Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Honda Classic

The first event of the Florida swing kicks off this week with the Honda Classic and with the new schedule we have quite a nice stretch of golf coming up with the Arnold Palmer next week and then The Players Championship leading into The Masters the start of April.  Of course it always helps to fuel our excitement when we are doing as well as we have been so far this season.  We will continue to give you the best information we possibly can, to help you stay winning.  We will dive into the Honda, but first let’s recap WGC Mexico-

What went right?

Outside of Dustin Johnson, my two top tier guys-McIlroy and Thomas were the two best plays in the top tier scoring the 2^nd most and 8^th most DK points respectively.  I have been behind Rory each tournament this year and he continues to produce despite being low owned every single week.  I will continue to back him in what I predict to be a big season for him and possibly his first win at The Masters.  Another staple in my core was Patrick Cantlay who finished 6^th in DK points.  Cam Smith also came up huge for us as we capitalized on his bounceback from Riviera, scoring 85.5 DK points, good for 10^th highest for only $7,400. One of the very best plays last week was Patrick Reed.  He was literally mentioned by nobody in the industry and we took advantage of 7% or less ownership in every GPP and the upside he possesses if he is on his game.  Well he came through for us as he was the 9^th highest DK point scorer.  Several times this season now we have taken advantage of high upside, top players in the world being massively under-owned (2 weeks ago it was Marc Leishman).  Trying to predict who will play well is important in GPPs, but using game theory and identifying guys that will be low owned and taking shots on them is so very important.  Plus, as we have talked about so much, when guys like that are so low owned, our investment does not have to be huge to be two or three times overweight the field.

What went wrong?  Well, look no further than not having the winner, Dustin Johnson in our core.  Even though he did not end up being super highly owned (12-15%) if you did not have him, you did not win a large field GPP.  It is quite disappointing for me because I have DJ in my core the majority of the time.  The fact that I like JT and Rory a bit more considering their price, took me off DJ.  I talked about doing our best to avoid the $6k range because very rarely do guys in this range crack the Top 15, which we were shooting for having all six of our players in.  Well if you had Kiradech Aphibarnrat, then congratulations because he was a monster, scoring the fifth highest DK points for only $6,700.  I unfortunately did not have him in my core. Not having much exposure to the $6k range was the correct play as only two other guys finished in the Top 30 in DK point scorers. The two guys that I had in that range (Grace and Knox) unfortunately were not those two, but they both did finish in the Top 50 point scorers (although that is not what we were looking for).  The only other player in the core, outside of the $6k range that I could say was really a bust was Alex Noren, but our exposure was minimal and his price was cheap.  Otherwise most everybody put up a respectable performance and paid off their price.

We continue to do well in small, field no-cut events and have so for four years now.  I like the full-field cut events, but when you continually make money in these, it makes you want more than just a handful a year.

Onto the Honda Classic-

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- Honda Classic
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