The Daily Spin – AT&T Byron Nelson

RECAP

Another week, another win. It’s strange how there are seasons where it feels like I have to fight all year to be profitable and yet, other years it feels like I can’t lose. I’ll certainly take this type of season over the constant struggle, but I know that this is never a game where you can take winning for granted. We need to stick to our time tested process each and every week, play within our means and not get frustrated or burnt out. Whether or not you won or lost in a given week, you need to develop the mindset that the next week is a brand new event with a new field and you are starting from scratch. It does not matter if you have been on a good or bad streak. I feel really good about our wins in recent weeks. Though the research might be a little tougher in weaker field events, again and again, we have had tremendous success with them over the years.

Of course, it helped enormously last week that I nailed my core and especially my betting picks. My picks started out with Keegan Bradley, Cam Young and Max Homa. I managed to hit a very nice outright win on Homa for the week and it was a pretty low sweat finish. I managed to hit Top-10s on Keegan, Young and also Brian Harman so it proved to be a really great week for my picks.

I built a fairly balanced cash game lineup for the week. After taking the pulse of the industry, it did not feel like Rory McIlroy would be very heavily owned. If I have an inkling that owners are going to pay up to make the high dollar elite player heavily owned, I will look to play defense the way I instructed with Rahm the previous week in Mexico. However, if I get the sense that ownership for that top player will be under 15% in cash games, then I feel comfortable fading them and going with a more balanced approach.

For my cash game/single entry lineup, I once again was able to get five golfers through the cut, falling just short of a bigger GPP score. I was slightly concerned with the weather forecast, but it did not end up being a big issue. My initial build had five PM and one AM golfer before I even went over the tee times so I elected to simply stick with that. Amusingly enough, the one AM golfer that I had on Thursday was Seamus Power who was my one missed cut for the tournament.

I started my team at $9300 and Russell Henley. On a tight course, I love his accuracy off the tee and approach game. Unfortunately, he is not the same on bentgrass with his putter as he’s far better on Bermuda and that proved to be a problem. He was great off the tee and on approach, but faltered around the greens and was terrible with his putter. He finished 41st for the week so it was not terrible, but he certainly did not pay off his price.

On the other hand, Max Homa at $8400 was an absolute steal. I did have some worries about his putter on bentgrass, but his game translated so well on a layout like this that I was willing to take my chances. He had some struggles around the greens, but the rest of game was fantastic as he ended up 10th in SGTG and 4th in SGP, putting on a masterful performance. Homa continues to improve throughout the season and both Jeff and I thought he was an incredible value last week, especially in such a soft field. Hitting the winner on my cash team always makes for a much more relaxing Sunday.

Seamus Power was the one player that I owned who missed the cut on Friday. His iron play was terrible, but really it just came down to one disastrous hole on Friday to wreck his week. On one of the few scoring holes on the course, the Par 5 10th hole, he opened his round with a triple bogey, taking a penalty and hitting some awful approach shots. From there, he was just trying to fight a tough course to gain any ground back. While he did shoot -1 over the last 17 holes, he finished at +2 overall and missed the cut. It is a real shame he could not squeeze through as it would not have taken much to move up the leaderboard as several players did that were right on the line on Friday.

I felt like Cam Young was way too cheap last week at $8000. His ball striking skills are already pretty elite and it is just going to be a matter of time before he gets his first win on tour. He led the field in SGTG for the week, but his putter betrayed him throughout the tournament and he lost 2.3 strokes putting. He had a couple of close range putts that did not fall on Sunday that made the difference between him and Homa, but he keeps putting himself into position to win as this was his third 2nd place finish of the season.

Kuch might be running out of steam after a 49th place finish. He did start off well with a 67, but was over par the last three rounds and could not get anything going. Even his short game was not looking too good over the weekend as he lost strokes on the greens for the first time in a while. He managed just 10 birdies over the course of the tournament, so there were not a lot of DK points. He did make the cut which was what was most important at his price point so it was still a win overall, though not by much.

Through his first 26 holes, Joel Dahman was -9 and leading the tournament. Over his last 46 holes, he shot +17 and finished 51st. It was disappointing in that my team was on fire early and near the top in many contests on Friday late into the morning, but his bogey ridden nonsense the last 2.5 rounds wrecked him as an outright bet and dropped him pretty far down in DK points as well. I guess I should be thankful. At least he managed his 64 in the first round and did not save it for the practice rounds over the weekend.

Sign up for an FGI account today to see the rest of this post.