Jeff’s Hardcore Core- WGC-HSBC

The final week of night golf for us in the United States as the WGC- HSBC is the last stop on the Asian swing. A loaded field as always for a guaranteed paycheck although it always amazes me the unwillingness for some guys to show up and play. I mean who of us would want to be bothered with flying on a private jet to China, stay in a luxury suite at a swanky hotel, and just show up and play 72 holes of golf for a mere $40k? Oh yeah with a shot at $1.6 million dollars.  It just speaks to how much money these guys make and how little a tremendous sum of money to us means to them. Anyway, there are some reasonably sized contests on Draftkings, although they did reduce the big $5. Before we dive into my strategy and core of players this week, let’s recap last week.

What went right?- Actually not that much. I chose to hitch my wagon to Justin Thomas and he made me pay for that decision finishing way outside of where we needed him to. Brooks Koepka was the necessary play in the upper tier and was essential to winning any size GPP. Cabrera Bello was my best player and thankfully he helped save some rosters and salvage some money for me, so it was not a complete wash. His $7,900 price tag was so appealing and yet he wasn’t that highly owned in GPPs (around 15%), which really surprised me. Another big positive from the core included Keith Mitchell who was huge and the 7th highest DK point scorer at only $7,100.

What went wrong?- As you had to take a stand in the upper tier and could not own everybody I elected to go JT and then drop down to Casey and Horschel. Casey was fine for us and although did not finish real high in the standings (T18) he did fine DK points wise from hitting some bonuses, including a hole in one. Billy Horschel was a utter disaster and basically eliminated every roster that had him on. I thought his performance at CIMB was an aberration and that I would capitalize on low ownership, but it backfired and I paid the price. Sunjae Im, who I was surprised by his massive ownership was disappointing. Had I thought he would be owned between a quarter and a third of the field across GPPs he would have become an easy fade for me. I need to remind myself how it seems like everybody knows all the details, like it was Im’s home course, unlike a few years ago when nobody but us would have known that. I think we can use this to our advantage however. Whenever we know of a fact like that or popular tidbit,  we need to assume that folks are going to gravitate toward it. This will help us fade massive chalk and when they disappoint like Im did last week, we will benefit significantly from it. Others who flopped included Jason Kokrak, who I have officially cast off to “never own again island”, Stewart Cink, and Kevin Tway. I apologize if you followed my lead on some of these guys. Sometimes we are going to have weeks where we whiff and we just need to try get back to our winning ways as difficult as it is. I am confident we go back to where we ended the season and started at the Safeway with some good success this week.

Best of luck Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- WGC-HSBC
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