Takeaways From Week 1 Of The European Tour On Draftkings.

As you know, last week Draftkings debuted contests for The European Tour and as no surprise to us, the popularity was enormous. All contests filled easily and the buzz around the DFS golf industry was abunant. We at Fantasy Golf Insider have always followed the European Tour closely and now we get to capitalize on our knowledge on a weekly basis. Now available is our European Tour Package, which if you have not signed up for yet, I would encourage you to immediately. (Sign up for European Tour Package here) Why? Because it is a huge opportunity to make money, especially while Euro DFS is in its infancy. Most people do not know much about The European Tour or its players yet, but they are still fascinated and you can bet they will be playing in contests. This will offer a lot of dead money for Team FGI to take advantage of. We will offer the same top level, industry leading content for the Euro Tour as we do for The PGA Tour. Despite the fact that there have not been contests for the European Tour, we have still been following it closely every week, to take advantage of Euro Players during majors and WGC events. Already in week 1 we had a huge week, profiting big, and I personally doubled my money playing GPPs. For those of you who read my article: The Fantasy Golf Insider Crystal Ball: 2016 Edition, you were able to capitalize on one of the 20 players that I highlighted as one of my favorites for 2016, Chris Wood who won last week’s European Tour event.

After you sign up for access to the European Tour, be sure to read our articles every week dedicated specifically to the Euro Tour event, use the tools, like Who’s Hot, Tournament History, Sportsbook Odds vs Daily Pricing, and Our Model. If you have any questions about strategy or anything else, do not hesitate to send us a tweet or email, we want you to make money.

For access to this entire article and all of our tools and articles, sign up for our European Tour Package.(Sign up for European Tour Package here)
[cointent_lockedcontent view_type=”condensed buyButtonOff”]
As I assumed heading into the first week of contests on Draftkings, ownership would be extremely easy to predict. Those players that play frequently on the PGA Tour or who have had some success in the Majors or WGC events will be those players that will be heavily owned. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. Rafa Cabrera-Bello, Danny Willett, Francesco Molinari, Soren Kjeldsen, Byeong-Hun An, Luke Donald, Jamie Lovemark, Shane Lowry and Russell Knox were all among the highest players owned. I am expecting this to be the case going forward for the foreseeable future, because most people just do not know most of the field in European events and will gravitate to those players that they have seen play before and are familiar with. This presents a huge opportunity for us, as we have seen how fruitful it is to fade the most heavily owned guys on the PGA Tour week after week. In my opinion, it is the most important factor and strategy that can be used to gain an edge in GPPs in DFS Golf today. Heading into an event take a look at the field and make a list of those players that have had exposure to U.S. golf fans. Those players that play primarily on the PGA Tour, WGC events or in the major tournaments, especially if they have had success. Shane Lowry was a guy that people know from his time on the PGA Tour and his WGC win so 13% owned him in the $3 and $27 and 19% in the $300, despite his steep salary of $11,000. I faded Lowry completely and it paid of nicely as I was able to separate my GPP teams from a decent portion of the field. Every week I will mention those players that I feel will be heavily owned in my Jeff’s Hardcore Core European Tour article.

Although I do not have any statistical data that supports my next thought, my experience and what I have witnessed, says that players who play primarily on the PGA Tour and who do not play regularly on the European Tour, but go over occasionally do not typically perform up to expectations. We definitely saw that last week as Russell Knox missed the cut, Jamie Lovemark finished 59th(this was an easy fade for me last week), and Luke Donald T27 all disappointed. I will continue to follow this observation and possibly develop some statistical evidence, but for now, I just recommend you keep it in mind and see if it holds true.

With The European Tour and it’s players being so new to US golf fans, I feel as though we are going to have a large edge in identifying players that not many people will be privy to. As I mentioned earlier, Chris Wood is one of those guys that I highlighted in my article early in the year because he is an outstanding player, ranked in the Top 55 in the world, yet was only owned by 11% of the field in the $27 Tee-off contest and 10% in the $3 contest on Draftkings. Rikard Karlberg was another example of a top-level talent that not many people were on last week, despite the fact that coming into the BMW he had 8th, 21st, and 10th place finishes. Only 11% of owners rostered him and were able to take advantage of his runner-up finish. I personally had 50% exposure to Jaco Van Zyl last week, and he was only owned by 5% in the $3 and $27 contests and 2.2% in the $300 event. His $7,100 price tag was very surprising to me as he had six Top 25 finishes in the nine events he had played in 2016. His T7 finish helped propel several of my GPP teams well into the money. These were just a few examples of great value, under most people’s radars picks from last week that did not surprise me in the least with their success. I believe great plays like these will be available and under-owned for many months until the U.S. golf fans learn more about them.

Current Form is obviously very important metric that we need to look at every week. Our Who’s Hot Spreadsheet is an excellent resource for the European Tour events, but to dig even deeper down, you can find all worldwide events, including the Asian, African, and Latin America Tours results for every player in the World at The OFFICIAL WORLD GOLF RANKINGS website. You can find real diamonds in the rough on this website and I use this religiously when I am doing my research each week. This leads me to a valuable point and that is when you are researching players current form, you need evaluate the strength of the field of each individual tournament. Just because a guy placed in the Top 10 a tournament in Asia, does not necessarily make it a tremendous accomplishment. If nobody in the field was in the Top 200 in the world, the result definitely needs to be devalued. Our Who’s Hot Spreadsheet has this built into its function, but if you are researching player’s form in obscure tour events be sure to look closely at who was in the field in the individual tournament.

One thing that is going to be a challenge in researching for DFS European Tour is the lack of statistics that are tracked on the European Tour. The following is the best place to find all of the stats tracked European Tour Statistics, but as you will see, there are only a handful of available statistics. Valuable stats like strokes gained tee-to-green and strokes gained putting are not even tracked on the Euro Tour. Instead we need to go by the archaic and misleading stats, such as average putts. We all know how inaccurate that stat can be, and if you have not read an article that I wrote a couple of years ago, Do Statistics Really Matter in Fantasy Golf, I would recommend you go back and read it to see just how valuable the strokes gained statistics are and why. Although it most likely is a negative that we do not have highly informative statistics for the European Tour, neither does anybody else. It will make our observation and experience that much more important. Our model will incorporate the statistics that are available now and help identify who the best plays are based upon the course, just like we do for the PGA Tour.

One other thing we found out about the European Tour in week 1, is it is just as hard to get six guys through the cut as it is on The PGA Tour.
In the $3 Birdie event: Only 6.26% of rosters had 6/6 through the cut (23.5% of rosters had 5/6 through the cut)
In the $27 Tee Off Special event: Only 5.3% of rosters had 6/6 through the cut (25.5% of rosters had 5/6 through the cut)

I truly believe having access to our Euro Tour Package will help you gain a tremendous advantage over the competition. I will continue to create articles as the season goes on that I believe will benefit Team FGI in Euro Tour DFS. Be sure to keep us updated on your progress. Good luck!
[/cointent_lockedcontent]