Erik van Rooyen

EVR upped his PGA tour appearances from 17 to 28 this season securing three top-10 finishes. The 33-year-old is below average in his approach play and putting, but makes up for it with solid numbers off the tee. Van Rooyen may be best served for fantasy players at the Barracuda Championship with the tournament being his best performance of 2023 and home to his lone tour win.

EVR doesn’t play a full PGA Tour slate, as he occasionally competes across the pond in Europe. That said, he frequently made the most of his 17 appearances this past season and was one of the more efficient players as measured by earnings-per-event. This bodes well, particularly for DFS value. His best finish of 2022 was T10 at the RBC Heritage, and he also finished 13th at The Players. The key for the South African will be how he comes back from a neck injury he suffered over the summer. He has the game to make the playoffs next season.

Van Rooyen first caught some attention by playing well at the majors, but he hadn't accomplished much on the PGA Tour until the 2020-21 season. More accurately, he hadn't accomplished much on the PGA Tour until late last season. Van Rooyen caught fire during the final two months of the season and parlayed that into a spot in the Tour Championship. He landed in the 23rd spot on the FedEx list, but he earned little more than $2 million. There's certainly room for improvement this season, but the jury is still out on just how good he is.

Van Rooyen grabbed some attention in 2019 when he scored a top-10 at the PGA Championship and a top-20 at the Open Championship and when he earned a T3 at the WGC Mexico Championship early this past season, expectations began to rise. That was the high-point of his season, however, as he failed to find any traction the rest of the way. van Rooyen will turn 31 this season, which places him in the prime of his career, but he's only recently found his footing on the PGA Tour and it might take a little more time to show everything he has. This upcoming season will also be his first full season on the PGA Tour and it's always best to temper expectations for foreign players in their first year in the states full time.