The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Arnold Palmer Invitational
Two weeks ago, we saw a win from Phil Mickelson after four years which came at a time when many said he would never win again. Then last week, after years of heartbreak and close calls, Paul Casey finally broke through for just his second win on the PGA Tour, nearly nine years after his last win. It was an incredible effort for Casey as it looked like he had allowed his opportunity to slip away on Saturday afternoon when he fell back to -4 and looked to be too far back of too many good players to make a run on Sunday. However, Casey managed to post an impressive final round score of 65 on Sunday to overcome some of the biggest names in the golfing world with the likes of Patrick Reed, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods all lurking close at hand making it all the more impressive.
The good news for me last week was that my top two plays in my core were Casey and Garcia. I looked at the best ball strikers in the tournament near the top of the field and they both stood out as obvious picks for the week. Things really should work out well when you have a 60% weighting of the winner of a tournament and 60% of the 4th place finisher. Unfortunately, the other three key players of my core group all took a terrible nosedive on Friday afternoon in what can only be described as nightmarish fashion. Jason Dufner, the player who was probably the most mispriced in terms of pure value last week, managed to lose five shots over the final six holes on Friday afternoon, missing the cut by just a single shot in a spectacular collapse. He had not previously missed a cut at Copperhead, nor had he finished any lower than 28th place there in his career. He had even been playing reasonably well this season, which made it all the more improbable. Chez Reavie followed suit, managing zero birdies and four bogeys on Friday to also miss the cut by a single shot. Between Reavie and Dufner, it took a really special effort for both of them to find a way to blow the cut on Friday. I have no regrets in playing either golfer, however, as everything lined up well from their ball striking ability, being able to stay out of trouble, and general consistency in terms of making the cut. They were priced right and if I had the same information in front of me today, I would make the same decision to roster them heavily.
The other player that really hurt me last week was our old friend, Kevin Na. Na is one of those players that reminds me of what it is like to be in a bad relationship. You get burned by someone, you go into your shell, you lose trust and just when you think you’re done with them, they start to do little things to improve the situation, then bigger efforts and pretty soon, you have convinced yourself that they have changed. You give them you heart once again and…..you get promptly stomped on. This was the case for Na last week as he withdrew just before his afternoon tee time last Thursday with a neck injury (soreness). With injuries on the PGA Tour, you never really know the severity of what the player is feeling, but with certain guys, you do not always give the benefit of the doubt if the behavior becomes common enough so it’s tough to say how much it was hurting him. It was odd in that it followed a couple of weeks off so one would think he would have been fairly healthy in being in the field. While he was not a core cash game play for me, he was a in the secondary group of GPP plays which helped to get the day off to a rough start as a quarter of my teams where immediately DOA.
It’s frustrating in that it was the second WD that’s really hurt me on this Florida swing and with injuries being so difficult to stay ahead of in PGA from week to week, there really is not a whole lot that we can do about it other than to let DK know that there are solutions to this highly annoying issue that nearly always seems to hit me when a withdrawal occurs. I am not sure why the braintrust over there has not considered implementing a method by which the dreaded withdrawal can be avoided by DFS owners. It would not have to be any different than the late swap option in the NFL where you are allowed to swap out a player and use another so long as the tee time had not taken place for the new player in the lineup and you could fit them in under the remaining salary cap. Yes, this would require owners to pay more attention to what is going on during the opening round, but it’s a far better solution than simply losing a team and money through no fault of your own. If the goal is to build interest in the game and to get people to come back, DraftKings needs to do a better job of trying to find methods that would improve the user experience. When they ignore our requests for change, it does nothing other than to build resentment. If you think this would be a good fix, feel free to send an email to the DK Support team to let them know. It took years for them to change the hole-in-one scoring so I am not anticipating an immediate change, but perhaps if we continue to make our voices heard, maybe somewhere down the line, DK or another site will implement the idea.
With just a few weeks to go before the first major of the year, the PGA Tour heads just to the southwest of Orlando for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. Once again, Tiger Woods is in the field and for the first time in five years he enters the tournament as the odds on favorite to win. What stands out this week as opposed to the last two starts for Tiger is that he played very little at the Honda Classic or at the Valspar Championship throughout his career. The fact that he finished as well as he did on two courses that I would not have thought were great fits for him at this point in his career speaks volumes about where his game and his body are at today. This week, Tiger gets a course that he is not only more familiar with, but where he has won eight times throughout his career with the most recent win taking place in 2013. With his second place finish last week, he now also has the second best betting odds for The Masters in April. It’s been a remarkable comeback for Tiger who was not only having trouble making cuts over the last few years, but even just in managing to finish rounds without being forced to withdraw due to back pain. I am incredibly impressed with Tiger’s game around the green right now as well as his putting. He’s still wild off the tee, but his iron play and his short game are as strong as ever. Four years ago, when Jeff and I first got into DFS golf heavily, Tiger was off the table for us and has remained that way until these last couple of weeks. I made the argument on the podcast last week that a pivot to Tiger from Casey might not be a bad way to play things, but ultimately stuck with Casey. Moving forward, be prepared to see Tiger appearing much more frequently in lineups across the industry. Should he start to win and his salary rises to the top of the highest tier, we will have some very interesting decisions to make during the middle of the season.
Coming into the week, the first consideration for any event that takes place in Florida has to be the weather, especially this time of year. With the way that the winds can pick up and with water in play throughout these courses, a bad wind day or even just a bad half day can create havoc across the leaderboard. Fortunately, this week, it looks like we should have one of the better weeks all year in terms of weather with winds looking fairly mild all day on both Thursday ad Friday with no real advantage for one wave over another. In weeks like this, I always like to build a couple of teams favoring each wave just in case the weather should shift before the tournament starts. We lose nothing by making this play to better organize our lineups and those instances where weather does pop up late and creates a one or two stroke difference between the waves, we’ll be in great shape to capitalize on it versus our fellow competitors.
In looking at the course this week, we are back to a standard layout with Bay Hill playing out over 7,400 yards and is a Par 72 with four Par 5 and four Par 3 holes to contend with for the week. The Par 5’s are where players are going to have to do the brunt of their scoring this week as those holes typically play under par while much of the rest of the course, players will be trying to avoid making bogeys. With three Par 3 holes that are over 200 yards as well as five Par 4 holes that are over 450 yards, long iron play is a major factor again this week. Take a look at those players who are most proficient from distances of 175 yards and beyond. While this is a second shot course where Par 5 scoring is at a premium, don’t count out the shorter, more accurate hitters. Typically, when folks think about Strokes Gained Off The Tee, they think about bombers, but it’s actually important to consider accuracy as well. Players like Francesco Molinari, Brian Harmon and Zach Johnson have all found regular success here by keeping the ball on the fairway and being well positioned for their approach shot.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
Proximity: 10%
Strokes Gained Off The Tee: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Par 5 Scoring: 5%
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