Le Golf National is a golf course that is featured annually on the DP World Tour when it hosts the Open de France. You might also remember the golf course from 2018 when it hosted the Ryder Cup. The USA Ryder Cup team took their best shot at Europe before falling 17.5 to 10.5 during what ended up being a relatively smooth sailing final day.
I broke down that Ryder Cup extensively that season and talked heavily about how each home team always emphasizes an extreme in their choice of where to play.
When Team USA hosts on American soil, the USA pushes all the chips in for distance with driver and shaves the rough down as low as possible to maximize their length advantage off the tee — like when they hosted in 2020 at Whistling Straits.
Europe's Ryder Cup strategy is always the opposite, as they try to remove the driver from play completely, which presented the perfect opportunity to use a 7,183-yard tactical venue in Le Golf National because of the water and rough that accentuate driving accuracy.
Will Le Golf National possess the same sort of missed fairway penalty this week as the 2018 Ryder Cup? Of course not.
However, think of this golf course as Florida golf mixed with "Links and French Connections" to warrant what is going to be a legacy-changing week for someone in this field.
Find my 2024 Paris Olympics Golf Data-Driven DFS Picks below.
2024 Paris Olympics Golf Data-Driven DFS Picks
Plays
All of my plays will carry under 10% ownership. I would prefer pinpointing some ultra-contrarian targets and found a few golfers whom I didn't talk about heavily this week in the outright market when I recorded the Links + Locks Olympics Betting Preview.
Matthew Fitzpatrick $8,700
It isn't a perfect profile for Matthew Fitzpatrick, but there has been a market overcorrection for him compared to other golfers in this price range.
Fitzpatrick did grade as a fringe negative DraftKings value in how it corresponded with my overall rank. However, as I always talk about when we try to pinpoint leverage options on the board, it is important to identify the spots to back slightly overpriced commodities if the industry has gone too far in the other direction.
Here are the best leverage options on the board when trying to answer that question:
The more recent metrics have turned the industry off, but there is something to be said about Fitzpatrick grading 12th for Expected Total Driving, fifth for Par-3 Scoring and sixth for Anticipated Putting.
Sami Valimaki $6,600
You won't hear much about Sami Valimaki throughout the golf betting space because of his recent boom-or-bust nature. Still, for as low as the floor may be for him in the Paris Olympics, his ceiling delivers the potential to win a gold, silver or bronze medal.
Valimaki graded inside the top 40% of the field in all seven categories that I weighed at Le Golf National, including a Weighted Total Driving output that surpassed 72% of the field and an Expected Long Iron result that overtook every single player teeing it up this week.
If the venue plays softer and longer because of wet conditions, that combination of Total Driving + Long Iron Proximity has a chance to play heavily on the leaderboard.
Fades
All fades carry over 12 percent ownership within my projections. There is no point in fading what the whole industry is already fading. These will carry a heightened risk because there is typically a strong blueprint as to why ownership is trending in their direction.
Hideki Matsuyama $8,800
I removed a lot of the weight in my model for Strokes Gained: Around the Green because the water around these surfaces will unfairly penalize errant approaches. That factor neutralizes one of Matsuyama's greatest strengths in his elite short game.
It doesn't mean the Japanese sensation won't find a way to use his long-iron prowess to work his way up the leaderboard. However, the issue comes into play when it starts impacting someone's high-end upside when we talk about a golfer already priced as a top-15 salary and ownership option on the board.
He is safer than some of these alternatives we may be considering, but we probably need a true medal-contending performance to warrant this price tag and ownership in large-field contests.
Guido Migliozzi $7,400
The price is fair for Guido Migliozzi, but more of my concern stems from his top-15 projected ownership rate at the Olympics this week.
I understand that having a victory at the venue is worth something. However, it changes the optimal lineup construction for the week when it shifts that player into a territory where everyone wants to back him.
My guess is Migliozzi finishes somewhere between 20th-40th on the leaderboard, which starts to diminish his playability if the ownership is going to be as high as I'm expecting for the event.
Winner
Jon Rahm $10,700
My model loved Jon Rahm's ability to traverse the venue, ranking third for Projected Greens in Regulation Percentage, second for Strokes Gained: Approach and third for Weighted Scoring.
Those totals show the potential we have gotten from him over the last few starts after a cold start to 2024, and there might be reasons to be even more optimistic since my model removed the concerns that we had gotten recently from Rahm's Total Driving returns.
This category was always his strength when he was in his prime, and when I ran my baseline totals for him dating back an entire season (when still on the PGA Tour) over the sloppy combination of recent form and LIV Golf data, the Spaniard jumped into the same price range as Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler.
The industry has not fully jumped back into the fray since we don't see him weekly.
