Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Pebble Beach Pro-Am

The PGA Tour heads North this week, although still in California for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.  Max Homa was victorious again last week on California soil at Torrey Pines, as his impressive run over the last couple of years continues.  It is amazing how a guy who could barely stay on tour can elevate himself to an elite player in the world.  For DFS purposes, the major thing that stood out to me on Saturday was basically a reinforcement of what we always try and do for the Farmers, which is target experience.  You could see in my core, that I valued guys who have been around the block and who have played Torrey and other California courses quite a bit in the past, even if their form was not the best coming into the event.  Guys like Hideki Matsuyama, Brendan Steele, and Justin Rose, all who did well last week.  Guys that also fit the experience description that I did not own unfortunately included Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, hell even Jimmy Walker.  There were barley any young bucks atop that leaderboard when the dust settled on Saturday.  I will be circling, highlighting, and underlining my notes to continue to target veterans for the Farmers in the future.

We have ourselves another Pro-Am event this week, which I believe is the last one we have to endure this season. Another three course rotation, which I will talk about below.  Best of luck this week my friends!

 Jeff’s Strategy & Core- AT&T Pebble Beach

Update-  Just a ho hum week, oh except the fact that one of the few elite players in this field came out today and disclosed that he is dealing with a neck injury.  Of course I am referring to Matthew Fitzpatrick, one of my favorite top tier guys this week.  He said he hurt his neck last Saturday, but he will try and play through the injury.  Whenever I hear things like, “I’ve not got like full speed or anything like that” and “just going through the ball is just a little bit more difficult than normal”, it worries me.  I pledged at the start of the season that I was not going to mess around with neck and back injuries.  These guys are so willing to just mail in these tournaments if they have an injury like this and they have a poor start, that I just do not want any part of it. Being that he is planning on playing the next two weeks, if he does not have a great start, he will be looking for a reason to bail on this pro-am crap.   It served us well when we bailed on Xander Schauffele at the TOC.  If Fitz wins, he wins, but I am not willing to take a zero on half my lineups.  So, I am removing him from all my lineups this week.  I would assume a lot of people who heard this news today are doing the same and many will move to Viktor and Spieth.  I already own Viktor, and I wanted to fade an already high owned Spieth, so I am going to pivot elsewhere. 

Here are a few of the places I will pivot-

Taylor Pendrith. People are bailing on him after two events this year.  It sounds like he will be owned in the single digits.  I liked him coming into the year and think he has some upside.  Although I have not liked his two results so far this year, I think it is a tad early to give up on him.  With just a 18-20% stake we can get close to doubling up the field.

I have owned Dean Burmester in each of his two events this year and he has had a T54 and T37 (not terrible considering his price).  He is a guy who can score and with the wind looking to be minimal the first couple of days, he is capable of lighting up the easier courses.  No need to go crazy with exposure, but 15-18%, it gives us some leverage on another guy who I like this year on tour. 

Andrew Putnam is now in play for me at $9,700.  Very solid end of the fall and into the start of 2023, he actually has shown more upside than before with a 4^th at Sony and runner-up at ZOZO.  

I will also need to add a little more exposure elsewhere, so I will probably own some Denny McCarthy, more Keith Mitchell, and Joel Dahmen.

I will pivot off Fitz to these guys and upgrade elsewhere. Overall it is going to make my lineup composition this week more balanced than before.  

 

Sign up for an FGI account today to see the rest of this post.