Bolton: Maximize starts, manage risks at Torrey Pines for Farmers Insurance Open

Before we dive into the Farmers Insurance Open, this is another reminder that the tournament begins this Wednesday and concludes Saturday. The PGA TOUR will return to its customary Thursday-Sunday sequencing next week.

Once upon a time, way back in 2024, the Farmers laid before us as elastic within a fixed construct. With the North and South Courses at Torrey Pines splitting duties for the first two rounds, savvy gamers positioned their charges to exploit the weaknesses. They were presented both in ease of the North and whatever Mother Nature was up to.

There’s still flexibility in shape rosters with the newest version of PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by PGA TOUR Superstore, but a little more intel is required to know where to bend.

In all iterations, the objective has been to have all six of your golfers play the North. With four Starters in each of the first two rounds, that’s eight in all, so you can’t have more than four on your roster in the same draw without being forced to bench at least one when that side of the draw plays the North. (Only the South hosts the third and final rounds.)

In the old days, you could toy with variations of 4x2, 2x4 and 3x3 while respecting the typical influences to determine your model. However, because you can’t begin a tournament with your captain on the bench in the current version, it could be a juggling act for how you want to rotate your golfers through the North Course this week.

In the last six years, the North has averaged from 2.134 strokes (2019) to 4.244 strokes (2022) lower than the South in the first two rounds of their respective editions, so there’s no debate in maximizing your starts on the North as usual. With pleasant weather conditions during the first half of this week’s edition, you have the freedom to choose who you want on the North and when.

But how do you choose when you lean on the South for those two starts? This is easier than it might seem, at least historically.

In the last 14 years of the tournament and comparing only averages in the first two rounds on the South, fields have gone lower in the first round every year but once. The outlier occurred in neutral weather conditions in 2020 when the second round averaged 72.90 to the first round’s 73.69. Even if you wanted to toss on variables like course renovations, course conditions, field strength, inclement weather, wind and delays across the first two rounds, that’s still a mountain of data that supports burning at least one of your starts on the South in the first round.

If you’re in a situation in which you need to play the South twice in the same round, do your best to tilt toward the first round for these reasons. That’d achieved the 2x4 model for the North. Just remember that your captain must be a starter in the opener.

The decisions I’ve made for my roster follow this evidence. They are detailed below.

Captain

NOTE: All points scored by this player are doubled. Be aggressive.

Tee times aren’t released until after my Power Rankings is published, but as it turns out, the top six are split evenly on both courses. And because there are no concerns about the weather in the first two rounds, I’m opting for the 3x3 model.

Jason Day … The top of my Power Rankings opens on the South Course, so he’s the default to take one for the team on it in the opening round. Because of the expected scoring deviation and our obligation to adjust to it, that’s all the strategy necessary in this tournament.

Other considerations

Ludvig Åberg … No. 3 in the Power Rankings. Given my position as a chaser among the experts, I was going to designate him as my captain because he’s such a stud, but the captain dispersion for Day might be less, anyway.

Keegan Bradley … The No. 4 in the Power Rankings is the shrewdest choice, both for fit and form. The layer that only he can claim, of course, is what’s driving him as a competitor managing a side hustle as the Ryder Cup captain. The fascination of that narrative continues to swell, and his game is in lockstep with the hype.

REMINDER: To designate a captain, select “C” beside the starter you want as your captain.

Rounding out the roster

With the top six of my Power Rankings falling in nicely and with no worry about wind and/or weather, I’m merely lining up the half that opens on the North Course with my captain. It’s Fantasy Golf 101 as it concerns the Farmers.

Because both of the guys who open on my bench will rotate in for the second round, Wednesday’s opener also could persuade me to decide who stays in the starting lineup on the South alongside them on the North.

In the bigger picture, with a high percentage of gamers sharing limited chalk, surviving the Farmers with a push is a net win. Fantasy scoring will be lower on the weekend, so picking up points on the margins is a bonus. If you try to thread the needle with an outlier of, say, 2024 champion Matthieu Pavon, you’re not only going to need for him to deliver, you’d also need to cover what you left exposed. And then you’d need to manage any benefit over time. That’s a lot to reach during a week when the primary objective simply is not to lose ground to your opposition.

My starters

• Jason Day (c) – South-North
• Ludvig Åberg – North-South
• Keegan Bradley – North-South
• Will Zalatoris – North-South

My bench

• Tony Finau (1) – South-North
• Hideki Matsuyama (2) – South-North

REMINDERS: If you don’t save your lineup, what you’ve selected will time out and go blank. If you don’t choose a captain when you select “Save,” you will be reminded with a pop-up message. If you edit your roster after saving, you must select “Update” to activate changes.

Careful

For almost every tournament, a usually impressive subset of the field warrants avoiding, and it might be represented in my Power Rankings, which are not written in the context of any fantasy golf format. In this section, I will single out who demands pause and why.

Matthieu Pavon … The Frenchman is defending his title this week. That alone presents some cause for pause, but he all but lost the magic in the second half of 2024 with zero top-35 finishes in full-field competition. His win at Torrey Pines occurred amid a torrid stretch of form at the time, so he’s a trap.

Max Homa … As much as I’d love to endorse the 2023 champion, he’s still falling well short of the fairest of well-earned expectations. Similar to Pavon’s late-year fade, Homa hung up just one top 20 worldwide in the last eight months, and it was a T14 in his title defense of the Nedbank Golf Challenge that hosted just 66 golfers. Opened 2025 with four sub-70s at Kapalua and still settled for a T26 with 59 golfers on that racetrack.

Charley Hoffman … The 48-year-old from San Diego looks like he’s taken a swig from the Fountain of Youth, and a T5 at The American Express was objectively impressive, but even in his prime, Torrey Pines won most of the battles. Running it back to only 2015, he’s just 5-for-9 with one top-30 finish (T9, 2020).

Luke Clanton … Yes, he’s the world’s top-ranked amateur, but no one is immune to the learning curve. He experienced it just two weeks ago when he missed the cut at the Sony Open in Hawaii where experience has proven to matter. Now he tries to tackle Torrey Pines, where he’s seeking to become the first amateur in 14 years to make the cut. The last to do it is Anthony Paolucci, who was an 18-year-old senior at La Jolla Country Day School in 2011. In the interim, amateurs are a combined 0-for-10. The victims include Jake Knapp in 2015 and Viktor Hovland in 2019.

Returning to competition

Adam Schenk … Opened The American Express with a 2-over 74 on the Pete Dye Stadium Course, and then withdrew due to back spasms. A sore back also knocked him out of the Charles Schwab Challenge last May, and he failed to make any noise the rest of the season. The upshot is that he opened 2025 with a balanced T6 at the Sony Open in Hawaii, so you know he’s eager to move on from this latest malady. Top 25s in the last two editions of the Farmers, too. Makes the most sense fractionally in DFS.

Notable W/Ds

Xander Schauffele … Golfers who weren’t committed at the entry deadline typically are ignored in this space, but he’s a special case given his local roots and loyalty to the tournament. It’s the first time in his nine years as a PGA TOUR member that he’s sitting it out.

Collin Morikawa … He’s made 120 PGA TOUR starts as a professional, but this is his first withdrawal between the commitment deadline and the opening round. Obviously would have been among the favorites to win, but he’s opted for third consecutive week off since a runner-up at The Sentry and ahead of next week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which is the second Signature Event of the season.

Akshay Bhatia … Now that he’s scaled to compete in all of the Signature Events – he didn’t qualify for Nos. 2, 3 and 4 last year – it stands to reason that he’s learning how he wants to balance his schedule while listening to his body and mind. He placed T13 in his debut at Torrey Pines (with four red numbers) last year.

Mackenzie Hughes … Gamers are unlikely to miss him given he’s just 3-for-7 and without a top 25 at Torrey Pines, but he did sit T10 at last year’s midpoint before fading for a T64. That’s the kind of bitemark that Torrey Pines South can leave. Stumbled out of the gate in 2025, too, but it’s still too soon if the momentum with which he concluded 2024 has been exhausted. Look for him as well at Pebble Beach.

Harry Hall … Positioned fifth in the Aon Swing 5 for entry into next week’s Signature Event at Pebble Beach, the timing of this decision is curious, but you can’t fault the Englishman for needing a break and playing the long game. He’s opened 2025 with respective finishes of T8, T10 and T21. He also might be wise in opting for rest given he’s 0-for-3 at Torrey Pines. Worst case, he tumbles outside the Aon Swing 5, gets two weeks off and returns at the WM Phoenix Open where he can add to his FedExCup points total and reenter the Aon Swing 5 for The Genesis Invitational.

Nicolai Højgaard … He’d have been making a long but quick trip after a T65 at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, but he did it last year after a T7 and finished alone in second at Torrey Pines. He’s not automatically exempt into Pebble Beach.

Chesson Hadley … After missing the cut at The American Express, he’s down to one start on his Minor Medical Extension. Should he earn at least 160.542 FedExCup points in it, he’d be promoted to the Major Medical category (No. 22 in the Priority Ranking) for the remainder of the season. If he falls short, he’d drop into Category 32 because he’s already cleared the threshold for conditional status. So, even if he fails on the medical, the veteran has nonzero value in the long-term.

Tyler McCumber … After a runner-up finish in the Victorian PGA Championship in early December, he presented as a sneaky play in all formats for what would have been his fourth appearance at the Farmers. Instead, the 33-year-old will remain parked with 14 starts on a Major Medical Extension. He’s just 62.178 FedExCup points shy of conditional status as a secondary objective, so keep an eye on him.

Membership notes

Aaron Baddeley and Kevin Streelman … Both missed the cut at The American Express, which was the last start via a Minor Medical Extension for both. So, each now will use the one-time membership exemption for making 300 career cuts. Baddeley has cashed 313 times, while Streelman has 303 paydays. They now slot in Category 28 and will reorder with the class comprised of DP World Tour, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry golfers.

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