The Daily Spin – An Initial Look At The Masters

Hey Spin-thusiasts, I hope you are enjoying your weekend and taking in some golf down in San Antonio. Apparently, there has been a little bit of wind to deal with and it is blowing away all of those players from tournament who started out on Thursday morning. If your teams were wiped away by this disaster, fear not because we are here to provide you with a much needed distraction with The Masters coming up in just under two weeks. Since Draft Kings has gone above and beyond in offering an unprecedented Millionaire Maker for this tournament, we want to make sure that we are doing our best to give you a lot of extra coverage and insight into this event. As the prices have been set for the field, there should be some great opportunities for value if certain players heat up in the last couple of weeks leading up to the tournament.

Augusta National is a challenging course and clocks in at 7435 yards and plays as a Par 72. As with many courses, distance off the tee will go a long way towards helping the winner enjoy success here. However, driving distance alone will not be enough to separate a player from the other competitors. We predict that the winning score for the course will come in somewhere between -8 and -12 for the weekend so we need to know where players are going to be able to gain ground over their opponents. Since the Par 5 holes tend to play the easiest on the course, we want to take a closer look at the guys who can cut the course down to size and make it manageable to play. The Par 3 and 4 holes do not yield a lot of birdies so players who score well on Par 5 holes are going to have the advantage. We have narrowed our search down to a few statistics here in our initial look at some of the top players in the field: Strokes Gained Tee to Green, Total Driving (a measure of both driving distance and accuracy), Greens In Regulation and Par 4 and Par 5 scoring. Winning players have had a tendency to limit the damage on the more challenging holes while also taking advantage of birdie opportunities. In that regard, those who have scored best on Par 4 holes have the most Top 10 finishes at Augusta going back to 2009. Obviously, putting is going to be important with the tricky greens at Augusta, but for the most part, we will not avoid a player in the top echelon unless that player is putting particularly poorly.

To open our feature preview column, we are going to look quickly at the Top 10 players based on price and take a quick look at how they are playing and how they rank in the relevant stats that we mentioned above.

Rory McIlroy – The top ranked player in the world is struggling a bit thus far since his arrival from the European PGA in February. After missing the cut at The Honda Classic, McIlroy finished 9th at the WGC-Cadillac at Doral and then 11th last week at The Arnold Palmer Classic. He appears to be a bit frustrated, but working through it as The Masters approaches. The fact that his play is a bit off could be an advantage to fantasy players as his price and recent performance could be enough to keep owners away more than usual. For the year, McIlroy ranks 16th in Total Driving as his distance has been solid as usual. Last year, McIlroy was one of the best players in the field in GIR ranking 6th for the year, but has slipped to 80th so far this season leading to tougher decisions around the green and having to be more focused on saving par rather than making birdies. Where he usually dominates, strokes gained tee to green, McIlroy is still a very respectable 20th so far this year, but a full stroke below where he was in 2014 just to give some perspective. With limited stats to measure from, Rory is around 100th currently in Par 5 scoring, but we would anticipate him rebounding to somewhere closer to where he was last year when he ranked 5th overall. He ranked #1 in Par 4 scoring last year as well. McIlroy is usually tough to roster for the average tournament, but he is more intriguing for The Masters as the pricing is so soft that there are a lot of very high quality players priced well below where one would normally see them. This should strongly influence a lot more rosters stacked with Rory at the top than usual.

Bubba Watson – A lot of years, we would start by talking about how Bubba is one of the best in the world, but also one of the most inconsistent players on tour. This year, Watson has turned that around and the erratic play has been eliminated so far. Bubba has four Top 10 finishes this year and has finished in the Top 15 in all 6 events that he has played so far this season. He will be a popular player for owners with two recent wins at Augusta. His numbers show why he kills it at The Masters. He ranks 31st in total driving, 6th in stroke gained tee to green, and 1st in Par 5 scoring. He also tends to rank near the top for Par 4 scoring as well ranking 23rd this year and 6th last year. While his GIR number is high this season, Bubba was 24th last year and typically in the Top 10 in previous years so he is basically the ideal player for this tournament. Also of note is that Bubba is left-handed which has been an interesting factor for winners of The Masters with Bubba winning twice, Phil Mickelson winning three times and Mike Weir winning once all over the last 12 years.

Jordan Spieth – While his experience is limited here, he made the most of his first appearance with a 2nd place finish last year. Coming off a dramatic playoff win at the Valspar Championship should provide him with a lot of momentum heading into The Masters and his 2nd place finish at TPC San Antonio should keep that going. Spieth is a testament as to why the strokes gained statistics are so incredibly relevant in predicting success on in tour events. There is not any one statistic outside of the strokes gained categories where Spieth is dominant. This season, he 44th in driving distance, 135th in accuracy and 151st in greens in regulation. He ranks 39th in scrambling, 30th in Par 4 scoring and 85 in Par 5 scoring. Yet, he is on an amazing tear this season. He ranks 11th in strokes gained tee to green, 23rd in strokes gained putting and 3rd overall in strokes gained. Without the strokes gained stats, you would be forced to muddle through dozens of data points trying to piece together how Spieth has achieved success. Spieth will be a popular pick and will have a great chance to carry his recent success forward at The Masters.

Jason Day – Day has been another player who has been amazingly consistent this season, making all 7 cuts for the tournaments he has entered this year and finishing in the Top 10 four times and in the Top 20 six times. Day has two Top 3 finishes in four starts at Augusta. Day ranks 9th in driving distance, 3rd in greens in regulation and 19th in strokes gained tee to green. Day is not terribly accurate off the tee so that has led to some trouble in the past, but his iron play and scrambling abilities keep him well positioned. This has led to Day ranking 1st in Par 4 scoring. Day will be another popular pick and his price is not as high as it is normally when he plays in events. We will have a fair amount of exposure to Day for our rosters.

Adam Scott – Were it not for the change of putter, Scott might be our favorite play at The Masters. Unfortunately, Scott has been hit and miss with his new putting style and looks to be working through it in his mind. As he gains confidence he will pick up momentum and stop overthinking things, but a missed putt or two can throw him out of whack for a whole round or even an entire tournament. Scott won at Augusta in 2013 and has been in the Top 10 in three of the last four years. He has limited stats from this season to go off of, but is typically a leader in driving distance and total driving and has been ranked 5th in strokes gained tee to green the last two years. Last year, Scott ranked 3rd in Par 4 scoring and 1st in Par 5 scoring. Unfortunately, Scott has tumbled on the greens this season. With the anchor putter, he had moved up to a rank of 55 last year and actually scored a positive .217 strokes gained putting for the year. However, since making the change to upright putting, he is -.633 strokes gained putting, a disastrous loss of .850 strokes. Can Scott pull it together to compete for a title at Augusta? We will own Scott, but will have a hard time overweighting him in our lineups.

Dustin Johnson – Johnson has played solid golf since returning from a lengthy layoff with a win at Doral and two other Top 5 finishes. He is a threat at Augusta, but has not had great success in five starts, finishing as high as 13th in 2013, but also missing the cut last year. His other three finishes were in the 30s. DJ is a big hitter, although not the most accurate of drivers. However, he did rank 21st and 39th the last two years in GIR. He is dominant in the strokes gained tee to green category where he ranks 1st in limited data collected this year, and ranked 9th last year. Unfortunately, for DJ, he struggles with his putting where he ranks 140th in strokes gained putting this year, losing .178 strokes. His distance off the tee helps to keep him in the Top 10 for Par 5 scoring. Although he has stuggled in Par 4 scoring this year, he did rank 24th last season. We probably will limit our exposure to DJ given his lack of success at Augusta, but he will find his way into a small percentage of our rosters.

Henrik Stenson – Stenson is another high level player that just has not had enormous success at Augusta. In nine starts, he has never finished in the Top 10, although to his credit, he has finished 14th and 18th the last two years. He has ranked in the Top 3 in total driving over the last two years and is typically a Top 10 player in strokes gained tee to green. What makes him a little more interesting this season is that his putting has been better than previous years. Although he did miss a few key putts in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his 2nd place finish marked his 3rd consecutive Top 5 finish since returning from the European Tour in March. Stenson is 2nd in GIR this year, was 8th last year and 1st in 2013. Stenson ranks 2nd currently in Par 4 scoring, and while he is 138th in Par 5 scoring this year, he was 7th and 4th in the years prior to this season so we know that it is an area of strength for his game. Stenson is putting it all together this year and we see the pieces coming together this year for Stenson to have his first Top 10 finish at Augusta. He is at a nice price and players will be scared away by his lack of tournament success here so we think he is a very strong play.

Phil Mickelson – We have faded Phil all season and this tournament will be no different. We know that to win the Millionaire Maker, you will probably need to have six players in your lineup that finish in the Top 10. It does not seems likely that Phil will be in the Top 10 this year. He finished 3rd at Augusta in 2012, but then slipped to 54th in 2013 and missed the cut last season. He is still a good tee to green player, ranking 27th this season, but has slipped over the last couple of seasons in GIR, and Par 4 and 5 scoring. His putting, after peaking in 2012 and 2013, slipped in 2014 and again this season falling from 5th in 2013 to 119th this season. Phil is still a competent player and will make a lot of cuts this year, but his pricing is for name value more than anything else. Limit your exposure to Phil at The Masters. As the 8th most expensive player, he will have a hard time achieving that value.

Rickie Fowler – Rickie had an exceptional 2014 season and did everything at major tournaments except to win one. Rickie finished in the Top 5 in all four major tournaments last year. However, he has not gotten off to a great start in 2015. He is still making the cut each event, but his finishes have been underwhelming with only one Top 20 finish for the year. Fowler finished 5th last year in Augusta, but in the previous three years finished between 27th and 38th. He ranks 24th in total driving which allows him to have success at Augusta. However, we think Fowler’s success should be viewed as an outlier as he had an above average weekend putting based upon his own skillset. Now, Fowler did putt well overall last season, but has slipped this year. He also has struggled with Par 4 scoring this year, having slipped to 123rd in the rankings after having been 41st last year. He is still in the Top 20 for Par 5 scoring, but his short game has us a little concerned. Near the end of 2014, Fowler was a near lock for a Top 10 finish, now he is muddled in the middle of the pack. Will Rickie turn things around at Augusta? We suspect he will revert to his normal finishes and be somewhere in the 20-30 range.

Justin Rose – Rose is so far off of good form right now that owners are turning away from him pretty dramatically right now. He has been nothing short of brutal in 2015, missing the cut in three of four events and finishing 55th in the one event where he did make the cut. What puts us in a tough position as owners is that Rose has enjoyed some success at Augusta with a couple of Top 10 finishes over the years. Right now, Rose just cannot find the fairway and his putting stroke is a mess. In previous years, Rose was a great tee to green player with a below average putter. This year, he has been below average in all categories. He has also fallen from 1st in GIR in 2012, to 9th in 2013, to 41st in 2014, to 113th in limited stat tracking this season. We will have to see how he does at the Shell Houston Open, but right now, we would not roster Rose on any teams. There are certainly players where a contrarian play is reasonable, but with Rose, it appears that his whole game is off right now.

We’ll return later in the week to look at the next tier of golfers and try to see if we can find some values to work with. The pricing is pretty soft to draw in players of all levels so we anticipate being able to find several core players from the next group that we examine.