DraftKings PGA DFS Picks: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Cash and GPP Strategy

This article is part of our DraftKings PGA DFS Picks series.

AT&T PEBBLE BEACH PRO-AM

Purse: $20M
Winner's Share: $3.6M
FedEx Cup Points: 700 to the Winner
Location: Pebble Beach, Calif.
Courses: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill GC
Yardage: 6,972 (Pebble)
Par: 72
2024 champion: Wyndham Clark

Tournament Preview

It has not been a smooth start to 2025 season for the PGA Tour. Lots has gone wrong. Some of it has been accidental and unfortunate, some of it self-inflicted. But this week has the potential for so much to go right.

Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth -- arguably the three biggest stars on Tour* -- all will make their 2025 Tour debuts, with famed Pebble Beach Golf Links supplying the majestic Pacific Ocean vistas. (*-Not the three best players.)

Scheffler returns from a Christmas dinner accident that required hand surgery. McIlroy has arrived stateside after traditionally beginning his year on the DP World Tour. And Spieth will be in action for the first time since August, following surgery to his left wrist, which had been an issue of varying degrees for the past two seasons.

Their collective arrival, as part of flat-out loaded field of 80 for the second signature event of the season, could not come soon enough for those occupying the Tour's offices in Ponte Vedra Beach.

To briefly recap what's gone amiss so far in just the first four weeks of 2025:

• -The top two golfers in the world have been injured. Scheffler is now back but Xander Schauffele will miss this tournament with an on-going rib/side issue.
• A bunch of lackluster and buzz-less golfers have been winning the tournaments.
• The new TGL simulated league is showing that its brand of golf can actually be fun to watch and golfers actually do have personalities in this setting. This has actually been good and bad for the Tour.
• The on-going issue of slow play blew up this past Sunday at Torrey Pines, where the final trio took a mind-numbing 5 hours and 29 minutes to complete their round.
• Torrey Pines will be front and center once more in three weeks after the disastrous California wildfires forced the Genesis Invitational to relocate, costing a week at one of the jewel courses on Tour in Riviera.

With Scheffler, McIlroy and Spieth -- who did not qualify for this signature event and is in on a sponsor invite, as he surely will be again at the Genesis -- are the top draws in a field featuring eight of the top-10 in the world rankings, 23 of the top-25 and 45 of the top-50.

The supporting headliners are Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Hideki Matsuyama, Rickie Fowler (sponsor invite), defending champion Wyndham and 2024 runner-up Ludvig Aberg.

But there is a cost for all these A-list golfers lured by the tournament's recurring signature status. It has altered, perhaps forever, the ol' Crosby Clambake. Bing Crosby invited his Hollywood pals to the Monterey Peninsula for four full rounds of jovial pro-am golf in a week unlike any other on the PGA Tour, a tradition that continued with Bill Murray, Clint Eastwood, Ray Romano and others.

Last year, the Tour rewarded its longest-tenured title sponsor, AT&T, with a highly coveted signature event -- an elite, limited field of 80 of the world's best golfers and they are guaranteed to be around all four days in this $20 million no-cut event. The amateurs in the pro-am were reduced not only from 156 to 80 across and to two days instead of four, but also in stature. All the celebrity 20-handicappers are out, better amateurs are in, and not many of them are well known other than athletes. The names collectively are so underwhelming that you can't even find them on the tournament's official website just days before the start of the tournament. Six-hour pro-am rounds are now a thing of the past (probably).

This is the only signature event with alternates because they need to get 80 pros to play with the 80 amateurs. 

The golfers and their amateur partners will play Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill (7,041 yards, par-72) once each on Thursday or Friday before only the pros turn to Pebble exclusively on Saturday and Sunday. The usual third course in the tournament rotation, Monterey Peninsula, is out for the second straight year and perhaps forever.

For such a short course, Pebble surely has some teeth and the potential to be a bear, depending on the weather.

What makes such a short course so hard? For one, the greens are the smallest the golfers will see all year, averaging 3,500 square feet, almost half the size of the Tour average. That calls for highly accurate iron play and, barring that, great scrambling. Those tiny Pebble greens with their confounding poa annua grass are also well protected by bunkers, with almost 120 total on the course. Spyglass greens (averaging 5,000 square feet) are also poa.

The hardest Pebble Beach holes tend to be in the middle of the round -- the 195-yard 5th, the 428-yard 8th, the 504-yard 9th and the 202-yard 12th. Pebble also features two of the harder par-5s on Tour, the 580-yard 14th and the picturesque 543-yard 18th.

A DraftKings strategy that we recommended last week at the Farmers, playing a single-day game and loading up on golfers playing the easier course, isn't a good option this week with no clear-cut easier course.

The weather does not look great, though far better than last year, when the tournament was reduced to three rounds. High temperatures will only be in the 50s, which means golfers might play a bit in the 40s. There is a chance of some rain every day, though not a lot, and the wind is forecast to be on the lighter side.

Key Stats to Winning at Pebble Beach

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

• Driving accuracy/Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
• Strokes Gained: Approach/Greens in Regulation/Approach from 125-150 yards
• Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green/Scrambling
• Strokes Gained: Putting

Past Champions

2024 - Wyndham Clark
2023 - Justin Rose
2022 - Tom Hoge
2021 - Daniel Berger
2020 - Nick Taylor
2019 - Phil Mickelson
2018 - Ted Potter Jr.
2017 - Jordan Spieth
2016 - Vaughn Taylor
2015 - Brandt Snedeker

Champion's Profile

Experience has mattered a lot in playing Pebble Beach -- not only the course but the tournament with its quirky amateur setup, though now it's not as quirky as it used to be. The past 15 winners all had at least a prior top-25 in this event and nine of the past 12 had played this tournament at least FOUR times previously (the other three had played it at least twice). A lot of guys made their Pebble debuts last year because of the new signature status; there will be only five newbies this year.

In the past nine years, every winning score has between 17- and 19-under, even last year when Clark won at 17-under after shooting a course-record 60 on Saturday in a tournament washed away after three rounds. That is a very tight window. But that also included the often-easy Monterey Peninsula track and did not always include the weather conditions of last year.

Pebble is a second-shot golf course. Getting on the green is always harder when the greens are small, so superior wedge play is paramount -- both from the fairway and around the greens. In nine of the past 11 years, the winner did not rank in the top-20 in driving distance. The past three years, Clark, Rose and Hoge had trouble hitting fairways, too. But Rose showed what truly matters -- he ranked 14th in the field in both SG: Approach and Putting, and fourth in SG: Around the Green. Similarly, Hoge ranked fourth in Approach and third in Putting.

Last year, neither Clark nor runner-up Ludvig Aberg were especially good with their longer clubs. But Clark ranked 14th in SG: Around-the-Green and second in SG: Putting, while Aberg ranked fifth and sixth, respectively.

Perhaps it's coincidence more than anything else, but there have been only four non-U.S. winners of this tournament since 1965, with Rose being the fourth (though Graeme McDowell did win the U.S. Open at Pebble in 2010).

The over/under on the winning score as set by golfodds.com was 268.5, which is 18.5 under par.

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$10,000 and up

Scottie Scheffler - $11,900 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +400)
As crazy at it seems to type this, Scheffler is a bit of a wild card. We aren't sure what to expect with the world No. 1 coming off hand surgery. Scheffler originally thought he be back at the Amex two weeks ago, but he needed extra time. One thing we are sure is that Scheffler will come in as prepared as possible. In his Pebble debut a year ago, he tied for sixth.

Collin Morikawa - $10,200 (+1400)
Like Scheffler and a bunch of other top guys, Morikawa made his Pebble debut a year ago. He tied for 14th. He lands at No. 2 overall in our model behind Scheffler. Morikawa has not won in more than two years, but he does have three career wins on poa.

$9,000-$9,900

Justin Thomas - $9,800 (+1400)
After struggling with his game for a few years and seeing his world ranking fall in the 30s, Thomas has systematically boosted it back up to No. 14 now. He still hasn't won since the 2022 PGA Championship, but he is compiling a lot of very good weeks. One of them was a T6 last year at Pebble. Another was a runner-up last time out at the Amex. Putting is the big concern for Thomas this week, though in a very small sample size in 2025, he is ranked 31st on Tour in SG: Putting.

$8,000-$8,900

Jason Day - $8,900 (+3500)
Day already has one excellent showing in 2025 -- a tie for third at the Amex. And his Pebble Beach history is well known, with nine top-10s through the years. Day has never won the tournament, but he's won four others on poa. He also tied for 21st at the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble.

Keegan Bradley - $8,500 (+5000)
The run-up to Bradley's stint as Ryder Cup captain has begun in spectacular fashion, with a pair of T15s sandwiching at T6 at the Sony. One of the keys is that he's been putting -- how shall we say this? -- less bad. Bradley tied for 11th last year in his first start in this tournament.

$7,000-$7,900

Beau Hossler - $7,600 (+6500)
Last year in this article we referred to Hossler as chalk but we played him anyway and he tied for 14th. So here we are again, on the likely chalk. He's even $200 cheaper this year. Hossler finished 11th and third here the two previous years, slipping only a little against an elite field. He's also started his 2025 season on form, with top-15s in both his starts.

Nick Taylor - $7,200 (+7500)
As quickly as Taylor's game fell apart after the won at Phoenix last year -- the week after Pebble -- it has miraculously returned in 2025. He followed a win at the short, narrow Sony with a T12 at the Amex. Taylor won at Pebble in 2020, has another top-10 there and two other top-20s. He's been among the most accurate in the field from the 125-150-yard range.

$6,000-$6,900

Aaron Rai - $6,900 (+10000)
Rai let us down big-time last week with a bad missed cut. But he is such a good fit here that we had to get right back in the saddle. With laser-accuracy off the tee, Rai might find more fairways than anyone else in the field this week. That's a big reason why lands in the top-25 in our model.

Eric Cole - $6,800 (+11000)
Don't be swayed by Cole's three bad finishes so far this year, including last week at brutish Torrey Pines. Instead, take heart that his one good finish, at the Sony, portends well for Pebble. Cole has finished T15 and T14 in his two starts here, so the quality of the field didn't hinder his performance.

Nico Echavarria $6,500 (+15000)
The last thing many of us expected from Echavarria after his out-of-nowhere win at ZOZO last fall was continued good play. But he was runner-up at the RSM and then at the Sony. He is showing that he's not just a weak-field golfer. Echavarria is at his best on and around the greens, but he's also better than the Tour average with longer clubs in his hand.

Putting together some plays for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am? Peer at the top Sportsbook Promo Codes!