DFS Dish: Collin Morikawa on the rise ahead of wide-open Travelers Championship

Tournament Preview (David Barnett)

In the wake of an entertaining U.S. Open, the PGA TOUR has arrived at TPC River Highlands for the Travelers Championship. The Travelers has long been regarded as one of the most hospitable stops on the TOUR schedule. With this year’s stacked field given its Designated status, the Travelers gets to play host to most of the best players in the world traveling across the country from Los Angeles.

Hopefully after reading last week, you did some skillset stacking in your DFS lineups to include bombers AND Harris English. English played great, and bombers dominated the leaderboard. However, TPC River Highlands is really up for grabs by anyone. We’ve seen every skillset possible play well at this 6800-yard par-70, Pete Dye design.

We love handicapping courses that can be approached in a variety of ways. It feels as if the entire field opens up to us. In DFS, it becomes so much easier to mine the low-owned leverage player we need when the course doesn’t overwhelmingly favor one type of player.

Of course, we dive into the statistics, the course history, and the recent form every week. But sometimes it’s worth zooming out and considering other factors that may not be as measurable. This week, it may lead you to a young player full of energy and motivation to get his first PGA TOUR victory. Maybe this player had a week off for the U.S. Open and arrives to Connecticut hungry and rested. Maybe the travel hasn’t taken the toll on his body, or maybe he doesn’t have the spouse and kids at home eagerly counting down the days ‘til he’s got an off week.

Obviously, the best players in the world aren’t ever easy to take down. But at this point in a long season, could there be some compelling DFS pivots ready to take advantage of the “elevated” opportunity?

Picks (Pat Perry & Ben Little)

Now that the stage is set, let’s get into some of our favorite plays this week. Many would say (OK, mainly just Pat) that after some rough play, Collin Morikawa was on our “stay away” list for the time being. Of course, we can be very dramatic in the DFS world. But now… Morikawa has gone to Hollywood and totally redeemed himself!

Morikawa played extremely well for the most part at LACC, slightly losing strokes around the green, but gaining in every other major category. He even gained strokes with the putter! His record at TPC River Highlands isn’t great. We haven’t seen him show up here since the COVID year of 2020. However, the upside of a surging Morikawa with somewhat suppressed ownership by those in the DFS world still ignoring him makes him an enticing play.

We mentioned that this could be the week for a motivated first-time winner on the PGA TOUR, and it’s hard to look past one of our favorites, Sahith Theegala. Theegala’s runner-up here in 2022 shows he can play the course well, and we doubt the rigors of travel immediately after a major are really going to affect this young stud all that much.

While different skill sets have been successful when it comes to victories here, we know that distance is an advantage everywhere. Bubba Watson and Dustin Johnson have four wins at TPC River Highlands between them. Theegala can definitely move it off the tee, but he’s also a very good iron player with a propensity to make birdies in bunches. With the Over/Under of the winning score at -17.5 at one Las Vegas outlet, making birdies in bunches is a necessity. Theegala won’t go under the radar in DFS circles. However, the U.S. Open certainly showed us that having some chalk in your lineup isn’t always a bad idea.

DraftKings has underpriced Russell Henley for what seems like the 10th week in a row. He had a very sneaky T-14 at the U.S. Open, and we say sneaky because we don’t remember seeing one single shot of his over the weekend. He gained strokes across the board while gaining the most strokes on approach for his 2023 season. The “Russ Bus” (TJ Trademark) is tailor made for the Travelers Championship. He’s the number one DFS value in the field this week. He’s made the cut four of the last five times he’s played at TPC River Highlands with 3 of those being top 20’s.

We’re also very high on Si Woo Kim this week for many of the same reasons we’re high on Russell Henley. Last week, Kim almost gained strokes across the board for a second straight week and has a great statistical course fit for TPC River Highlands. Yes, he has missed the cut here the last two years. However, he was in very poor form leading into the Travelers those years and in 2020 finished T-11 all while losing strokes putting. At $8,000 on DraftKings, he likely only needs to finish in the top 30 to return value. There aren’t many players below the $9K range with as much Pete Dye design winning upside as Si Woo Kim.