Jeff’s Hardcore Core- John Deere Classic

I cannot tell you how much fun I had at TPC Twin Cities last week. Considering the fact that the field was not incredibly deep, it turned out to be an amazing finish and the course was spectacular. It was great meeting all of you who were able to come out. I was there Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and Zach and Aaron were there on Friday and Saturday. The course was in great shape, there were a ton of players (including big names) in contention until the very end, and of course the dramatic eagle from tour rookie Matthew Wolff. The weather was spectacular (which is not always a given in Minnesota) and it was just an awesome time being out at the course. Be sure to put this event on your calendar next year and get up here to hang with us!

This week we have the John Deere Classic, which makes last week’s field look like a major. Still we have fantasy and dfs golf, so we will be entertained. Let’s recap last week before we talk about this week’s event.

What went right? I went with a little larger core as I have been doing for these weaker field events. The reason I do it is twofold. 1. To get exposure to a few more guys. 2. To lessen my exposure to each player. Both are for the reason that these events are much more highly variant than those with stronger fields and become far more unpredictable. This I am sure is something that you already know, but for further proof look no further than the winners the last two weeks- Nate Lashley and Matthew Wolff. Out of the 20 players in my core last week, 18 made the cut and 16 went through the modified cut as well. I ended up having around 30% of my teams get 6/6 through the cut, which was right around double the average. The core also had some high upside finishes with our lowest priced guy Troy Merritt delivering a monster payoff week posting a T7 for $6,900. Of course Wyndham Clark remained hot and finished T5 although it looked like we were going to get better for him late on Sunday. Still it is hard to be disappointed with a T5 from a $7,100 player. Collin Morikawa was a guy I was really high on coming into last week and owned a little over 20%. If not for a miracle eagle putt by Wolff, we would have seen a playoff and who knows maybe Morikawa could have got the victory. Matsuyama was the best performing high dollar player for us ending 7th. Hovland, Im, and Piercy all finished Top 15 in the $8k-$9k range.
As far as strategic fading went, it could not have worked out any better. I let others in the industry fall all over Doc Redman over one weeks result and massively overinflate his ownership to over 20% across GPPs. I thought it might be around 15%, which was high enough for me to fade, but 20% was absurd. Anytime I see that happen it becomes an auto fade for me and one that pays off more times than not. With his missed cut we essentially eliminated a fifth of the field on that play alone. The other fade that I made was Sepp Straka, who I thought would be higher owned than he actually came in at (7%). If I would have known it was only that high it would not have been such an auto fade, but it turned out for the best as he missed the cut as well.

What went wrong? I can’t say I am kicking myself for not having Matthew Wolff as a core member last week. I did have 5%-7% exposure to him in my 150 lineup builds last week to be 2X there, but in my 20 lineup builds, it was just hard pulling the trigger on a guy who really hadn’t done anything on tour yet. My biggest regret was my decision to go with Koepka up top, especially instead of Bryson. I had specifically talked about how Koepka and DJ show little signs of motivation at these lesser events, while guys like Matsuyama and Bryson seem much more the grinder type and much more focused in these lesser field and less prestigious events. I had Matsuyama, but needed to make a decision between Brooks and Bryson and I made the wrong one. I really thought Bryson would be significantly higher owned than Brooks, but as it turned out he only ended up 2-3% higher owned. As the week went on, I felt like others were of the same mindset as me and felt like Brooks was the contrarian play and elected to go with him which brought their ownerships a lot closer than it should have been. I should have zigged when others zagged and reacted to the sentiment in the industry and shifted to Bryson. That was a mistake on my part and one that cost us, and for that I apologize.

Results wise, it was another week of being slightly profitable. Nothing big myself in over a month now, but thankfully I have heard from a ton of you who have. Keep up the hardwork and if we continue to keep our head above water the majority of weeks, the big score does happen and it will happen again soon.

Good luck this week Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- John Deere Classic

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