The 2025 Farmers Insurance Open Preview

The California Swing continues with the Tour returning to sunny Southern California. As expected, the weather should be just fine with little wind to speak of through rounds one and two.

For final analysis on weather advantages and tee times, make sure you tune into the Nut Hut live chat starting around 9pm ET for the latest and final thoughts on the weather this week...GET IN THERE

Hideki Matsuyama -126 ($10,700) vs. Ludvig Aberg +104 ($10,800)

In our first heavyweight mismatch of the year, the oddsmakers disagree with the DFS pricing near the top of the odds sheet as they have Hideki Matsuyama as a favorite over Ludvig Aberg in a four-round matchup despite a slight discount on the former Masters champion.

In addition to his hot form, Deki also has a vast experience advantage with 12 prior starts at Torrey under his belt. Aberg on the other hand made his first visit to the famous venue last year finishing T9 as a PGA Tour rookie.

According to our Nut Hut ownership projections available in the Discord, these two are among the most popular plays in DFS this week. Ludvig actually leads the field at around 28% with Hideki not too far behind him at 20%.

Welcome to the Show
Get to know the 2025 PGA Tour Rookies

Thanks to recent eligibility changes from the PGA Tour, 45 newly-minted Tour Cards were handed out ahead of the 2025 season. Each week, we’ll spotlight a few up-and-comers whose names will be important to know as the year progresses.

• Frankie Capan - Stillwater, MN

  Frankie Capan got hot at the right time, and he’s keeping it rolling so far in 2025. The 25-year-old secured his first PGA Tour card thanks to a third-place finish in the season-long KFT points list, but it was a couple of big weeks to end the season that punched his ticket to the big leagues. He won the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship the week before finishing T5 at the KFT Championship last fall, and he’s off to a good start on the PGA Tour with 2/2 made cuts including a T12 at the AMEX last week. He played two years of college golf at Alabama before transferring to Florida Gulf Coast. As a teenager, he and his playing partner Shuai Ming Wong won the 2017 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Pinehurst No. 2

• Steven Fisk - Atlanta, GA

  A strong start to his third season on the KFT was enough for Fisk to finish fourth in the season-long points standings. The Atlanta native won his first KFT event at the Club Car Championship in Savannah, GA, and he followed that up with four more top-5 finishes last summer. Fisk, 27, turned pro in 2020 after a distinguished career at Georgia Southern where he set the school record for individual titles (9) and finished runner-up to Matthew Wolff in the 2019 NCAA Individual Championship. He made his first PGA Tour start last fall at the RSM Classic where he finished T49, but he has yet to make a cut through two starts in 2025.

Over/Unders for the Farmers

We were in the money last time out at the Sony before I took off for a week down in Costa Rica — so here’s hoping to keep it going after missing the AMEX.

Not gonna lie, the early start caught me a bit off guard, so with limited time to prep, I’m gonna tail our friend at Bet The Number, Luke Javersack, who’s ID’d a couple of plays based on their model. Read more about it here.

BTN Weekly Prop Play 
2025 Record: (0-1-1) [-1 unit]

Tournament Matchup — Tony Finau (-125) v Jason Day

An 18th-hole birdie pushed us on our Rd. 1 bet at the Sony, so we’re still on the hunt for our first win headed into the Farmers.

J Day will be popular this week coming off his T3 at the AMEX, but I’m not going to overreact. La Quinta and Torrey couldn’t be more different setups, and while the Aussie has a pair of wins and plenty of top-10s here, he has nearly the same number of MCs.

Finau hasn’t finished worse than T13 in his last seven starts at the Farmers, excluding one horrific putting week in 2022. His game built on power and ball striking is a much better fit for the South Course, and I think he’ll separate himself over three rounds on that track.

*DISCLAIMER: The Chalk Bomb is CHALK for a reason! This is a ballsy call. We're simply giving you 1 player projected to be highly owned that we think could warrant a fade in order to gain leverage in DFS GPP Tournaments. Sack up & fade OR Ignore the play. 

After a break last week, we’re still off to a sluggish start in this part of the column thanks to Keegan Bradley’s T6 effort at the Sony.

But we now turn our attention to SoCal where the California Swing rolls on into San Diego and Torrey Pines.

A staple of the early PGA Tour calendar and the U.S. Open, Torrey is a very familiar venue for many of these guys and one that offers plenty of historical data to learn from. Though technically every man will play the North Course once, we’re focusing on the South for our projections considering it will play host to the majority of the golf this weekend.

The South is long and hard (pause), with thick rough that will prove a challenge for those wayward off the tee. But as we’ve seen in years past, this track can be overpowered with elite driving and ball striking.

So who seems like they won’t play well here this week? As always, the Chalk Bomb is limited to players projected at over 15% ownership in DFS according to our proprietary projections available in the Tour Junkies Discord. That leaves us with a total of 10 star names to choose from.

We start, as we always do, with our data nerds at Bet the Number who have identified some key data points that will drive success (or failure) on the course this week. Unsurprisingly, their biggest stat this week is SG: Ball Striking, followed by Driver Carry Distance, Par-5 Scoring and SG: Putting from 4 -12 Feet on Poa.

With that in mind, here’s where this week’s Chalk Bomb ranks among the field of 156 in those stat categories:

• SG: Ball Striking — 76th

• Driver Carry Distance — 51st

• Par-5 Scoring — 70th

• SG: Putting from 4’-12’ on Poa — 37th

That said, when you look at his past performances at Torrey, you can see why he’s priced at $9300 on DraftKings. In 15 trips here, the Chalk Bomb has seven top-10 finishes, including wins in 2015 and 2018. But his poor showings shouldn’t be overlooked — notably five missed cuts, including last year where he went home early after rounds of 74 and 71.

Owned in over 20% of lineups according to our projections, he’s the fourth-most popular player in the field, and that seems a little too steep for a guy who very well could fall short of expectations…

So, Jason Day… you are the Chalk Bomb!

I feel like there’s a good chance now that there are more Chevy Impalas in the world than actual impalas.

Huge winter storms are quite the scene for people here in the deep south. I imagine a Netflix series based solely on the premise to show us prepping for a winter storm could be quite entertaining and funny to the fine folks up north.

I don’t know why people get so mad when someone forgets their birthday. I mean, if that person then remembers and sends you a belated birthday message or present, it just extends the joy you have on your actual birthday. People who forget birthdays should be much more appreciated in this world for their thoughtfulness.

In the future world, if you tell a kid to “make a car sound” for as long as they can, it will be a good way to just keep them quiet.

Alright folks! That’s all I got for The Farmers this week. Stay well and good luck with all your PGA DFS lineups and bets. BOME!