Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Valero Texas Open

One week away from The Masters and I have already begun thinking about Augusta, and who I might include in my core.  Our guy Aaron is on top of things and has many of our tools updated for The Masters already so be sure to check them out.   Of course we still have this week’s Valero Texas Open to focus on for now and we will certainly dive into that, but first let’s recap last week’s WGC Match Play.

For those of you who didn’t play DFS for the Match-Play event last year or haven’t watched the event, you now know just how slow moving the event is. It certainly is not ideal for DFS, as we get about two shots every 15 minutes and a whole lot of filler in between and unless you had one of the remaining four players, then you have zero interest.  Personally I would rather have a regular stroke play event anyday, but at least they have DFS for it and can live with it once a year.

What went right?  It is important who you own each week, but it is also important who you don’t own.  Coming into the week I felt like a few guys were going to be extremely popular and with the unpredictability of the match play format, I thought it was a great play to fade them.  Bubba Watson, Ian Poulter, and Jason Day were the three that I wanted to fade and as it turned out, none of them advanced out of their pool and it paid off to fade them.  Out of the 15 guys in my core, five of them advanced out of their pool (McIlroy, Rose, Garcia, Kuchar, and Oosthuizen.  Of course Kuchar advanced to the final and racked up 182 DK points points for us, which was huge.  It ended up being a rather chalky week as the winners of large field GPPs had much higher aggregate ownership of their rosters than the winners had last year.  I was not real happy with the outcome of pool play and did not really have much going over the weekend.

What went wrong? I am not happy with myself, because I have had Kevin Kisner in my core his last five events and I went away from him last week.  I was too focused on Tony Finau winning that pool, which steered me away from Kisner.  His run in the match play event last year combined with his solid current form should have been enough to put me on him last week and I missed it, and am not happy about it.  Another guy who I feel like I missed that I should not have was Francesco Molinari.  As with Kisner, Molinari has had success in the match play format and has been in great form.  Just like I had too much focus on Finau in Kisner’s group, I had too much focus on Webb Simpson in Molinari’s group.  Another decision I consider a mistake.  Having those two in my core would have given me a chance to make a deep run in GPPs with the core that I did have.  Not a terrible week, but not anything to write home about.  I am happy to get back to stroke play and the Valero and then onto The Masters.

Good luck this week Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- Valero Texas Open
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