After an exciting trip to Phoenix for a Super Bowl week tournament that needed overtime to crown a champion, the PGA TOUR is headed back to the Pacific coast for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The no-cut event is the first Signature Event of the season and offers a solid field of 80 players, who should each play four rounds (three at Pebble Beach Golf Links and one at Spyglass Hill Golf Course), barring withdrawal or disqualification. If you’re teeing off for any of this week’s GPP contests on DraftKings, check out these top three fantasy golf picks for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This week, I’m backing Justin Rose ($9,400), Akshay Bhatia ($7,300) and Michael Kim ($6,700) as my three top GPP options, who I think come in with lower ownership but have a strong chance to step up and exceed salary-based expectations as strong pivot plays.
Let’s be sure to define what we’re searching for in this post, to be sure we’re all hunting the same flagstick. A fantasy golf pivot play is a golfer with low expected ownership in tournament formats but very high upside. Typically, these selections come with major risk factors compared to more popular options that are available around the same DFS salary. Even though these plays are NOT the safest options in their price range, they have enough potential upside to be worth the extra sweat since they come with lower ownership. These are “grip it and rip it,” boom-or-bust style options that could go off or could flame out. Getting players at low ownership is critical to finding success in GPP tournament-style events with many entries, in which making yours stand out is critical. Be sure to check out my companion post to this one that highlights my picks for cash lineups if you’re looking for safer options that raise the overall floor of your lineup.
Getting players at low ownership is critical to finding success in GPP tournament-style events with many entries, where making yours stand out is critical. Be sure to check out my companion post to this one that highlights my picks for cash lineups if you’re looking for safer options that raise the overall 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 $1M Sand Trap Special [$200K to 1st]
Justin Rose ($9,400)
With Scottie Scheffler ($14,500) and Rory McIlroy ($11,500) at the top of the salary structure and Si Woo Kim ($9,800) and Chris Gotterup ($9,000) coming in so hot, Rose is getting a little overlooked in the mid-$9,000s.
Rose took last week off after blitzing the field and winning by seven strokes in a wire-to-wire masterclass at the Farmers Insurance Open. The layout at Torrey Pines for that tournament is similar in many ways to this week’s course at Pebble Beach. They’re both coastal courses with Poa Annua greens, and Rose has a great course history on both tracks.
The 45-year-old ranked second in Strokes Gained: Approach and first in GIR% in his win. Like that course, Pebble Beach demands precision iron play since it has the smallest greens of any regular PGA TOUR stop. Rose has played this tournament six times in his career, with three top-10 finishes, including a win in 2023, a T11 in 2024, and a T3 last year behind Rory and Shane Lowry ($7,900).
Rose missed the cut at The American Express to start the year, but he found his game and locked in, and with his success at this track, I expect him to be right in the mix again this week.
Akshay Bhatia ($7,300)
With so many top-tier options and people building around Scheffler, the $7,000 range is very popular as managers fill in around Scottie or Rory. In this range, Pierceson Coody ($7,600), Jake Knapp ($7,900), Kurt Kitayama ($7,300) and Saheet Theegala ($7,300) are some of the most popular plays. If you’re looking to swing for the fences with a high-risk, high-reward GPP play in this range, I love targeting Bhatia at this salary.
The 24-year-old lefty got off to a slow start to 2026, missing the cut at The American Express and Farmers Insurance Open. He found his swing last week in Phoenix, though, with a solid and consistent 68-67-67-67 to finish T3 behind only Chris Gotterup and Hideki Matsuyama.
Bhatia didn’t win in 2025 and only posted four top-10 finishes in his 26 events. However, he was solid overall with 10 top-25 finishes. He finished the season tied for 13th in the FedExCup standings and advanced to the TOUR Championship.
One of those top-25 finishes was at Pebble Beach last year, where the L.A. native finished T22. He also made the cut and finished T30 in 2021 when he played this event as a 19-year-old.
Bhatia ranks 12th in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach over the last 24 rounds and finished sixth in the field last week in both Strokes Gained: Approach and Strokes Gained: Putting.
He brings a sky-high ceiling when at his best, so his ceiling makes him a good fit for GPP lineups, especially without a cut to worry about this week.
Michael Kim ($6,700)
Since everyone will be shopping for values this week, Sam Stevens ($7,000), Matthew McCarty ($7,000), Kevin Yu ($6,400) and Patrick Rodgers ($6,600) are all getting lots of attention. Michael Kim comes in as a less popular play but also brings some very solid upside.
The 32-year-old was forced to withdraw before the Farmers Insurance Open two weeks ago with a back strain, but returned last week in Phoenix. He posted his best finish of the season with a T18 after an impressive 65 on Friday and a 67 on Sunday in the Final Round. He birdied three of the last four holes to surge up the leaderboard.
That was his second made cut of the season, following a solid T31 in Hawaii. Three of his four rounds at Waialae were outstanding, but his 74 on Saturday held him back. If he can string together four strong rounds, he could definitely contend at Pebble Beach, which he stated on X is one of his favorite courses to play.
He claimed his one PGA TOUR win at the 2018 John Deere Classic, but he won more recently internationally. Last September, he claimed his first DP World Tour at the FedEx Open de France, passing Brooks Koepka and Min Woo Lee in the Final Round to get the win.
Kim didn’t qualify for this event last season, but finished T11 in his last appearance at this event two years ago. At this price point, even a middle-of-the-pack finish would be a great value, but he has the upside for even more if things go his way all week at Pebble Beach.
