After a pair of great Signature Events the last two weeks on well-known courses in Doral and Quail Hollow, the PGA TOUR is lined up for a great week at Aronimink Golf Club just outside Philadelphia. Aronimink is hosting the second major championship of the season, as the PGA Championship is ready to tee off this Thursday, with a deep, strong field on a difficult course.
Aronimink hasn’t hosted the PGA TOUR since 2018, when the BMW Championship visited as part of the FedExCup Playoffs. The course was low-scoring that week since the weather was extremely wet and needed a Monday finish and a playoff before Keegan Bradley emerged with the win. It has hosted the PGA Championship before, but not since 1962. For more info on the field, the format, and the challenge at Quail Hollow, check out this First Look from RotoGrinders.
Especially in large-field GPP tournaments, you’ll want to make sure to target players who have lower ownership projections than their potential performance suggests. Finding high-leverage plays is critical for GPP success, so the picks here go against the grain, looking for under-owned options.
Usually, I rely heavily on the Strokes Gained Model in FantasyLabs, which is very predictive of results. I also tend to lean toward players who excel in Strokes Gained: Approach, which is more sustainable week to week than a hot putter.
Since these are GPP picks, we can accept more risk in exchange for getting a higher ceiling. High-risk, high-reward options with low ownership create the “boom-or-bust” style lineups that often lead to large-field success. To find guidance for all contest types, check out our full Daily Fantasy Golf coverage each week.
No matter what type of format you prefer, be sure to use the FantasyLabs PGA Models to help you make the best choices. These models use stats and simulations to highlight different players’ strengths and weaknesses. A few critical new stats for GPP play are Perfect% and SimLeverage, which are further explained here.
As you dig into the numbers, you can enjoy the many tools FantasyLabs offers, including the Lineup Optimizer, which effortlessly creates up to 300 lineups. Alternatively, you can use the Lineup Builder if you prefer a more hands-on approach.
Check out my top picks in each price range listed below.
Editor’s note: SimLeverage and Perfect% numbers may change after this piece is published. Be sure to check the PGA Models for any updates to the sims.
High-Priced PGA DFS Picks
Cameron Young $10,200
While Scottie Scheffler is the favorite and a great option to build around, as my colleague Alex Hunter broke down this week, there are plenty of great options at the top of the salary structure in such an incredibly stacked field. One of the plays with the best current form is Cameron Young, who has been very impressive since breaking through for his first PGA TOUR win last summer.
Young has the highest Perfect% in the field, meaning that he is in the ideal lineup in more of our thousands of sims than any other golfer in the field. He is just ahead of Scottie in that category but has a much lower ownership projection. He has the third-highest SimLeverage in the field, with the second-highest floor projection and the third-highest median and ceiling projections.
After his first win at the Wyndham, Young finished in the top 12 in each of his five tournaments to close out the year. He carried over his momentum to 2026 after ramping up slowly early in the season. By the end of February, he was locked back in with a T7 at The Genesis Invitational and a T3 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational before he won THE PLAYERS Championship.
In the first major of the year, he finished T3 at Augusta and then dominated at The Blue Monster Course to win the Cadillac Championship two tournaments ago in Miami. Last week, he was in the mix once again but faded to a T10 after a tough four-putt on the second hole seemed to throw him off. His slower finish last week actually keeps his ownership projections more manageable for this week.
In the last year since the PGA Championship, Young has racked up three wins and 13 top-10 finishes, including top-5 finishes at two of the three majors since then. He leads the entire elite field in Total Strokes Gained over the last three months and is second in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.
His strong tee-to-green game gives him a high floor, and he has made the cut in three of his four PGA Championship appearances, with a T3 in 2022 as his best finish. He has proven over the last year that he can win on tough courses and in elite fields. He bested similar fields already twice this season at TPC Sawgrass and the Blue Monster Course.
Throughout the season, Young has been so consistently near the top of the leaderboard that it would be no surprise at all if he breaks through for his first major win this week. Even if he doesn’t, he has a great chance of another high finish, making him a great DFS option to build around.
Ludvig Aberg $9,800
Ludvig Aberg is another well-known player who has been a regular on leaderboards this season and has the kind of game that gives him a high ceiling and a high floor. He hasn’t delivered the wins that Young has but has consistently been near the top of the leaderboard all season.
Aberg has the second-highest SimLeverage in the field this week, with the third-highest Perfect% behind only Young and Scheffler. He has a top-five median, ceiling, and floor projection but only the sixth-highest ownership projection. He also matches the second-most Pro Trends in the field, behind only Rory McIlroy.
Aberg rolls into Aronimink after five top-10 finishes in his last six events, and he has exceeded salary-based expectations in nine straight tournaments. He ranks sixth in the field in both Total Strokes Gained and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green over the last three months, and he also ranks fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach during that span.
Aberg has proven he can play well in majors, with five top-25 finishes in nine career majors. However, he has not yet made the cut at any PGA Championship, but he should be lined up for a career-best finish this week and has a chance to contend.
The 26-year-old from Sweden remains one of the best young players on the PGA TOUR, and his versatile, well-rounded game should play well at Aronimink. The course features multiple difficult par-3 and par-4 setups, which he typically excels on. Aberg has the kind of game to win multiple majors if he can get it to “click” and fall into place on Sunday.
Now available: our PGA DFS SimLabs Lineup Generator that creates advanced DFS lineups using the power of simulation.
Mid-Priced PGA DFS Picks
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