clanton. The kid can bomb it. This one may not be for everyone, but I’m taking a chance on the elite talent here. I think he’s worth a flier in large field GPP’s this week at single digit projected ownership.
