DraftKings PGA DFS Picks: The Sentry Cash and GPP Strategy

This article is part of our DraftKings PGA DFS Picks series.

THE SENTRY

Purse: $20M 
Winner's Share: $3.6M 
FedEx Cup Points: 700 to the Winner 
Location: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii 
Course: Plantation Course at Kapalua 
Yardage: 7,596
Par: 73
2024 champion: Chris Kirk

Tournament Preview

In what may be the worst possible way for the 2025 PGA Tour season to begin -- or the best, depending on your vantage point -- a bombshell dropped just before the new year: Scottie Scheffler injured his hand on Christmas Day, underwent surgery and could miss a month of action.

While preparing Christmas dinner -- is there anything this man can't do? -- Scheffler "sustained a puncture wound to the palm of his right hand from a broken glass," Scheffler's manager, Blake Smith, said in a statement. "Small glass fragments remained in the palm which required surgery. He has been told that he should be back to 100% in three to four weeks."

So Scheffler had to bow out of this week's Sentry tournament. His next scheduled start, at the American Express beginning Jan. 16, is in doubt. Maybe a more realistic return, given the recovery timeline, would be the second Signature Event of the season at Pebble Beach beginning Jan. 30.

Scheffler is the sport's biggest talent, recently named three-peat winner of the PGA Tour Player of the Year. Anytime a sport loses a marquee name, it's not a good thing. On the other hand, Scheffler has been so dominant, with opening Sentry odds of +260, that the tournament was in danger of becoming a fait accompli. Now, with its sudden wide-openness, the Tour's annual lid-lifter might generate more excitement sandwiched between the college football playoffs and the final week of the NFL regular season.

On top of Scheffler's injury, there was the usual Hawaii no-show of Rory McIlroy, leaving the Sentry not only without the Tour's biggest talent but also its biggest star. Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry likewise have said "aloha" -- the goodbye version, not hello -- leaving the field for the first no-cut Signature Event of the year at an even 60 players.

Two-time 2024 major winner and 2019 Sentry champion Xander Schauffele now heads the field, joined by other bold-face names in Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg, Hideki Matsuyama, Wyndham Clark, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay and two-time Sentry champ Justin Thomas. Chris Kirk was the first player to gain entry into this year's field by capturing last year's Sentry at 29-under, one stroke better than Sahith Theegala and two better than Jordan Spieth, who himself is recovering from wrist surgery but also didn't qualify.

Not to be outdone on the injury front, Hovland posted on Instagram an X-ray of what appears to be a broken right pinky toe with the comment "Bed frame 1 – 0 me."

With Scheffler out, Morikawa moves up to the second betting favorite behind Schauffele. Having been runner-up two years ago and never finishing worse than seventh in five trips to Kapalua, he would have been a very good DFS option except for one small fact: DraftKings inexplicably didn't put him in the field. ... Really. ... No, we're not kidding. [Later Monday, after this article was posted, Morikawa's name appeared and he was priced at $10,100. That's a good price, but some gamers had already submitted their lineups.]

Moving on ...

The field is made up of 2024 Tour winners -- including opposite-field events and the fall season -- plus the top 50 players from the 2024 FedEx Cup points, which is another way of saying everyone who qualified for the BMW Championship.

In all, six of the top-10 in the world rankings are here, 18 of the top-25 and 37 of the top-50. So it's a pretty stout bunch. There are also seven guys outside the top-100, all lower-level tournament winners, culminating with Brice Garnett down at No. 201. Almost one-third of the golfers are Sentry first-timers. Newcomers to Kapalua rarely contend, thanks largely to the enormous and undulating greens -- largest on the PGA Tour -- that take time to master.

Kapalua is nearly 7,600 yards, third-longest on Tour behind Torrey Pines and Puntacana. But as we know, it plays far shorter as a par-73 and with massive elevation drops buoying distances. We'll surely see some 400-yard drives again this week in fairways that ****average*** 58 yards wide. Who could forget Dustin Johnson's 430-yarder seven years ago that finally settled inches from the cup on No. 12, oh-so-close to a mind-boggling par-4 hole-in-one?

Still, we have seen shorter hitters excel here with Kirk, Spieth (2016), Zach Johnson (2014) and Steve Stricker (2012) winning. In fact, the golfers absolutely will need to bring their short-game skills to succeed this week, as scrambling and putting have historically been critical. The bermudagrass greens average a whopping 8,722 square feet and run about 11 on the Stimpmeter.

There are only three par-3s. There are no par-4s between 450 and 500 yards; they are either shorter (eight holes) or longer (three). In fact, one of the par-4s, the 540-yard seventh, is longer than one of the four par-5s, the 526-yard fifth. The 14th should be fun, a baby 301-yard par-4. The course concludes with one of the longest holes in all of golf, the 677-yard 18th that plays not only downhill but downwind, making it easily reachable and a must-birdie. Heck, the whole course is almost a must-birdie. Only one hole played over par last year: No. 1, and barely. Closing the loop on one of the quirkiest courses we'll see all year, there are 93 bunkers and, even though they're playing on an island, there is absolutely no water in play. Bonkers.

As for the weather, duh, it's Hawaii, it will be beautiful. Highs will be in the low 80s all week. There will be moderate wind and a small chance of showers, especially on the weekend.

Fun Kapalua factoid: There were only 13 over-par rounds last year in the entire tournament, with 59 golfers in the field, and 11 of them came in the windy third round. There were no over-par scores in the second or fourth rounds.

Key Stats to Winning at Kapalua

The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key Stats" follow in importance.

• Strokes Gained: Putting 
• Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green/Scrambling 
• Birdie Average/Birdie or Better Percentage 
• Strokes Gained: Approach/Greens in Regulation

Past Champions

2024 - Chris Kirk
2023 - Jon Rahm 
2022 - Cameron Smith
2021 - Harris English 
2020 - Justin Thomas
2019 - Xander Schauffele
2018 - Dustin Johnson 
2017 - Justin Thomas
2016 - Jordan Spieth 
2015 - Patrick Reed 

Champion's Profile

When you are hitting 30-under or close to it, really, just about every part of your game is required. Kirk won at 29-under last year, Rahm at 27-under two years ago, and in 2022 all hell broke loose with three guys exceeding 30-under. Smith won at a surreal 34-under, one shot ahead of Rahm and two better than Matt Jones.

Kirk ranked 40th in driving distance, 19th in greens in regulation, 26th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and 14th in SG: Approach -- marginal numbers all. But he ranked first in SG: Around-the-Green and 11th in SG: Putting. Runner-up Sahith Theegala ranked ninth in putting and third-place Spieth ranked first. Byeong Hun An tied for fourth and ranked second in SG: Around-the-Green.

Really, you can make a strong case that wedge and putter are the two most important clubs in the bag this week.

In 2023, Rahm ranked second in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, but also third in Around-the-Green and first in Putting. He was only 32nd in Approach, but obviously that mattered little.

Because of all the trickiness of the putting surfaces, placement on approach shots is important. That's why course knowledge is viewed with such importance here. No Sentry rookie has won since Daniel Chopra in 2008. But with the smaller, no-cut field, it's certainly possible for a first-timer to secure a high finish, as An did last year.

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$10,000 and up

Xander Schauffele - $11,000 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +500)
With the prices coming out before word came on Scheffler and McIlroy, Schauffele is now the lone five-figure golfer. And because of that, his $11,000 price tag looks like a bargain. Schauffele has a win, a runner-up and another top-five at the Sentry through the years, and he tied for 10th last year.

$9,000-$9,900

Patrick Cantlay -- $9,900 (+1800) 
Cantlay was steady but unspectacular in 2024. He made 18 of 19 cuts but had only four top-10s.
He's always been good with wedge in hand, and he has a couple of top-5s here since 2020. With the withdrawals of Scheffler and McIlroy, plus the Morikawa omission in the pricing, Cantlay owns the second highest price on the DK board.

Justin Thomas - $9,700 (+1000) 
Thomas is a two-time Sentry winner and two other times finished third. That's not a surprise considering his deftness around the greens -- he ranked third on Tour last season. Thomas didn't qualify last year, so that should serve as a little extra motivation this time around.

Sungjae Im - $9,500 (+1800) 
Im started playing better in the middle of the season and never stopped. But he also played great here at the beginning of the year with a tie for fifth, the second time he's done that in four visits. Like with a lot of guys, we again can attribute that to his wedge play; Im ranked 25th on Tour last season in SG: Around-the-Green.

$8,000-$8,900

Sahith Theegala - $8,600 (+3000) 
Theegala is a good example of a guy getting better at Kapalua with more reps there. He finished 33rd at 10-under in his 2023 debut, then last year was runner-up at 28-under. Theegala's wedge definitely let him down as last season progressed, not coming close to matching his accuracy from the year before. But there's no doubt when he's on he's among the very best wedge-putter golfers on Tour.

$7,000-$7,900

Davis Thompson - $7,900 (+4000) 
Thompson is one of the 19 first-timers in the field, so we're not expecting too much. He really came into his own last season, winning the John Deere to qualify here but also reaching the BMW Championship. Thompson ranked fifth on Tour last season in SG: Around-the-Green.

J.T. Poston - $7,600 (+4000) 
This will be Poston's fourth go-round at Kapalua and he's coming off his best result yet, a tie for fifth. He ranked top-50 on Tour last season in both SG: Around-the-Green and Putting, and it was actually down year for him on the greens.

Matt Fitzpatrick - $7,200 (+5500) 
Fitzpatrick is coming off an absolutely terrible year, thanks in large part to an injury. He had only three top-10s -- yet he still reached the BMW to qualify this week. Through it all, Fitzpatrick's putter never stopped working, as he ranked 23rd on Tour. He's played Kapalua twice, finishing seventh in his 2023 debut and 14th last year. Either result this year would count as a win with such a low price.

$6,000-$6,900

Harry Hall - $6,800 (+7500) 
The Englishman won the ISCO Championship over the summer to qualify, then had a strong finish to the fall season with three straight top-15s. One of them was at the ZOZO, which had a top field. While Hall is new to Kapalua, his dexterity around and on the greens makes him an interesting play. He ranked sixth on Tour last season in SG: Around-the-Green and 43rd in Putting.

Nico Echavarria - $6,500 (+11000) 
Echavarria produced one of the stunners of the year by winning the ZOZO, which included Schauffele, Morikawa and others. Many guys take a few steps back right after a life-altering maiden win, but not Echavarria. He tied for sixth next time out in Mexico, then finished 2024 with a shared runner-up at the RSM.

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