Jeff’s Hardcore Core- CIMB Classic

I am always very anxious to see the ownership percentages once lineups lock on Thursday mornings. Early in the season it is very difficult to try and predict which way the masses are going to go, especially with all of the new players on Tour. I also take an interest in who the DFS golf players  that I consider “good” are owning as well. I believe this is critical information each and every week when building our strategy and core players. This is why we post the tournament information from the previous week, so that you can analyze how the ownership breaks down. GPP Data from Safeway Open

As you might assume, last week was kind of all over the board when it came to ownership. My strategy going in was to own some top players up top and then target some of those new players on tour that would be under owned, or at least I hoped were under owned. The strategy worked out really well as guys I wanted to be overweight on in my core, came in shockingly low-owed. Some examples were Keith Mitchell- 10%, Rob Oppenheim- 3%, Denny McCarthy- 2%, Bronson Burgoon-1%, and Andrew Landry 3%. Not all of these guys performed well, but the goal of targeting guys under the radar was on point. I will continue to target these guys throughout the Fall as I think they all have high potential for their price and ownership. Not many of these newcomers on Tour will be playing in Malaysia this week, so we will have to wait until next week. Of those guys mentioned in the under the radar category, the best was Andrew Landry, who finished T7 and racked up a lot of DK and Fanduel points with 2 eagles over the weekend. Bronson Burgoon also played well and provided value for his price finishing T17. The others were a big disappointment and surprised me how their momentum did not carry over from the Web.com finals, especially Rob Oppenheim, who was absolutely horrendous, especially putting. Tony Finau turned out to be a wise inclusion into the core, as was Grayson Murray, and Chez Reavie. The guys who really hurt were Peter Uihlein, who looked absolutely disgusting. I will be reevaluating his inclusion in the core going forward, as his play on U.S soil has been really poor. Nate Lashley looked as though he was going to slide through the cut until he double bogeyed the easy Par 5 last hole to miss the cut by a stroke. Jamie Lovemark made the cut, but was a big disappointment for his price.

One thing I wanted to point out and it might be obvious with Brendan Steele winning is the importance of course history. I was guilty of not placing enough importance on it last week, did not include Steele in my core, and I paid for it. As I am watching Steele play all week, it was evident that he was ultra comfortable at Silverado. I let his lousy form cloud my judgement rather than using it to get a cheap price and reasonable ownership for a guy who would tear up the course.

This week we have a smaller field (78 players) and a no-cut event. We need to make decisions on how we will structure our lineups based upon the pricing and also with the format of the event.  We have several situations as I described above where guys are coming into this event, where they have had success here before, but do not have the greatest form.

Jeff’s Strategy & Hardcore Core- CIMB Classic
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