Jeff’s Hardcore Core- WGC HSBC

The final stop on the Asian swing for the PGA Tour is the WGC-HSBC this week where we have another small field, no-cut event, just like the past two weeks.  Unlike last week however, we have history for the course this week.  I will talk all about my strategy for the WGC as well as my player pool for GPPs, but first let’s recap last week’s ZoZo Championship.

What went right?  Not enough.  My top tier guys played mediocre and my bottom tier guys played awful.  The bright spots were few and far between but included Gary Woodland who finished 5^th and paid off his $9,500 price tag as well as Poulter (T13), Wolff (T13), and Conners (T6).  I decided to own Justin Thomas again after he fueled us in Korea and he finished T17, which is not a disaster, but it certainly was not good enough for his $11,800 price tag, especially when a couple other top tier players like Rory and Hideki finished so well.  Those were the only guys that really did exceptional last week in the top tier.  Middling finishes by Morikawa (T22), Niemann (T33), Grillo (T30), and Sabbatini (T33) did not help us much either.

What went wrong?  Well I didn’t own Hideki, Rory, or Tiger, so that obviously hurt bad.  There were not a lot of believers in Tiger last week (5-6% of the field in GPPs).  Normally I am more than happy to swoop in on low owned contrarian plays, but coming off surgery and a two-month hiatus, I just didn’t believe he would be sharp and especially not for a $9,300 price tag.  I felt much more confident in guys like Hovland, Morikawa, and Finau who have been playing often this fall and have been playing well.  Tiger defies the odds however and does things that no other golfer could even imagine.  Shake off surgery, wipe the dust off and go win a PGA Tour event, easily.  It is crazy and something I did not anticipate.  Viktor Hovland and Tony Finau who I had significant investment into both were downright bad and gave us their worst finishes in a long time (T41 and T59).    I decided to make a contrarian play on Matthew Fitzpatrick with a small amount of shares and that turned out about as bad as it could have (75^th).  Guys who had been playing well coming in like Andrew Putnam and Kevin Streelman were unexplainably terrible.  Kevin Kisner who I believe was a perfect fit for the course, but I mentioned in my article I was concerned about the long lay-off, well I should have waited to see him show some form before I bought, because his game was not sharp in the least.

Overall, I can’t remember a week that has been that bad in years for my player pool.  Anytime we have a brand new course it adds variance as well as crazy weather, delays, postponements, etc all of which we had that add to the unpredictability of the outcome.  Anytime we have weeks like this I am glad we practice disciplined bankroll management.  We talk about this often, but it is so important.  The reason Team FGI  has been able to stick around so long in this crazy game of DFS golf while the majority of others have fallen by the wayside is we do not allow our bad weeks to ruin us.  While others bet over their heads and expose way too much of their overall bankroll in a given week and go bankrupt, we are still here.  There is no reason that you should be exposing more than 15% of your overall bankroll in any given week.  DFS is highly variant in every sport, but especially golf.  Terrible weeks are going to happen, it is a reality.  For those that do not acknowledge that, they will be gone.  We have our good weeks and we have our bad weeks, but we need to be around for our huge weeks, so stay disciplined and stick with your research.

Onto this week’s event, good luck Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- WGC HSBC

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