DraftKings PGA DFS Picks: Rocket Classic Cash and GPP Strategy

ROCKET CLASSIC

Purse: $10M
Winner's Share: $1.8M
FedEx Cup Points: 500 to the Winner
Location: Detroit
Course: Detroit Golf Club (North course)
Yardage: 7,328
Par: 70
2025 Champion: Aldrich Potgieter

Tournament Preview

There surprisingly is a lot to unpack this week for one of the lesser events on the PGA Tour calendar, with multiple storylines to address heading into the final Rocket Classic.

Well, that's the first storyline -- that this is the final Rocket Classic.

The Rocket Companies is ending its 13-year relationship with the PGA Tour, the last eight of which were in Detroit. The Detroit News reported that the company's decision was based on "imminent changes to the PGA Tour schedule, sagging attendance and the struggle to draw marquee players in recent years."

Which brings us to a second storyline: There is no shortage of marquee players this week -- the field is the best in the history of the tournament with four golfers in the top-10 OWGR and 20 among the top-50. And that doesn't even include the top headliner of the week, newly minted PGA Tour winner Jackson Koivun.

Koivun will be joined by Cameron Young, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth, Sam Burns, Wyndham Clark, Russell Henley, Chris Gotterup, Patrick Cantlay, Si Woo Kim, Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, 2022 tournament winner Tony Finau and 2024 champion/Rocket pitchman Rickie Fowler. There's also YouTube star Ryan Ruffels of Australia in on a sponsor invite.

That's A LOT of big names two weeks before the playoffs start.

Why? Why now?

Every player has his own reason, but one of them surely relates to the "imminent changes to the PGA Tour schedule" mentioned above. Those changes won't happen until 2028, but there certainly is a connection and domino effect already underway.

Let's connect the dots.

The upcoming playoffs will start out with 70 players. The top-50 after the first playoff event, the FedEx St. Jude, advance to the second event, the BMW Championship and also automatically qualify for all the signature events in 2027. That will give those 50 players a decided advantage to favorably position themselves for 2028, when those changes to the Tour schedule take hold. The Tour has announced there will be two levels to the Tour beginning in 2028 --  the Championship Series and the Challenger Series. The top-120 or so golfers after the 2027 season will play in the 2028 Championship Series. Everyone wants to be in the Championship Series, including the Rocket Companies, but that wasn't gonna happen.

So this is where Rocket bails out.

What's another storyline? Piggybacking off of the second storyline, there's the mad dash to get into the top-70 for the playoffs with just this week and next week's Wyndham Championship to do so. The most noteworthy golfers outside the top-70 right now are Bradley, Finau and Brooks Koepka. This will be a much bigger deal at the Wyndham, but as you can see, some pretty big names are fighting for their playoff lives.

There's one final storyline of note. It's the course. This has been one of the biggest birdie-fests on Tour since the tournament's inception in 2019. Every year, the winning score was between 18- and 26-under, with Aldrich Potgieter the 2025 winner at 22-under.

The North Course underwent significant changes since last year under the direction of New Jersey-based architect Tyler Rae, whose goal was to restore the original vision of the 1916 Donald Ross design. Most notably, the par-72 track with four par-5s was turned into a par-70 with just two. Short par-5s at Nos. 7 and 17, the two easiest holes on the course, were turned into 500-yard-plus par-4s. Last year, those two holes accounted for two-thirds of the eagles and roughly 25 percent of the birdies for the entire tournament. That is a huge change. There are now four par-4s of 500ish yards or more, plus a nearly 250-yard par-3.

Rae and his team also made the bentgrass greens much larger, now averaging roughly 6,700 square feet, contouring from back to front, a la Ross. The fairways are tighter. They removed the one water hazard from the course, a pond from in front of the 14th green. It was replaced with fescue grass, which now permeates the entire course. They also added a numerous bunkers and reshaped and deepened many of the others.

"It will play probably a couple of strokes harder," Rae told GolfWeek last week. "Maybe two or three strokes harder."

Multiply that by four and that is a significant change to a course that now will surely play longer and most likely harder, even under prime playing conditions. The golfers will see high temperatures in the 80s all week with little chance of rain and minimal wind.  

First Rocket Classic LIV-related factoid: When Bryson DeChambeau won in 2020, per the 2021 PGA Tour media guide, he "became the first winner in the ShotLink era (since 2003) to lead the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Putting. He also led the field in Driving Distance (350.6 yards) and Par-4 Scoring Average (3.68)." That seems like a good way to win -- do something no one has ever done before. Seriously, DeChambeau blasted it off the tee, yet ranked only 58th in fairways hit, but it didn't matter. His worst score all week was 67.

Second Rocket Classic LIV-related note: Last year, Michigan native and former LIV player James Piot received a sponsor invite. He played two years with the breakaway circuit before being relegated late in 2023. So by 2025, he had served a de facto one-year suspension and  became eligible to return to the PGA Tour. He tied for 73rd last year and now has been playing on PGA Tour Americas. 

Key Stats to Winning at Detroit Golf Club

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

• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee/Driving Distance/Driving Accuracy
• Strokes Gained: Approach/SG: Tee-to-Green
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green
• Par-4 Scoring 450-500 yards

Past Champions

2025 - Aldrich Potgieter
2024 - Cam Davis
2023 - Rickie Fowler
2022 - Tony Finau
2021 - Cam Davis
2020 - Bryson DeChambeau
2019 - Nate Lashley

Champion's Profile

A lot of what we learned from past years here no longer applies. As detailed above, the course has undergone significant changes.

It is long, the fairways are narrow. The course likely has shifted from a bomb's-away birdie-fest to more of a ball-strikers track.

It's almost pointless to detail what happened in the past, but here's what happened last year. Potgieter won a five-hole playoff with Max Greyserman and Chris Kirk, with the latter being eliminated after two holes.

Potgieter led the field in driving distance, ranked seventh in SG: Off-the-Tee and sixth in SG: Approach, while outside the top-30 in Around-the-Green and Putting. Meanwhile, Greyserman ranked eighth in Off-the-Tee, 52nd in Approach and second in SG: Putting. Kirk did not have the length of those two. Instead, he ranked 10th in Approach, eighth in Around-the-Green and 22nd in Putting. 

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$10,000 and up

Cameron Young - $10,500 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +950) 
After finishing second to Ryan Fox at the Open Championship, Young now is probably the front-runner for PGA Tour Player of the Year. He has two wins, one being THE PLAYERS, plus that runner-up and two third-place finishes. Young was second at the Rocket in 2022 and finished sixth in 2024.

$9,000-$9,900

Si Woo Kim - $9,600 (+1900) 
Kim completed a very successful trip across the pond with a tie for ninth in Scotland and a T6 at the Open. That gave him 10 top-10s on the season. He's done all that despite being ranked outside the top-100 on Tour in SG: Putting. But when you are top-5 in both SG: Approach and Tee-to-Green, that makes up for a lot.

Wyndham Clark - $9,300 (+1850) 
Clark tracked as No. 1 overall in our model, even with his missed cut at the Open Championship. In the six tournaments before that, he had two wins, two other top-5s and no finish worse than T13. Ranking top-25 in SG: Approach, Tee-to-Green, Around-the-Green and Putting is next-level stuff.

$8,000-$8,900

Jake Knapp - $8,800 (+3200) 
Knapp was one of the top players on Tour through the first 3 1/2 months of the season before a wrist injury derailed him for two months. And he did not play well upon his return. Knapp tied for 13th last week at the 3M Open, zooming up the leaderboard on Sunday with a 9-under 62. Despite his season going off the rails for the better part of four months, he still ranks 15th on Tour in SG: Approach and sixth in Putting. He tied for fourth here a year ago.

Ryan Gerard - $8,600 (+4000) 
Gerard doesn't have as many runners-up this season as Scottie Scheffler, who has five, but he does have three. And, after tying for ninth at the Open Championship, he hasn't missed a cut since March. Ranking 20th on Tour in SG: Approach and 32nd in Putting, Gerard appears to be headed toward a berth in the Tour Championship.

$7,000-$7,900

Keegan Bradley - $7,800 (+4700)
Bradley got off to a terrible start in 2026 and has been battling back ever since. He still sits outside the playoff cutoff point, at 76th in the point standings, but has been playing much better of late. He's missed just one cut since March and had top-20s at two signature events in June, the Memorial and the Travelers. Bradley's season-long stats still don't look appealing, but our model tracking only more recent play puts him in the top-20 in this field.

Ben Kohles - $7,300 (+8400)
Kohles started out on the Korn Ferry Tour this season. He won earlier this season but hasn't been back in a while. That's because he's racking up good finishes on the PGA Tour. Kohles has had four top-25s in a row, two of which were top-10s, including last week at the 3M Open. The stretch started with a T23 at the U.S. Open. Kohles still does not have enough measured rounds to be ranked in the PGA Tour stats, but if he did he'd be ninth in SG: Tee-to-Green.

Kevin Yu - $7,200 (+11500)
We liked Yu last week and he tied for 16th, so we are back for a second helping. After an absolutely brutal start to the season, Yu is playing quite well of late. He's made 5 of his last 6 cuts with three top-25s. His season got off to such a bad start, he's still only 109th in the point standings. Yu is ranked 35th on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee and 29th in greens in regulation. He tied for 31st here a year ago.

$6,000-$6,900

William Mouw - $6,800 (+13000)
Mouw missed the cut last week at the 3M Open, but had strung together four straight cashes before that, two of which were top-25s (and a near miss at T26). The strength of his game is his iron play – he's ranked 23rd on Tour in SG: Approach. That should help get Mouw to the weekend, even though a dicey short game makes a high finish a challenge,

Pontus Nyholm - $6,500 (+42500)
Nyholm has made only 8 of 18 cuts all season, but he rides four in a row entering this week. He has 10 rounds in the 60s across those past four events. The Swede is one of the longest drivers on Tour as well as one of the least accurate. But he is a better than average putter, ranked 58th on Tour.

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