2022 PGA American Express Round 2 Showdown Picks and Strategy

If you believe you have an edge in DFS golf in general, then you should be trying to take advantage of showdown slates like Friday’s second round at the American Express. The more slates you impose your edge on the field, the more return you should realize. Like full slates, game theory plays an important role in showdown as well.

At FTN, you will also be getting an advantage by making use of Alex Blickle’s showdown ownership projections and I have uploaded my showdown point projections into the FTN Optimizer. Bot of these tools are included in the PGA subscription. If you’re not yet a member, use code AXIS for 20% and begin building better lineups!.

We know how much volatility there is over four rounds of golf so when we condense our slate to 18 holes, leveraging your lineup to embrace the variance will go a long way to pushing your lineups up the leaderboard.

First thing to check for each showdown slate is the weather. This is the first potential edge that a lot of the field will not check each day. I prefer to use either windfinder.com or darksky.net to check wind forecasts. When it comes to weather, I am definitely most interested in the wind more so than rain or temperature.

Having checked the forecast, there does not appear to be a clear-cut advantage to starting early or late, or at one particular course (for wind).

For Round 2 of this week’s American Express, we now have one round that is fresh in people’s minds, and many will continue to be heavily influenced by what has already happened. This does not mean we need to ignore those golfers who played well in Round 1, but we need to be aware that the ownership will be higher for golfers near the top of the leaderboard. If you build using some of these golfers you will have to find a way to be a bit different in your remaining spots.

There will also be opponents who risk using too many golfers playing on the Stadium Course. We saw the splits in Round 1 and although low rounds are out there at the Stadium Course, there are fewer, with a lot more trouble lurking. I had explored the idea of potentially using a golfer for leverage from the Stadium Course in Round 1 be decided against it and will continue that trend for Round 2. We will be targeting golfers playing on La Quinta, but golfers for the Nicklaus Tournament Course (which is where Jon Rahm and Patrick Cantlay will be playing) can also be mixed in.

Jon Rahm, $10,500 Like I mentioned for Round 1, it is simply hard for me to fade the No. 1 golfer in the world at one of the easiest courses on tour. After a slow start at La Quinta, he recovered nicely, and I expect that to be closer to his floor than his ceiling at the Nicklaus course. He will again be very popular, and I can understand if you want to fade. He was 50.3% in the $10 for Round 1 and I would be surprised if it was much different in Round 2. If you play Rahm, you will want to mix it up with the rest of your lineup. This feels like a free space (or at least as close as you can get to one in golf).

Charles Howell III, $7,600 CH3 got the Stadium Course out of the way, firing a -3 despite a terrible day on the greens. I believe the price is a solid bargain for heading to the easiest course of the rotation, and he’s striking the ball well. He played well in Hawaii as well (per usual) and his history also tells use he usually plays well in California as well. His driving is still good enough to not be losing strokes and in fact he gained over one stroke OTT in round one, and the iron play was solid as well. This, on top of his tournament prior expectation and a bump in projection for playing La Quinta makes him a strong play for Round 2.

Kramer Hickok, $6,700 Hickok shot an even par to start his tournament, though he did it on the most difficult course of the three. Now he should get some reprieve heading to La Quinta. The Stadium Course does provide strokes gained data, so we can (slightly) build on our pre-tournament thoughts. The good news is that Hickok drove the ball well, which is something I like to see in live stats. I prefer OTT over approach because if you’re not putting yourself in solid positions OTT, it may not matter how good your irons are playing from the rough all day, bad lies, or taking penalties. Overall, I still prefer my priors over small round samples but it’s nice to see solid play early on in a tournament. If he can repeat his ball striking in Round 2, he could be in for a large scoring day.

2022 PGA American Express Round 2 Showdown Picks and Strategy

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