This article is part of our FanDuel PGA DFS Picks series.
Butterfield Bermuda Championship
Course: Port Royal Golf Course (6,828 yards, par 71)
Purse: $6,900,000
Winner: $1,242,000 and 500 FedExCup Fall points
Tournament Preview
There are only two more FedExCup Fall events remaining for players who are on the bubble to lock up their status for the 2025 season. Hayden Springer currently holds that all important No. 125 spot with Dylan Wu just four points behind him. Joe Highsmith (5th) and Daniel Berger (T20) were able to jump inside the top-125 with good showings last week in Mexico, and plenty others just on the wrong side of the bubble will be hoping to do the same in Bermuda.
Hopefully nobody gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle this week, but there are plenty of elements at play in this forecast. We will likely get some rain during the four tournament rounds, but also three of the four days are projected to have sustained winds over 20 mph with gusts up over 35 mph. There's also no where to hide as Port Royal Golf Course is as exposed as can be to the elements. That will create a very fun viewing experience with players having to get creative to get the ball close to the hole. Camilo Villegas won in Bermuda last year at 24-under-par, but expect a number closer to the 15-under-par total we had in 2020 and 2021, which were similar conditions to what is expected this week.
It's another subpar field for the PGA Tour this fall, as there are no players in the top-50 in the FedExCup last season teeing it up, and Lucas Glover (48th) is the only player in the top-50 of the OWGR heading to Port Royal. That being said, there's still a big battle for a spot in the two west coach Signature Events early in 2025 via the Aon Next 10 from the FedExCup Fall. Mackenzie Hughes, Maverick McNealy, Seamus Power, Patrick Rodgers, Nick Taylor, Ben Griffin and Kevin Yu all currently hold an Aon Next 10 spot and are in the field. Nico Echavarria (61st) and Glover (62nd) are right there knocking on the door. There's still a two-year PGA Tour exemption and a spot at the Masters and PGA Championship next year with a victory in Bermuda.
Recent Champions
2023 - Camilo Villegas (-24)
2022 - Seamus Power (-19)
2021 - Lucas Herbert (-15)
2020 - Brian Gay (-15)
2019 - Brendon Todd (-24)
Key Stats to Victory
- SG: Approach/GIR Percentage
- SG: Around-the-Green/Scrambling
- SG: Putting/Putts per GIR
- Par-3 Scoring
Champion's Profile
The first thing that will stand out about Port Royal Golf Course on the card is that it is only 6,828 yards and a standard par 71 with a trio of par-5s. That's a big reason why we have seen short hitters like Brendon Todd, Brian Gay and Camilo Villegas win here in recent years. Eight of the par-4s at this course are listed at under 415 yards on the card. The hardest part about this course is actually the par-3s with three of them measuring over 210 yards.
If you go back and look at a lot of the top finishers at the Bermuda Championship, you'll notice a lot of them rank very highly in greens in regulation, scrambling or putts per GIR. There unfortunately is not any strokes gained data available for this course. One thing that really doesn't seem to matter is driving. You can hit fairways, you can miss fairways. You can hit it long, you can hit it short. It really doesn't matter where you are playing from. It's really more about how well are you able to control your ball flight into these heavy Atlantic breezes. Even if you are doing a good job of that, there's still going to be points where players miss their targets or catch a bad gusts. This is definitely a week where the short game will need to be tidy to contend. While the greens will be slow on account of the wind, it will still affect the putts. Players need to strike their putts with conviction to keep them on line.
FanDuel Value Picks
The Chalk
Mackenzie Hughes ($12,000)
Hughes is making his first start at Port Royal, but he's exactly the type of player we're looking for. The Canadian is an elite putter and short game player ranking third in SG: Putting and fourth in SG: Around-the-Green this year. He also was strong on approach in each of his last two starts which resulted in a T4 at the Procore and a T8 at the Sanderson Farms.
Patrick Rodgers ($11,400)
Rodgers may not exactly seem like the prototypical golfer to find success on a short course like this, but you can't argue with the results finishing fourth and T3 in his last two starts in Bermuda. Rodgers has stayed busy this fall and is coming off his second top-25 in three starts last week in Mexico where he ranked top-five in scrambling. The Stanford product has also gained storkes on the greens in eight of his last 11 measured starts.
Justin Lower ($11,100)
We see guys go on runs in the fall every year and this time Lower might be able to take a page out of Camilo Villegas' playbook and go from a T2 in Mexico to a win in Bermuda the next week. Lower fits the profile very well ranking 25th in GIR percentage and 29th in SG: Putting. His only real weakness has been driving and he's top-15 on Tour in birdie average.
The Middle Tier
Andrew Putnam ($10,000)
This short hitter should enjoy playing a course like this given how sharp the rest of his game is. Putnam has gained strokes on approach in eight of his last nine starts, and ranks top-40 on Tour this season in SG: Around-the-Green, SG: Putting and scrambling. Putnam is in strong form having finished T27-or-better in five of his last seven starts and he owns a T21 finish in Bermuda in one previous start.
Jacob Bridgeman ($9,800)
Bridgeman is on his way to holding onto his card for 2025, something not always easy for rookies to do. While he doesn't have a top-10 this year, Bridgeman has piled up nine top-25 finishes in 2024, including four in his last five starts. He's been so strong on the greens ranking sixth in SG: Putting and 16th in putts per GIR. The 24-year-old is also a very respectable top-60 in GIR percentage, proximity, SG: Around-the-Green and scrambling this season.
Nico Echavarria ($9,400)
Echavarria didn't have the Sunday he was hoping for, but he led or co-led the World Wide Technology Championship after 36 and 54 holes as he attempted to go back-to-back after he took down all challengers at the ZOZO Championship. Echavarria ranked fourth in GIR's and eighth in scrambling in Mexico. One the season he is 33rd in GIR percentage, 39th in putts per GIR and third in par-3 scoring. Echavarria will be looking to be the second Colombian to win in Bermuda in as many years.
The Long Shots
Wesley Bryan ($8,800)
It certainly wasn't pretty for much of the year, but Bryan has really locked in this fall and put up some strong results. He has made the cut in all four starts with three top-25 finishes, including a T6 last week in Mexico where he was ninth in scrambling and T17 in GIR's. When Bryan is playing at his best he is very strong both on and around the greens. That would translate well to Port Royal like it did earlier this year at Punta Cana where he finished runner-up.
Ryo Hisatsune ($8,700)
Given where a lot of the other options are in this $8K range, Histsune looks like a pretty solid value ranking 79th in SG: Total and 78th in adjusted scoring average. He's pretty solid across the board gaining strokes in every category except SG: Around-the-Green where he's -0.004. Hisatsune ranks T30 this season in GIR percentage and has gained strokes on the greens in five of his last six starts.
Kevin Tway ($8,500)
Tway is playing off conditional status this season, but he is on the cusp of being back to fully exempt next season at 129th in the FedExCup Fall standings. Tway had a run of three straight top-11 finishes earlier this year that started with a solo third in Punta Cana. He profiles as a solid fit for Port Royal as well given he ranks T30 in GIR percentage, 39th in SG: Around-the-Green and 22nd in SG: Putting.
Strategy Tips This Week
Based on a Standard $60K Salary Cap
You'll notice I didn't dip below $8,500, and I don't recommend doing it because it becomes just a complete dart throw that low. There's enough reliable options in the $9-10K range to make that not be too much of a problem, even if you want to add two $11K players.
The good news is that a lot of this field has played a large majority of the fall events, so we have a lot of recent history to go off of. That's also a big reason why even if a player has shaky numbers on the year, it's not much of a concern as long as they are putting up results now.
Given all of the expected challenges of the conditions and the length of this course, these type of tournaments just always seem to come down to short game and putting. It's not typically the stats I like to target on a week-to-week basis, but I think that will be the way to build the most optimal lineups this week.
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