Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Sanderson Farms Championship

It feels good to be back in the swing of things this fall with PGA DFS and it also feels good to do as well as we did in the first week of the season last week. This week we have the Sanderson Farms with a similar field (maybe a bit worse), and we will do our best to keep the momentum going throughout the fall. As a reminder, be sure to check out my article- Top PGA Tour Newcomers to Target in the 2019-2020 Season. There were several members from that article that did very well last week including Scottie Scheffler, Robby Shelton, Lanto Griffin, Harry Higgs, Doug Ghim, and Viktor Hovland. Overall 5 of the 12 players detailed in the article placed in the Top 20. It is important to know who some of the new guys are that have such high upside, because not many of our competitors do.

What went right? Our guy Joaquin Niemann, who I have featured in my core pretty much since last spring rewarded us with a runaway victory. Of course we were far from the only ones on him, but regardless if we were to have a shot in any GPPs we needed him on our rosters. Hopefully, you were able to have some lineups that paired Niemann with other members of the core who did well like Sebastian Munoz (T7), Viktor Hovland (T10). In my column I talked about stacking a couple high dollar guys and then dropping down to the low $7k and $6k to round out our rosters. For that reason I had a lot of lineups with Hovland/Niemann stacks along with guys like Nate Lashley (T3), Harry Higgs (T19), Lanto Griffin (13th), and Robby Shelton ($7,200). Unfortunately I only had variations of rosters with those six guys and not one roster with all of them on the same one or I would be $100k richer right now. The pieces were there however, now all we need is the lineup generator to find that perfect gem for us combining all the correct guys from the core.  FGI member Bo Fulton had a lineup similar and won $10,000 it included Hovland, Niemann, An, Lashley, Ghim, and Shelton.  Congratulations Bo!

What went wrong? Nothing is ever perfect and having a stake in Bryson DeChambeau worked out very poorly. One driving factor in my having exposure to him was the lack of ownership that I felt he would have. In the $8 he was only owned by 15% of the field, so all it took was owning 30% to be 2X overweight and take our shot with arguably the most talented golfer in the field. He clearly did not have his A game last week, blew the cut, and blew up 30% of my teams. Hurting me just about as much were Sepp Straka and Tom Lewis who I felt were two really solid plays in the $7k range with tremendous upside and they both blew the cut.  Looking back, not factoring in the result I do not have any problem with the decisions I made and would likely make the same plays again.  There is one thing that I did make a mistake with that I would change if I could do it again and that is not owning Scottie Scheffler.  I wrote him up first in my Top Newcomers to Target column and he is my favorite new guy coming onto the tour this year.  In my head I pictured him priced in the low to mid $8k range.  When his salary was $9,300, I automatically thought that was way too much.  If I could do it again, I would not put as much emphasis on the extra $800-$1,000 that I thought I was paying too much and more on how good Scheffler is as a player.  He is every bit as good as some of the other players in the $9k range and I should have taken that into consideration rather than become so focused on the fact that it was more than I had originally thought it would be.  DFS is like anything else (work, school, etc) we need to learn from our mistakes and in the future I will make the change.

Overall a very strong week myself  and FGI members, Nice work Team FGI, I love seeing you get out to such a great start of the year. It is going to be a huge year for FGI, so lets go!!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- Sanderson Farms Championship-
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