After a few weeks of big tournaments stuffed with big names, the PGA TOUR is headed to Louisiana for the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. This week’s event at the TPC Louisiana is unique with a team format that gives players a chance to team up with a partner for this week’s contest. While it’s a unique week in many ways, it is still a great week for fantasy golf. DraftKings has a wide variety of contest sizes and formats, so it’s another great week to build your lineup for GPP tournaments. If you’re looking to find some fantasy golf pivot plays who are low-ownership options to help your differentiate your team, check out the teams of Keith Mitchell/J.T. Poston ($10,000), Sam Ryder/Rico Hoey ($7,900), and Sami Valimaki/Ben Silverman ($6,900). Each of those teams should have lower ownership but also the ability to outperform expectations at their price point.
To make sure we’re all aiming at the same flag, a “fantasy golf pivot play” is a golfer with lower ownership but similar upside to more popular options available near the same DFS salary. Last week at the RBC Heritage, my three pivot plays were winner Justin Thomas, Robert MacIntyre and Karl Vilips.
Often, golfers with lower ownership bring extra risk factors, but to make your lineup stand out in tournament formats, it’s worth the added risk for the lower ownership and higher ceiling. Targeting players with lower ownership increases the chance of your entry finishing higher on the leaderboard. These pivot plays tend to be “boom-or-bust,” bringing high risk and high reward. Even though they’re NOT the safest plays in the price range, they have enough potential upside to be worth the sweat. Be sure to check out my picks for cash lineups if you’re looking for safer options that raise the floor of your lineup.
Let’s break down why I like each of my top three pivot plays this week.
Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $500K Sand Trap [$100K to 1st]
Keith Mitchell/JT Poston ($10,000)
Just a reminder for this week, teammates have the same salaries and earn the same amount of fantasy points. You can only have one member of the team in your lineup, and you will earn the total team score regardless of format or which player does what.
With huge names like Rory McIlroy/Shane Lowry and Collin Morikawa/Kurt Kitayama drawing most of the attention at the top of the salary structure, Mitchell and Poston sneak in a little under the radar but still have a good shot at success. They will be teaming up for the first time, but both come in with great form.
Mitchell finished in a large group at T2 last week at the Corales Puntacana Championship, which was the alternate event to the RBC Heritage. Before that, he had back-to-back top-20 finishes at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and Valero Texas Open. While he hasn’t played with Poston, he has had success in this format, finishing T4 in 2021, T6 in 2023, and T28 last year.
Poston also comes in hot, after posting a T11 at The Heritage last week, wich was his 10th straight made cut. He has also made the cut in two of his four trips to TPC Louisiana, although his best finish was a T22 in 2019 when he played alongside Stephan Jaeger.
Mitchell ranks fifth in the field in Total Strokes Gained over his last 24 rounds, and Poston’s exquisite short game should complement his play off the tee very nicely in this tandem event.
Sam Ryder/Rico Hoey ($7,900)
Another first-time pairing that I think has a very complementary skillset is Sam Ryder and Rico Hoey. They’re priced just under $8,000 but have the potential to contend if they click as a unit.
Hoey caught fire in the second half of last season and has found that form a little earlier this year. Over all the rounds played in the last six months, he leads the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and ranks fifth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. The letdown for Hoey has been his flat stick, and he usually gives back multiple shots on the green. However, his teammate, Sam Ryder ranks second in the field in Strokes Gained: Putting over the last 30 rounds.
With that hot putter, Ryder has made the cut in each of his 10 tournaments this season with four top-25 finihses. Last year, Hoey posted nine top-25 finishes in 13 events from the middle of June through the end of 2024. He started 2025 with some forgettable results but has reeled off three top-26 finishes in his last six tournaments, highlighted by a T11 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open just a few weeks ago.
This duo feels like a classic combination of superpowers, but we’ll have to see if the two players actually can convert the combination into something special this week. If they do, their low ownership will make them great fantasy golf pivot plays.
Sami Valimaki/Ben Silverman ($6,900)
Valimaki and Silverman are definitely high-risk options under $7,000, but they also have a high ceiling based on Valimaki’s recent form.
Let’s start with the good news. Valimaki has a track record of going low on courses that are similar to this and should be a good fit for TPC Louisiana. He comes in after seven straight made cuts since the WM Phoenix Open.
He finished fourth and T12 in the two Texas stops before the Masters and then added a T18 last week at the RBC Heritage.
Silverman is much more of a risk factor. The 37-year-old Canadian has missed the cut in eight of his 10 tournaments this year, including each of his last six. He has been mostly solid around the green but has struggled on approach and with his putter. Last year, he ranked eighth on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting, though, so maybe he can find that form and add enough to the team this week.
Valimaki’s heater is enough to make this team one of the top fantasy golf pivot plays this week, and their ownership should be low since they are high risk.
