Yokohama Country Club gave up 19-under to win it last year, and with a stacked top end and zero cut line, this week’s Baycurrent Classic lineup construction is less about survival and more about stacking players who can go low early and often.
Quick take:
- Top play: Collin Morikawa ($10,400 DK)
- Why: Elite ball-striker at a premium number without carrying Xander Schauffele’s chalk price
- The number to watch: The field averaged 10.34 of 15 fairways hit last year — Yokohama rewards approach play far more than it punishes a missed drive
Yokohama’s West course plays to a par of 71 and just 7,322 yards, with only two par-5s on the entire card. That’s an unusual setup for a PGA Tour venue, and it shifts the DFS math: with so many two-shot holes, strokes gained approach carries outsized value compared to a typical week, and good drivers who aren’t necessarily long drivers can still clean up on this layout’s korai zoysia fairways. Add bentgrass greens that reward hot putters and a 72-man, no-cut field with an $8 million purse, and the result is a slate where volume scoring is the baseline expectation, not the upside case.
Chalk at the Top vs. the Leverage Play Underneath
Xander Schauffele is going to be the chalk of the slate at $11,000 on DraftKings, and checking live golf odds confirms it — he’s the shortest number on the board by a wide margin. It’s hard to argue with the profile: he won here a year ago at 19-under with a closing 63-67-64 stretch, he’s a two-time winner in Asia outside this event, and he’s gained strokes off the tee at an 11th-ranked clip on tour this season. But that salary and that ownership create an opening. Collin Morikawa at $10,400 is the preferred pay-up play — he was runner-up material here before (a six-stroke win in 2023), he just came off Presidents Cup action including a singles win over Hideki Matsuyama, and his price tag undercuts Schauffele’s by $600 despite comparable upside on a course built for accurate iron play.
Sleepers and Value Plays
With no cut and a soft back half of the field, this is a week to dig for salary relief that still has a path to 60-plus DraftKings points.
Michael Thorbjornsen ($9,000) is the clearest course-fit value in the field — he finished third at Yokohama a year ago and comes in priced outside the top 25 on the DK board despite that track record. Doug Ghim, fresh off a runner-up finish at the Bank of Utah Championship last week, brings live current form at a price that hasn’t caught up to his momentum. And Takumi Kanaya, in on a sponsor exemption at a rock-bottom $6,900 salary, is a legitimate GPP dart — he was T4 here last year and closed with a Sunday 62, and a home comebacker with that kind of course history at minimum DK salary is exactly the leverage play tournament-stacking lineups are built around.
Why the Course Setup Changes the Math
Only two par-5s means fewer easy eagle-look holes to lean on for ceiling, so the scoring here gets built on the back of par-4 approach play instead. Hideki Matsuyama, the home-country favorite at $10,200, fits that mold — he’s strung together three straight top-seven finishes before the playoff break and has six top-20s in his last 10 starts, a profile built on the kind of precision play this course demands rather than length off the tee. Wyndham Clark at $10,600 is the highest-ranked player in the field at world No. 5, giving him a strong talent-to-price gap for cash-game builds that want a true stud without going all the way up to Schauffele.
The field hit 10.34 of 15 fairways on average last year, meaning this course forgives the driver far more than it punishes a miss into the rough.
That stat is the whole thesis for this slate. It’s why a shorter, more accurate ball-striker like Morikawa or Matsuyama doesn’t need to out-drive the field to compete with Schauffele or Clark — Yokohama simply isn’t graded on driving distance the way most PGA Tour stops are. It also opens the door for value plays like Thorbjornsen and Kanaya, neither of whom profiles as a bomber, to post results that look disproportionate to their salary.
Jacob Bridgeman at $9,800 and Justin Thomas at $9,600 round out the mid-range tier worth knowing, but with 72 players and no cut diluting the field strength compared to a typical signature event, this is a week where chasing correlated course-fit profiles in the $9,000-$10,400 range should outperform simply paying up to the top of the board.
This Week’s Lineup Picks
Build around precision ball-strikers who fit a short, approach-heavy course, then layer in salary relief with real current form or course history.
- Top play: Collin Morikawa
- Value play: Michael Thorbjornsen
- Sleeper: Takumi Kanaya
Fade Schauffele chalk where it makes sense in large-field GPPs, and lean into the cheaper course-history plays that the betting market hasn’t fully priced in.
