Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Deutsche Bank Championship
Last week for the Barclays, was obviously a very good one for the Core. I received a ton of emails from Team FGI with success stories. Special shoutout to Richard King, who won $26,000 in GPPs last week on Draftkings! Numerous players made the difference for us in GPPs including Reed (1), Grillo (2), Day (4), Scott (4), Watson (13), Horschel (13), Palmer (13), Steele (22), etc. It is not a time to sit back and be content with our win, we need to press on and work even harder the next couple of weeks because there are some GPPs with very large prizes, that we want someone from Team FGI to win. In the premium section I am going to discuss a couple of different strategies for GPPs this week. In particular, I have had several requests from people to address the $1,500 Main Event, so I will do that. Best of luck this week!
Jeff’s Hardcore Core & Strategy- Deutsche Bank Championship
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The Deutsche Bank Championship is a bit different tournament of a tournament when you look at what type of player has had success in the past at TPC Boston. Of course the bombers like Jason Day and Adam Scott have really nice track records, but unlike most other courses it is not bombers who totally dominate. Watson, DJ, Holmes, Koepka, etc have not overpowered TPC Boston like they do most other courses. Rather, guys like Furyk, Kuchar, Zach Johnson, Charley Hoffman, John Senden, Brandt Snedeker, Stricker, etc have had a ton of success. Last year at the Draftkings Fantasy Golf World Championship (FGWC), I walked the course a couple times every day, so I really feel like I know each hole well and know that there is a premium on iron play and approach game. I was fortunate enough to have qualified twice, so I had two teams. I knew in the contest (only 25 teams) that most everybody was going to grab at least one stud (Day, Spieth, Rory) and the same holds true this year. So I elected to fade the total studs and build a team around the upper/middle tier guys including: Furyk, Kuchar, Paul Casey, Danny Lee, Kevin Kisner. This proved to be a great move, as Day, Spieth, and Rory all under-performed and it set me apart. If Paul Casey had not wd after making the cut, I would have for sure had a runner-up finish ($100,000), with a chance at $200,000 if Casey did really well. Even with Casey’s wd, I still finished 6th , so it shows you how good that team was. If you are building multiple GPP lineups, I would recommend you try something similar to that strategy on a couple teams this week. Not too many people will not own Day, DJ, Rory, Spieth, or Scott in any lineup. There are some great options below those guys that can certainly win this tournament, including many of the middle range guys.
Another strategy that I utilize every week is tee time stacking. If the weather reflects a significant advantage to one side or the other I will stack a lot of teams, but even if the forecast doesn’t necessarily indicate a huge advantage I will still stack some teams. Now I do not randomly pick players just because of their tee time, but I utilize the players in my Core (and a few outside) to build really solid lineups, with everybody in the same tee time wave. If weather or course conditions become a factor, like they did last week, then you have a significant edge over the field. I hear from many of you that stacked the Thursday A.M./Friday P.M tee times last week after my email, and it paid off huge. This week with $100,000 to the winner in the $3 event, if I build 100 lineups, approximately 30-40% of them will be grouped by tee times. It is a strategy that not many people in the industry talk about, but one that has proved invaluable to us and our members on certain occasions.
The $1,500 Main Event contest will have 370 teams competing in it. For those of you who are used to huge 10,000+ player fields, these are a little different. Now, most likely you will need to have the winner on your roster, but it sometimes is not mandatory in a smaller field GPP like this. Last week’s $300 tournament had 647 entries and the winning team did not have Patrick Reed on it. This makes that balanced, contrarian roster even more valuable. If you can get all six guys in the Top 15, you do not necessarily need to own the winner (depending who it is), if it is Day, then yes the winning roster will have the winner. The field is only 100 players and the cut-line still remains at the Top 70 and ties, so technically it should be easier to get six guys through the cut than usual. However, last year at the FGWC, none of the 25 teams were able to get 6 through the cut with surprising missed cuts from Koepka, Finau, Speith, Bohn, etc.
The pricing is a little bit tougher than last week, but it is still not real tough. There are some extremely viable players down in the $6k range, making it possible to own a stud and a few balanced guys if you want to take that approach. If I were to select a stud, it would be Jason Day. I think his ceiling is the highest of anybody and I also think his floor is the highest, as we saw him play very mediocre last week and finish 4th. If you stack Day and someone like Kuchar, you still have $7,275/player, which is plenty to have a solid remaining four guys. As always I feature players from all price ranges in my core.
If you want to go a bit contrarian, I think Spieth, Stenson, Matsuyama, and Rose are will all be owned at a lower clip than they normally would be, and they are all very capable of Top 5 finishes. Guys like Oosthuizen and Grace will probably be completely ignoed. I believe Day and Adam Scott will be the top 2 owned high end players. Remember when you go contrarian, you do not need to have been 100% contrarian. Often times the winning rosters will contain a few of the higher owned players combined with only 2 or 3 contrarian plays. As he did last year, Zach will do an in-depth study into all winning GPP rosters this season and share our findings with you.
I hope you found this useful and have a feel for a couple of different options as far as approaches go. Ultimately, you need to utilize the strategy that you feel comfortable with.
Day
Spieth
Scott
Garcia
Grillo
Watson
Furyk
Horschel
Kuchar
Johnson
Dufner
Snedeker
Knox
Kisner
Simpson
Summerhays
Steele
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