Fantasy Golf Tournament Preview – WGC Cadillac Match Play

The PGA Tour heads to San Francisco, California and TPC Harding Park this week for the WGC Cadillac Match Play. It is really an exciting tournament, with a different structure than the rest of the events throughout the season. As always, our preview will help season long players, one-and done leagues, other website games (Yahoo, pgatour.com, etc), and of course daily fantasy golf (DFS). This year’s Match Play has a different structure than it has had in the past so pay close attention to our description below. For you DFS players, this week Draftkings, for another year has not found a way to offer any sort of contest for this event so their site will be dead this week for golf. That does not mean that DFS is completely gone this week, as our friends at Fantasy Feud will be offering DFS contests for this event, which is really exciting. Our experts at Fantasy Golf Insider play on Fantasy Feud every week, enjoy their site, and recommend you check it out, and not a better week than this one to do so. If you want to check it out, do yourself, and us a favor and click on the Fantasy Feud link on the right hand side of our homepage to go to their site and sign up. If you do, you will get up to a $500 match bonus on your deposit. Plus let us know if you do click through our link and make a deposit and we will send you a coveted Fantasy Golf Insider Hat, T-shirt, or sleeve of golf balls (your choice which one).

The field includes 64 players who have officially qualified, with six of the former champions of the World Golf Championships Match Play, including the 2014 winner, Jason Day. As mentioned before, the format is new and now includes round-robin play in 16 different groups of four players for the first three days. The four players play each other one match per day on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The player with the best record in each group advances to the Round of 16 for single-elimination match play (in the event of a two-way tie in a group, head-to-head results will be used as the tiebreaker; a three-way tie will require a sudden-death playoff). Saturday features the round of 16 in the morning and the quarterfinals that afternoon. The semifinals will be contested Sunday morning while the championship and consolation matches will be played in the afternoon.

The past format produced 39 first-round upsets in the past three years – a 40 percent success rate for the underdogs. Our prediction is that will change dramatically this year with the round-robin play, as one bad round will not eliminate the favorites.

Saturday features the round of 16 in the morning and the quarterfinals that afternoon and will set up like this:

Winner of Group 1 vs. Winner of Group 16
Winner of Group 8 vs. Winner of Group 9
Winner of Group 5 vs. Winner of Group 12
Winner of Group 4 vs. Winner of Group 13
Winner of Group 6 vs. Winner of Group 11
Winner of Group 3 vs. Winner of Group 14
Winner of Group 7 vs. Winner of Group 10
Winner of Group 2 vs. Winner of Group 15

Quarterfinals

Winner of 1-16 vs. Winner of 8-9
Winner of 5-12 vs. Winner of 4-13
Winner of 6-11 vs. Winner of 3-14
Winner of 7-10 vs. Winner of 2-15

Semifinals (Sunday morning)

Championship and consolation match (Sunday)

 

TPC Harding Park is a Par 71 and measures 7,115 yards, which makes it one of the shorter courses that will be played all year on the Tour. TPC Harding Park first opened in 1925, is named after President Warren G. Harding, and sits along Lake Merced. The course has attracted national attention in the past and has hosted a number of important tournaments, including being a regular tour stop for the PGA in the sixties. After the San Francisco Open Invitational in 1969, the PGA Tour left Harding Park, due to deteriorating conditions and antiquated facilities. Course conditions worsened during the 1970s and 1980s, as the city budget cuts wreaked havoc on course maintenance. The low point came in 1998, when Harding was used as a parking lot during the U.S. Open at the nearby Lake Course of the Olympic Club. Renovation to TPC Harding Park began in the spring of 2002. The course property remains under the ownership of the city and county of San Francisco. On October 6, 2005, Harding Park hosted the WGC-American Express Championship, its first PGA Tour event since 1969, and was won by Tiger Woods. In addition to the course being short there is a decent amount of trouble with tons of Cypress trees, doglegs and bunkers. The winning score by Tiger at the WGC in 2005 was minus 10.

Last year, the Match Play offered us an incredible finish as Jason Day survived Victor Dubuisson’s numerous miraculous shots down the stretch to finally claim his first World Golf Championship trophy with a birdie on the fifth extra hole at Dove Mountain. It looked as though Day was on the verge of winning at 2-up with two holes left, before Dubuisson drained a 15-foot birdie putt at the 17th hole and win the 18th with a par-save from the bunker. Dubuisson sailed the green with his approach shot on the first extra hole, but snuck his pitch through cactus needles and a TV cable to see it crawl within 4 feet for par. The next hole was much the same, as Dubuisson whacked a wedge through desert bush and rocks to save par again. Three holes later, Day finally ended it with a pitch to 4 feet for a winning birdie.

Tournament history will be important in that it will give you an idea of who has success in match play. It is way different for players to be playing heads up than it is to play in the regular tournament format. By analyzing our Tournament History Page you will be able to see the players that shine in match play and those that struggle. Since the course changes every year, we cannot draw any information from how certain players play on the course.

As we do every week, we will highlight those players that we believe will have the best chance to play well and ideally win the tournament. In addition we will complete a bracket with the players we believe will advance throughout the tournament.

For access to all of our Top Stud Picks, Value Picks, Sleeper Picks, and our own completed bracket, become a premium member.

Top Stud Picks:

 

Jordan Spieth- Simply the hottest golfer on the planet and a guy you have grown accustomed to seeing atop our picks, as we have been recommending him most every week this season. In the 11 events he has played this season, he has made 10 cuts, including an incredible seven Top 10s. He has a T4 at Northern Trust, runner-ups at the Shell Houston Open and Valero, and won the Valspar and The Masters. His last appearance at the RBC Heritage, Spieth finished T11, but he was coming off a world-wind media blitz following his Masters win, and he was visibly exhausted in his Day 1, and he just wasn’t able to recover completely and contend. He is dominating the Strokes Gained statistical category on the PGA Tour as he ranks 5th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, 7th in Strokes Gained Putting, and 2nd in Total Strokes Gained. We see Spieth advancing far in the WGC Match Play this week and has a great shot at winning it all.

Jason Day- Red Hot Player + Weak First Round Pool + Great Match Play History = A Great Pick. Last week Day continued his strong play in 2015 with aT4 and we foresee that continuing this week in San Francisco. This season Day has made the cut in all 8 events he has played with Top 25s in six of those, including T17s at the Sony Open and Arnold Palmer, T3 at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, a T4 at AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, and a championship at the Farmers Insurance Open. Day has had a lot of success in the WGC Match Play in the past with a win last year, a 3rd in 2013, the second round in 2012, and the third round in 2011. Overall his record in WGC match Play is 14-3. He currently ranks 6th in the World Golf Rankings, 5th in driving distance, 18th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, 17th in Total Strokes Gained, and 11th in Greens in Regulation. If Day does not advance to at least the semis we would be extremely surprised.

Rory Mcilroy- For most everybody else’s standards, , Mcilroy’s 2015 has been great, but for his, the results have been a bit disappointing. After inexplicably missing the cut at The Honda Classic, Mcilroy has since had a T9 at the WGC Cadillac, T11 at the Arnold Palmer, and 4th at The Masters. In this tournament in the past Mcilroy had a 5th place finish in 2009, a runner-up finish in 2012. Last year he was upset in the second round by Harris English. He also won his heads up match over Rickie Fowler in last years Ryder Cup and has a career match play record of 11-6.

Dustin Johnson- In Johnson’s appearances since returning from his long layoff he has a T4 at Pebble Beach, 2nd at Northern Trust, MC at Honda, win at WGC Cadillac, T6 at Valero, and T6 at The Masters. He is ranked 1st in driving distance, 1st in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, and 5th in Total Strokes Gained. He has not had any success in this tournament in the past and has only made it out of the first round in six attempts (third round in 2012.)  We are looking more at current form than we are his prowess in match play.

Henrik Stenson – Despite suffering from the flu coming into the Masters, Stenson gutted it out and finished with a respectable T19. Before that he was playing great on the European Tour and then carried it over to the PGA Tour with a T4 at the WGC Cadillac, 4th at Valspar, and runner up at the Arnold Palmer. Even though it is only five starts in this wraparound season on the PGA Tour, his statistics are staggering as he ranks 6th in driving accuracy, 2nd in greens in regulation, 2nd in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, and 1st in Total Strokes Gained. Stenson won this event in 2007, has a 3rd place finish in 2008, but has not had any success since, as he has only made it out of the first round one other time and that was last year when he was upset in the second round by Louis Oosthuizen. As we mentioned before, the PGA has visited Harding Park before and that was for the WGC American Express Championship in 2005. In that tournament Henrik Stenson had a third place finish. Now we are not going to put a tremendous amount of stock in that fact, because it was ten years ago, but it also does not hurt the fact that we really like him this week.

 

Top Value Picks:

 

Matt Kuchar- Until his last appearance, which was the RBC Heritage where he delivered a 5th place finish, Kuchar had been struggling a bit. A disappointing T46 at The Masters and a 70th at the Shell followed several Top 35 finishes, but not nearly up to his standards. We think and hope that his RBC Heritage finish will propel him back to where he belongs amongst the top players in the world. He certainly has a great track record at the WGC Match Play with Top 10 finishes in his last four appearances, including a 3rd in 2011 and a championship in 2013. Per usual his putting has been on point as he ranks 6th in strokes gained putting. In addition, he ranks 56th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green and 20th in Total Strokes Gained.

Brendon Todd- After a rough start to his season, Todd has responded with several solid performances lately including a T10 at AT&T Pebble Beach, T14 at Northern Trust, and Top 30s at WGC Cadillac, Valspar, and Valero. Most recently he had a T4 at the RBC Heritage, which was held at Harbour Town Golf Course, which is similar in length to TPC Harding Park this week. Todd had an excellent 2014, due in large part to his outstanding putting (ranked 6th in Strokes Gained Putting). This season has been different however as Todd has struggled with the flat stick, but has showed signs recently of regaining that 2014 form. He currently ranks 20th in Strokes Gained Putting, 11th in driving accuracy, 27th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, and 14th in Total Strokes Gained. This is Todd’s first appearance in this tournament, but the way he is playing currently, we think he has the opportunity to pull an upset.

Ian Poulter- The first reason we like Poulter is that he has been playing really well lately with a T18 at RBC Heritage, T6 at the Masters, T21 at Arnold Palmer, and T24 at Valspar. The second reason we like him is the fact that he is an absolute monster in Match Play. His record in the WGC Match Play event is 23-11 and he is 4-0-1 in Ryder Cup action. We are not sure exactly why his game is so much better in heads up play as opposed to the regular style tournament play, but it clearly is. The final reason we like Poulter is the pool he is in. Jimmy Walker is the number #1 seed in his group, which is not the easiest number #1 seed, but it is also not like having Rory or Spieth to try and outduel. Walker can get hot, but when he is not, he is extremely beatable. It is not easy to pick upsets, but we think Poulter has a respectable chance.

 

Top Sleeper Picks:

 

Kevin Na – We have been recommending Na for his entire hot streak. That hot streak includes a T9 at the WGC Cadillac, T10 at Valspar, T6 at the Arnold Palmer, T20 at Valero, and T12 at the Masters. He does not have a good history in match play, as he is 0-2, but we believe he is a different player right now. He has a beatable first round pool, and he is playing as well if not better than the others (Matsuyama, Luiten, and Levy). Na has been playing like one of the best players in the world over the past month and look for him to have a legit chance of advancing.

Harris English- Last year English pulled of a big upset of Rory Mcilroy in the second round of the WGC Match Play before losing to Jim Furyk in the 3rd round. Now ranked 56th in the world, English has been playing well so far this year including highlights of a T2 at the Sony Open, T10 at Valspar, and a runner up finish in the playoff at the Farmers Insurance Open. He disappointed last week as he missed the cut at the Zurich, but the weather caused such issues that we are going to look past that. English currently ranks 42nd in greens in regulation, 24th in driving distance, 49th in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green, and 21st in Total Strokes Gained.

Graeme Mcdowell- This recommendation is obviously not based upon current form, because Mcdowell has been really poor. So far this season on the PGA Tour, McDowell has a missed the cut at the Honda and Arnold Palmer, had a T52 at the Masters, T56 at the WGC Cadillac, and a T26 in his last appearance at the RBC Heritage. So why are we recommending McDowell, well because he is a monster in match play completion. He has always played well in the Ryder Cup, including this fall when he beat Jordan Spieth heads up. In this tournament in the past he has won three matches the last two years in route to quarterfinal appearances and had a Top 10 in 2011 as well.  His overall record in match play is 9-8 in WGC, 3-1 in Ryder Cup, and 30-14 in all match play. He has been downright disappointing so far this year and we would not bet our bankroll on him winning this tournament, but he has the ability to generate an upset.

Russell Henley – Henley is in the most wide open first round pool in the tournament. We can easily see any of the four players advancing out, so why not take a guy who is playing really well and is at such an affordable price. Henley is 1-1 in WGC match play competition. His last appearance snake bit a lot of people as he missed the cut by 1 stroke at RBC Heritage. For that reason people will most likely be avoiding him like the plague. Before that he delivered a 21st at The Masters and a 4th at the Shell Houston Open. Henley is a good putter, which is key in Match play and ranks 12th in Strokes Gained Putting.
As always, best of luck to you this week, and let us know how you do.

 

-Fantasy Golf Insider