We’re about to get started with the final major of 2026, as the PGA ventures to England for the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. At the Open Championship, DraftKings users can play in DraftKings PGA Pick6 contests for all four rounds. If you’re new, Pick6 is a single-user daily fantasy game where you select players to go over or under the totals.

Players teeing things up at Royal Birkdale this week will be taking on a technical links-style course that features fairways guarded by large sand dunes with fescue grass acting as severe penalty areas for off-center drives. Birkdale is a wind-exposed Par 70 that measures over 7,100 yards and, in the past, when the wind is up, has been one of the most challenging Open venues on the rota, with Padraig Harrington winning at just +3 in 2008. As always, links experience will be crucial to success this week as players navigate pot bunkers and elevated greens with runoffs that are markedly different from the ones they face on the PGA in America every week.

All the top names are in the field this week, including Scottie Scheffler, PLAYERS winner Cameron Young, and Masters winner Rory McIlroy, who is going for his second Open Championship this week. I reviewed additional statistics and course dynamics in the Open Championship PGA Cheat Sheet and included some notes on the course below for Pick6 research.

“Royal Birkdale is in Southport, England, a major fixture on the Open rota. It last hosted in 2017, when Jordan Spieth outdueled Matt Kuchar down the stretch. Despite being just a 7,100-yard Par 70, Birkdale is famously one of the tougher Open courses to play.

Spieth’s -12 winning score in 2017 was the second-lowest ever. Lee Trevino (1971) holds the record at -14. In 2008, Padraig Harrington won the event at Birkdale at +3, a testament to how hard things can get there when poor weather and wind move in at the exposed venue.

The venue sits on the edge of the sea. The holes are built between naturally forming sand dunes, which can block the view but not necessarily the wind, as the course remains bare and open, as with most traditional links courses. The dunes also provide well-defined corridors and are covered in thick native fescue, which puts a strong emphasis on accuracy. Players who stray into the rough often face forced layups rather than aggressive recovery shots, making Birkdale one of the fairest tests on the Open, as accurate shots are rewarded while blatant bomb-and-gouge strategies will likely suffer.

The course was redesigned for this year’s major; the project was led by architects Martin Ebert and Tom Mackenzie, whose goal was to enhance its strategic character. In addition to modernizing several holes, the project addressed long-standing drainage issues and restored the course’s natural dune landscape. The result is a layout that places an even greater premium on precision, decision-making, and links golf creativity rather than pure power.

Overall, I expect this course to be a great one for targeting shot makers – players who can consistently find the fairway in the narrowest corridors while attacking flags or finding greens regardless of the conditions. Strokes gained approach, and around-the-green stats would be the two SG metrics I would emphasize most this week.”

As of now, we have Round 1 totals up on the Pick6 site for play, so that’s where we’ll be focusing this week. The players out first are expected to have slightly better conditions with winds picking up throughout the day. If you’re targeting stroke totals or birdie-or-better totals, keep that in mind.

With that in mind, I’ve focused on a few of my favorite plays for Round 1 of the Open Championship below.

Top DraftKings Pick6 Plays for the 2026 Travelers Championship

Nick Taylor Less Than 70.5 strokes

Taylor has been one of the steadier ball strikers in this field and typically thrives on shorter, accuracy-first layouts. If he keeps the driver in play and continues his strong iron play, I like him to finish under this scoring line in Round 1. He’s coming in off a T25 finish last week and was already in contention at a major this year, entering the final round of the PGA Championship close to the lead before falling back late Sunday.

Overall, Taylor’s great at playing these coastal links-like setups, having already won in windy conditions at Pebble Beach early in his career. If he can find a few putts on Day 1, he should be able to take advantage of this technical track and pay off for Pick6 lineups.

Hideki Matsuyama More Than 3.0 birdies or better

Matsuyama continues to generate plenty of birdie opportunities with his elite approach game. Even if the putter is only average, his tee-to-green consistency gives him a strong chance of recording four or more birdies on this shorter track where his short game and approach game will take center stage. He didn’t play last week, but having played Birkdale back in 2017 where he finished T14, Matsuyama should be better prepped for this test than most in the field.

You could look to take the less-than on his stroke total as well, but given that he can get wild with the driver, I prefer this birdie-or-better line. Even if he throws in multiple bogeys, he’ll still have the shot at bouncing back on some of the easier holes, and his 3.0 line just feels a notch too low for a player of his skill set and experience.

Pierceson Coody More Than 70.5 Strokes

I like fading players with little to no links experience at the Open, and Coody fits that profile to a T this week. He grew up playing traditional courses in America and missed the cut last week in Scotland, which isn’t a great sign to begin with. He’s also been slow to regain form after a fast start to the season and enters with inconsistent recent form. He also struggled with some of the tougher tests on the PGA Tour this year, missing a couple of cuts in Florida.

Coody is a player I’d be bullish on as we get into the late-summer and fall events, with a weaker field and more straightforward setups, but this week I’m fine fading him across the board. With accuracy at a premium, I expect enough dropped shots to push him over this stroke line.

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Pick6 is a peer-to-peer fantasy variant where you build a lineup (your “Pick Set”) of 2+ players and select whether you believe each will outperform their listed stat projection. Enter your Pick Set in Pick6 contests to compete against other users. Get enough picks correct and win a share of cash prizes.

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Create a Pick Set by choosing 2+ players from the same sport and Pick Group (a set of picks available from a group of competitions). For each player, simply select if you think they’ll have more or less than their listed stat projection. In each Pick Set, you can not pick the same player twice and you must pick players from at least two different teams.

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