Welcome back to the PGA Core Plays article for the 2025 season! After the ridiculous scoring we saw in Maui at last week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions, the tour will take an island hopper over to Oahu for the Sony Open this week, taking place in Honolulu. Here we will break down the core Sony Open DFS plays with the help of Stokastic’s PGA DFS projections, PGA DFS ownership projections and Sims tools!
2025 Sony Open PGA DFS Top Plays
Sony Open DFS Course & Tournament Preview
The season’s first full-field, standard-cut event will take place at Waialae Country Club. It’s a par 70 measuring in at just over 7,000 yards with Bermudagrass throughout the fairways, rough and greens. It features thin fairways with small greens and over 80 bunkers littered across the property. The thin fairways are the culprit leading to one of the lowest fairways-hit percentages out of all venues these players will face all year. Combine that with the course’s small greens, it tends to favor accuracy over distance. Thus, I’ll be looking for accurate drivers of the golf ball who are excellent on approach for the ideal mold this week.
I’ve identified the plays below using the Stokastic PGA Sims tool. Our hole-by-hole simulation technology allows me to take every golfer in the field’s range of outcomes into consideration, along with what I project the competition’s lineups to look like. By simulating the lineups against each other tens of thousands of times, the best plays on the slate reveal themselves.
The players that appear most in the highest ROI lineups are the ones I want to build my portfolio around. Our Sims tool is the core of my weekly DFS process and is something I highly recommend for those looking to take the next step in PGA DFS. For a limited time, get 20% off any of our PGA Sims packages using promo code “BERRYMANSIMS.“ Without further ado, below are the players I’ll be building around as my core plays for the Sony Open.
2025 Sony Open DFS Top Plays
Russell Henley — $9,900
Henley is a perfect fit for the demands of Waialae. He’s historically been one of the better iron players on tour and is extremely accurate off the tee with a 70% fairways-hit rate, which leads the field. He’s teed it up here 12 times in his career and has six finishes inside the top 17, including a win, a second and a fourth-place finish just last season.
Tom Kim — $9,800
Accuracy, birdie-making ability and elite iron play — Kim checks all the boxes I’m looking for in a core play this week. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 10th in this field in strokes gained on approach and 12th in driving accuracy with a 65% fairways-hit percentage. He sort of stumbled to the finish line to close out the 2024 season, which appears to be helping keep his ownership in check. I like the way he sets up this week.
Austin Eckroat — $8,700
Eckroat really came into his own to close out 2024. In addition to his sixth-place finish at Wyndham, he captured his first career win a the World Wide Technology Championship in November. He started off 2025 strong as well with a 15th-place finish in last week’s star-studded Sentry Tournament of Champions field, gaining strokes on the field in every category. He’s a rising star on the PGA Tour who sets up well to attack the golf course with elite iron play and 68% driving accuracy.
GPP Flier: Nico Echavarria — $7,300
Echavarria dominated the PGA Tour swing season in 2024 with four top-11 finishes in eight starts from October through the end of November. These finishes included his second career a win at Zozo and a second-place finish at the RSM classic. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks sixth in this field in birdie-or-better percentage, 20th in bogey avoidance and has a fairways-hit percentage of 66%. He appears to be going overlooked a bit by the field, with ownership projections hovering in the single digits. He’s a very solid option as a GPP differentiator at the bottom of the $7,000 range on DraftKings.
