The Sony Open gave us a fun start to the season in Hawaii, and now the best in the world return stateside for the American Express in California.
As usual, I’ll have you covered with the DFS roster construction on Wednesday, but we have to crawl before we can walk. When diving into the stats, who is best positioned to win this birdie fest?
American Express Ranking Process
This is a unique event in that it is a Pro-Am and comes with a 54-hole cut. Each pro is paired with an amateur, something that lengthens the rounds and traditionally comes with lower winning scores due to the favorable nature of the pin positions through the first three days.
READ MORE: American Express 2026 Tee Times, DFS Stats, and Weather Outlook
To offset the number of golfers on the course, the PGA uses three courses. Every golfer will play on all three tracks before a cut is made Saturday night to prepare for a Sunday finale.
To handicap this type of event, I wanted to focus more on learning what type of profile wins here. Usually, this process involves honing down on very specific, course-related stats, but for this week, with plenty of different questions being asked depending on the day, I took a look at the top of the leaderboard (Justin Thomas also finished in the top 10, but he is not in the field this time around as he recovers from injury).
- Sepp Straka
- Justin Lower
- Jason Day
- Charley Hoffman
- Patrick Cantlay
- Camilo Villegas
- Max Greyserman
- Taylor Moore
- Ben Griffin
What allowed these golfers to excel last season? What ingredients should I use when trying to put together the perfect combination of strengths for this week?
Of those nine, against 166 qualified golfers from the start of 2024 through the end of last season …
- Seven were better than average ARG
- Six were better than average P (three top 20)
- Six were better than average OTT (none better than 30th)
- Approaches results were all over the place (two top 10, two outside the top 140)
This is a short course in a sport that is getting longer, and thus, I’m buying the short iron success. Of that list above, five were top 35 in proximity from 125-150 yards, and of the four that weren’t, two of them improved their TOUR ranking in proximity as the distance to the hole shortened.
Now we might be onto something. We want putters that can spike with some short game prowess when it comes to iron play. The average winning score over the past decade at this event (-24.6) suggests that we need to be picking scorers, not par savers, when it comes to our One-and-Done pools.
- Strokes Gained Approach
- Strokes Gained Approach in Easy Scoring Situations
- Opportunities Gained
- Strokes Gained Par 5
Why Straka Makes Sense as Defending Champion
You probably don’t need to be notified that Scottie Scheffler was the best in this field in all of those categories a season ago, but what if I told you that defending champion Sepp Straka was next best in every one of those metrics?
The putting can come and go for Straka, and that’s the case with just about anyone on TOUR, but it’s more “come” and less “go” historically for him here. He’s been elite with the flat stick in four of his five trips to this track (he finished T-4 in 2020 in addition to the victory last season), and with the course rotation theoretically adding variance across the board, stability in that regard is encouraging.
Notables in field for next week’s The American Express:
Scottie Scheffler
Ludvig Aberg
Robert MacIntyre
Patrick Cantlay
Ben Griffin
Justin Rose
Sepp Straka
Matt Fitzpatrick
Will Zalatoris
Min Woo Lee
Max Homa
Michael Block pic.twitter.com/2dOYZcHbdE
— Underdog Golf (@UnderdogGolf) January 16, 2026
Just ask Jon Rahm how important that skill is here: “I mean, we’re the PGA Tour, we’re the best golfers on the planet and we’re playing a golf course where missing the fairway means absolutely nothing. There was times where missing the fairway by an inch was worse than missing the fairway by 20 yards, that to me is a mistake. I don’t know what else to say … It becomes a putting contest.”
American Express Rankings
I’ve crunched the numbers for this specific event to create a custom Top 20. Scheffler is going to grade out as my top golfer most, if not all, weeks in which he is set to tee it up, but there’s little logic behind using him in a non-signature event.
Straka had 12 birdies on the Stadium Course (the location of the final round) before logging his first bogey at this event a season ago.
Sharp Plays: American Express DFS Lineup Construction
He can get as hot as anyone (his first round at this track last season featured not one, but two birdie streaks of three straight holes), and that upside is something I’m comfortable chasing in an event like this with a golfer like Straka that I don’t feel obligated to hold for a bigger payout.
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sepp Straka
- Russell Henley
- Ben Griffin
- Sam Burns
- Patrick Cantlay
- Harry Hall
- Nick Taylor
- Matthew Fitzpatrick
- Ludvig Aberg
- Akshay Bhatia
- Daniel Berger
- Si Woo Kim
- Kurt Kitayama
- Robert MacIntyre
- Adam Scott
- Taylor Pendrith
- Harris English
- Rasmus Hojgaard
- Lee Hodges
