The 16th Presidents Cup will be played at the No.3 Course (par 70, 7,548 yards, bentgrass greens) of Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Illinois. This track most recently hosted the 2019 BMW Championship won by Justin Thomas (-25) and the 2012 Ryder Cup won by Team Europe.
The Presidents Cup is a team formatted match play tournament between Team USA and Team International that is held every two years. Team USA won in 2024 and has won 13 of 15 Presidents Cups. Each team features 12 players and there will be 30 matches played over the four days of this event. Each match won is worth one point and each match tied is worth a half point. The first team to 15.5 points wins and if there is a tie, the teams share the cup.
The first three days of the Presidents Cup consist of two-man team matches. There will be five four-ball matches Thursday, five foursome matches Friday and then four four-ball matches Saturday morning and four foursome matches Saturday afternoon. Following these team matches, there will be 12 single matches Sunday to conclude this event.
If not familiar with these formats, four-ball is when each player of a two-man team plays their own ball and the team takes the best score between the pairing on each hole. Meanwhile, foursome is an alternate shot format, when teammates of these two-man squads alternate shots until they finish the hole.
The pairings and matchups won’t be announced until Wednesday night and some players will play more matches than others, based on how the captains want to use their players throughout the event, so targeting players who you believe will play the most matches is wise. Each player is required to play in at least one team match before every player competes in the single matches Sunday.
As a team event that features only 24 players, DFS on DraftKings this week is specific to showdown format. Each lineup features six golfers, per usual, but one of these players you select to be your captain and that player accrues 1.5x the FPTS. The scoring format for the Presidents Cup is also different from a normal week of golf, as golfers will score points based on holes won, lost or halved.
As for the course, Medinah is a long parkland track that features wide fairways, big greens, 100 bunkers and water in play on five holes. Medinah saw a redesign following the 2019 BMW Championship, in an effort to make the course more challenging and the biggest change was the course’s length.
Medinah played as a par 72 for the 2019 BMW Championship, but now is a very long par 70 at 7,548 yards. Longer hitters are going to have an advantage at Medinah and we also need to be targeting strong iron players. When Thomas won by three shots here in 2019, he finished the event second in SG APP. The large putting surfaces are also going to make your play on the greens crucial and changing from a par 70 to a par 72 with 12 par fours puts a heavy emphasis on par four performance.
Let’s dive into two of my favorite DraftKings bargain plays for the Presidents Cup, both costing less than $7.5K.
Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $100K Sand Trap [$20K to 1st] (Cup)
Top DraftKings DFS Bargain Plays for the Presidents Cup
Tom Kim ($10,200 CPT, $6,800 FLEX)
While Kim’s match play record isn’t perfect at 4-7-1, he is one of the headline players for Team International and should play in 4-5 matches. Kim is coming off an awesome second half of the season on the PGA TOUR. In his last 10 starts, Kim has only missed one cut and he has finished inside the top-20 seven times.
After finishing solo third at the U.S. Open in June, Kim won the Genesis Scottish Open by two shots in July. This marked his fourth win on the PGA TOUR and a month later, Kim finished T5th at the Wyndham Championship.
Kim’s irons have been his backbone this season, ranking fifth in SG APP and he also ranks fourth in par four performance. Medinah features bentgrass greens and two of Kim’s four wins have come at venues with this type of green. The 24-year-old’s game sets up well for Medinah and he is an excellent bargain at only $6,800.
Jackson Koivun ($7,500 CPT, $5,000 FLEX)
Koivun is a tough fade at this cheap salary. While this will be the 21-year-old’s match play debut as a professional, Koivun dominated in this format during his incredible run at Auburn with a 13-4-1 match play record. After winning 11 times with Auburn in his three years as a Tiger, Koivun just joined the PGA TOUR in June and he won the 3M Open by three shots over Scottie Scheffler a month later. This is very notable for this week, not just because it was impressive to see Koivun win so quickly into his PGA TOUR career, but because the 3M Open was played at another midwestern venue in TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota.
Koivun has only missed one cut in eight starts and he has carded three top-10 finishes this season, most recently with a T5 at the Biltmore Championship Asheville this past week. Koivun gained strokes across the board at the Cliffs and he shot an 8-under 63 in the third round.
Koivun ranks second only to Scheffler in total strokes gained when we compare the last 24 rounds and Koivun’s +2050 odds on DraftKings Sportsbook to be the top points scorer for the Presidents Cup are the 12th-best in the field, but for DFS, the budding star is just the 19th-most expensive player on the board.
