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

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
2025 champion: Rory McIlroy

Tournament Preview

The Nos. 1 and 2 players in the world have not played in the same tournament in more than six months. That changes this week.

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy head the field for the first Signature Event of the PGA Tour season at Pebble Beach, and they'll also be at the second one next week at Riviera for the Genesis Invitational.

Little by little, the 2026 season has been taking shape. Scheffler debuted at the Amex. Brooks Koepka returned at the Farmers, as did then-world No. 2 Xander Schauffele. Now, the defending Pebble Beach champion McIlroy joins the fray, along with another top-5 player making his season debut in Tommy Fleetwood.

Scheffler and McIlroy have not crossed paths since last August at the Tour Championship (unless you want to include the Ryder Cup, which we suspect Scheffler probably doesn't).

A year ago, Pebble Beach is where Scheffler made his 2025 season debut following hand surgery, and McIlroy won to kick-start his brilliant Masters-winning season.

As we continue to search far and wide for data that would suggest Scheffler won't win in a given week, however futile that task is, we'll point out that he has never won at Pebble. (Narrator: Um, he's played there only twice.) Scheffler tied for ninth last year and sixth the year before in his maiden visit after it became a Signature Event.

This will be the top field so far in 2026. All top 10 golfers in the OWGR are entered -- actually, the top 11 for all you Harris English fans out there. The only ones missing from the top 25 are the injured Justin Thomas (No. 12), the repentant Patrick Reed (No. 17) and the still LIVing it up Tyrrell Hatton. A total of 43 of the top 50 are on hand. Thomas has stated his goal is to return during the upcoming Florida Swing, when we'll also see Koepka next.

Other bold-faced names in this 80-man, no-cut field -- and we're going by the biggest names, in our estimation, and not the highest-ranked players -- include Schauffele, Ludvig Aberg, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and 2017 winner Jordan Spieth. Every tournament winner so far in 2026 is entered -- Chris Gotterup (Sony, WMPO), Scheffler (Amex) and 2023 Pebble champ Justin Rose (Farmers).

When this tournament became a Signature Event two years ago, it brought in all these A-list golfers. But at a cost. The ol' Crosby Clambake had been altered, perhaps forever. The late entertainer 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.

Two years ago, 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 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 (probably) a thing of the past.

This is the only Signature Event with alternates because they need to get 80 professionals 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 old third course in the tournament rotation, Monterey Peninsula, is out for the third straight year and seemingly now forever.

For such a short course, Pebble surely has some teeth and the potential to be a bear, depending on the weather. The U.S. Open will return there next year.

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.

As for the weather, it doesn't sound great. There was rain forecast for early in the week and again on Sunday. It doesn't like the thermometer will reach 60 all week. Chilly, wet weather could depress scoring. But since the field is so small, there is little-to-no advantage to a later or early tee time since they are so close to one another. 

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

2025 - Rory McIlroy
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

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 before McIlroy last year all had at least a prior top-25 in this event and nine of the past 13 had played this tournament at least FOUR times previously (the other four 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 14 newbies this year, including Gotterup.

Last year, McIlroy used an ace on his sixth hole of the tournament -- No. 15 at Spyglass -- as a springboard to a 21-under score and two-stroke win over good pal Shane Lowry.

McIlroy led the field in SG: Off-the-Tee and driving distance, hitting more than two-thirds of the fairways. He was a respectable top-20 in SG: Approach and greens in regulation, but excelled on the greens, ranking seventh in SG: Putting.

Lowry wasn't nearly as long off the tee but more accurate, and he ranked second in SG: Putting. Lucas Glover and Rose shared third place. Glover was his usual strong self on approach, ranking second in the field, but he also was fifth in putting. Rose was more balanced across all the strokes-gained metrics.

Before McIlroy's 21-under, the winning score had between 17- and 19-under nine years running. That included Clark's 17-under with a course-record 60 on Saturday in a tournament washed away after three rounds.

So there is at least two years of evidence to suggest that scores are creeping higher, which is odd since the weakest course has been removed from the rotation. Maybe the elimination of the four-round pro-am format has helped golfers knuckle down. But as mentioned above, the weather could suppress scoring a bit this year.

It may coincidence more than anything else, but there have been only five non-U.S. winners of this tournament since 1965 (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 and the same as last year. They obviously have not been swayed by scoring the past two years. 

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$10,000 and up

Scottie Scheffler - $14,000 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +295)
You'll never guess who landed at No. 1 in our model. Even when Scheffler is in danger of missing a cut, which he hasn't done in three and a half years, he almost wins. He opened with a 73 last week at the WMPO, 10 shots off Gotterup's lead, yet still missed the playoff by only one shot. Scheffler never played Pebble before it became a Signature Event. He's finished sixth and then ninth. With this a no-cut event, there will be little fear about grabbing a couple of $6,000s to offset the high Scheffler price tag.

$9,000-$9,900

Si Woo Kim - $9,900 (+2500)
Kim is amid the best stretch of golf in his career. He's up to a personal-best 26th in the OWGR. Over his past 11 starts going back to the start of the 2025 playoffs, he finished top-25 every time, with five top-5s -- including the past two weeks. He's ranked second on Tour in both SG: Approach and Tee-to-Green. Really, the only thing separating Kim from multiple victories over this stretch is his putter -- he's ranked 131st on Tour. He finished 12th and 14th here the past two years.

Justin Rose - $9,400 (+2800)
Rose has an outstanding history in this tournament. He won it in the last year of the four-day pro-am, then since it's become a Signature Event, he's finished T11 and last year T3. And of course, he's coming off a runaway win at the Farmers.

Russell Henley - $9.200 (+3000)
Henley is such a straight shooter. And he does some of his finest putting on poa greens. That's a good combination for this week. He's finished top-25 in his past 10 starts dating to the Memorial in June, and he tied for fifth here a year ago. Henley is ranked fifth on Tour in SG: Putting so far this season.

$8,000-$8,900

Jason Day - $8,500 (+4600)
Day's record at Pebble Beach is borderline legendary. Sixteen starts with zero missed cuts, nine of them ending in the top-10. He tied for sixth two years ago and 13th last year. He's even off to a good start in 2026, with a runner-up to Scheffler at the Amex.

$7,000-$7,900

Jake Knapp - $7,900 (+3800)
We talked in the Champion's Profile how experience at Pebble goes a long way. We don't expect Knapp to win this week, but he did get a good taste here last year with a T33 finish among the game's elite in a Signature Event. He is off to a spectacular start to 2026, recording a T11-T5-8 ledger. Knapp is ranked top-20 on Tour in SG: Off-the-Tee, Tee-to-Green and Putting.

Sepp Straka - $7,700 (+6300)
Straka is coming off a T18 at Phoenix after missing the 54-hole cut at the Amex. He tied for seventh here last year and for 26th the year before. Straka is elite among Tour members with rankings of 16th in SG: Approach and seventh in SG: Around-the-Green. His putter may limit his upside, however, because he's ranked 138th in that department.

Taylor Pendrith - $7,400 (+7200)
Pendrith opened the season with a tie for sixth at the Sony, but he has missed two straight cuts since. His stats paint a better picture, as he sits top-60 in every strokes gained metric. Pendrith tied for ninth here last year and for seventh three years back.

$6,000-$6,900

Jacob Bridgeman - $6,900 (+12000)
With three top-20s in three starts this season, Bridgeman doing a great job proving that last year's berth in the tour Championship was not a fluke. He finished T4 at the Sony, T13 at the Amex and T18 last week at the WMPO. Bridgeman does just about everything well statistically, especially putting, where he is ranked sixth on Tour. This will be his Pebble Beach debut.

Tom Hoge - $6,500 (+26000)
Hoge plays here every year and does great just about every year. He won in 2022, before it became a Signature Event. But he was T6 two years ago and T17 last year in signatures, plus T12 back in 2022. Hoge has already made four starts in 2026, with a T8 at the Amex but also a missed cut last week. Statistically he's been a mess everywhere but on the greens -- he's ranked 31st in SG: Putting. Obviously, we're banking more on his course history here than anything else. Remember, he won't miss the cut.  

Finalizing your lineups for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am? See how they look in RotoWire's PGA DFS Lineup Optimizer.