Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Travelers Championship

An exciting end to an outstanding U.S. Open as the high expectations of host course, Pebble Beach were certainly met. The rough was difficult and the greens were just about perfect. Speaking of perfect, the weather was terrific as well. It might have been a little chilly for June, but to not have any rain delays or significant wind that influenced play very much is miraculous. Gary Woodland became a first time major winner, which is certainly impressive, but how about Brooks Koepka continuing to be a force even on a course that really did not play directly to his strength as the last two have.

I heard from a bunch of Team FGI members on Sunday who had sweats and although I did not have any teams in the running for a huge payday, I was rooting hard for our folks. One in particular was David Kotler, his screenname is dak1616, was way up the leaderboard in multiple contests including the millionaire maker. His team consisted of Rose, Matsuyama, Xander, Woodland, Stenson, and Reavie. I am not sure how much David ended up winning, but he took tied for 6th place in the Return to the Beach GPP worth $8,333 and he tied for 2nd in the millionaire maker good for $116,666. An incredible score for David and a day I am sure he will remember forever, congrats David!

What went right for my core? I am sure David will attest to the fact that Chez Reavie was certainly the highlight from the core last week as he delivered a T3 for $6,900 and was about 5% owned. I owned about 15% of Reavie, which put me at about 3X overweight the field. Reavie fit the exact type of player that I talked about targeting last week, accurate off the tee, accurate into greens, and had a good couple of appearances at Pebble the last 2 years. Xander was again huge for us at a big event placing T3. As long as he remains in the $8k-$9k range in big events with strong fields, you can bet we are going to stay on him. Simpson, Casey, Hatton, Kuchar, Hideki, Furyk, and Reed all did a serviceable, if not solid job for us. There has never been a U.S Open since I have been playing DFS golf where there have been so many 6/6 rosters that made it to the weekend. In years past the lower cutline has meant a bloodbath for rosters with very few getting 6/6. Even with that high of a number, it is still  hard to avoid grenades and for the most part my core did that getting 17 of 19 players through the cut. It is pretty amazing when only two of your core players miss the cut (Glover & Poulter) no matter what the cutline looks like, so that was certainly a big reason we did so well last week, considering we did not have Woodland.

What went wrong? The obvious is not having Woodland or Koepka as part of my core. Woodland was certainly a must in order to win a huge GPP, but Koepka not necessarily. Its funny, there were a lot of rosters that made a ton of money without Brooks on them, including our boy David Kotler. A more balanced approach with guys like Xander, Rose, Scott, Woodland, etc proved to be the best route. Certainly having Koepka was not a bad thing, it just wasn’t the end all be all like having Woodland was. As I mentioned, before, only two guys in my core missed the cut and it was two guys I would have thought would be a couple of the more likely ones to make it with Poulter and Glover. The only regret I have besides the obvious in not owning Woodland was not having some exposure to Rahm or Scott. Normally I am all over top players in the world like Rahm who are underpriced and underowned. I was really worried about accuracy and Rahm sometimes struggles with that, but with the elite of the elite in the world, we need to remember that they can win on any course, no matter what. If we just would have had 15-20% we would have been overweight, and it would have been a good investment. I have been on Scott a ton lately and went away from him, mostly because of ownership and other options that I liked in that price range. I should have had some exposure even if it was just equal to the field as it would have really enhanced those more balanced teams that I built.

The week after a major is always difficult, especially after an epic one played at an iconic golf course, but Fantasy Golf never rests, so we bounce right back into the swing of things with The Travelers Championship this week.

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- Travelers Championship-
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