The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – CJ Cup

We’re off to a nice start this season after hitting a lot of solid plays last week that led to some nice wins for the full slate as well as over the weekend. The Asian stretch of the PGA Tour is always a lot of fun for me and I am pleased that we have a third event this year to work with as it gives me more night golf to watch during the late night hours that I tend to put into my research for PGA and the NFL during the fall. The fields are fairly strong, particularly next week when the tour heads to China for a WGC event, and I like that a third week really allows for the players who come over early to get acclimated so that by the third week, their bodies should be used to the time change and comfortable with the schedule.

The CIMB Classic proved to be a lot of fun to watch. I was disappointed not to be in on Pat Perez in a week where he came through with a big win. What a fun player to watch. Not only did he lead the field in scoring, but also in expletives that the announcers had to apologize for throughout the evening. The only thing that we had to deal with more often than a Perez curse word was having to see the same the same travel commercial for Malaysia again and again on an endless loop. His interview after he won was fantastic. That’s one of the fun parts of golf. You actually get these regular guys out there who can compete and win on any given week.

Perez played really well, particularly early in the week. My reasons for not picking Perez for my rosters had nothing to do with his particular skill set. What Pat did well in 2017 was play really economical golf in regards to his short game where his wedge play and putter were incredibly good all season. Most people would not expect a shorter hitter like Perez to be that great in terms of Par 5 scoring, but he ranked 18th overall last season and 20th in birdie or better percentage on Par 5’s. On a short, Par 72 course with plenty of easy Par 5’s to take on, Perez was in his element and he played really smart down the stretch in not trying to get too fancy and in making every clutch putt he needed to keep a comfortable lead. Unfortunately, the $9,000 price tag was just too much based upon the other players around him who stood out a little more in terms of their stats, recent form and history on the course. At $8k, I would have been able to grab a few shares, but $9k put him out of reach. If he continues to play this well, I may have to recalibrate my comfort zone with what I am willing to pay for Perez on a week to week basis.

Our other key picks did really well for us with Keegan Bradley and Rafa Cabrera Bello both having huge performances compared to where they were priced which opened everything up for us to roster a lot of talent around them. Justin Thomas got off to a slow start and although he finished well, his price tag dictated a need for a Top-3 finish which we clearly did not get. Fortunately, we did have some shares of Hideki, who got back on track before failing to mount a final charge in the last round of the tournament. Xander continues to be a great play for us as he was down the stretch last season. The kid just looks unbelievable right now and he’s headed to Korea on bentgrass this week where he does his best work putting overall. Brendan Steele and Anirban Lahiri each put up solid efforts for us at very reasonable prices. Chez Reavie and Kyle Stanley both fared well and even guys who looked like busts early in James Hahn and Graham DeLaet rallied back over the weekend so that when it was all said and done, I was able to be fairly profitable for the week.

In taking a quick look at this week, the PGA Tour heads to Korea for the first time to play the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges, one of the more interesting courses that we’ll see this year. As our course preview expert, Adam Daly described it, there are elements of traditional courses on the front nine and then the back nine will play a little like a links style course. The course itself is at an elevation of 3500 feet above sea level which makes an already short Par 72 course (under 7,200 yards) play even shorter as players should be able to score easily on the Par 5’s all weekend. Only two of the Par 4’s are over 450 yards. The challenges on the course will be the fairway bunkers and water hazards that come into play on four or five holes.

It is a coastal course this week which usually means that winds could come into play and the current weather report that I am looking at right now show that winds are expected to be gusty throughout much of the weekend which could come into play to keep scoring from getting too out of hand. However, we’ve seen the Asian Tour host three tournaments here in recent years and for the most part, there was a good deal of scoring so I am expecting more of the same this week and project a final score of somewhere close to -20. Remember, Kapalua is also a course with some elevation where the winds can pick up a good bit, but there is always plenty of scoring to be had there as well. While we do not have any course history to guide us this week, I think that last week’s course at Kuala Lumpur works well as a comp course and also next week’s course for the WGC HSBC Championship.

The field size this week is the same as last with 78 golfers starting out on Thursday (Wednesday night at 6pm CST is lineup lock) and there is no cut this week again as is the case with all three Asian swing season events. Like last week, the strategy needs to revolve around building lineups with players who can avoid plummeting to the bottom of the leaderboard. Last week, I got a little lucky in the Grayson Murray started out the tournament by playing some hideously bad golf the first two rounds. However, given that there was no cut, and that Murray is supremely talented when it comes to scoring, he roared back, made a bunch of birdies and a couple of eagles and ended up having a better than average week for DraftKings points, finishing very well compared to his actual spot in the standings. That’s what we need again this week. We have to find players that can take advantage of this shorter course and in particular the Par 5’s to post as many points as possible throughout the weekend. Fortunately, we have plenty of big names at the top and near the bottom of the salary tiers to get us started.

Once again, I will not chase many of the Asian players that are not a part of the PGA Tour. The problem here again is that DraftKings has cut off their pricing at $6,800 this week. Anytime that this happens where they put the pricing floor a little higher than they would throughout the season, it makes it really tough to justify going down to grab a near complete unknown player when there are so many capable players from the PGA Tour that should be much higher caliber players overall. I took a look at a couple of there players this week, but it is very tough to get them right. Even early on last week when we had a couple who started off strong, by the end of the weekend, only one or two even had relevant finishes while the rest were somewhere near the middle or bottom of the standings. Don’t get too sucked into the buzz on any of these guys this week. There are plenty of golfers with direct ties to Korea that play on the PGA Tour that are far better options for the week so resist the temptation to get too cute with your lineups. In a 20 max entry contest, you need to be sure to keep your core tight and not throw too many darts.

For a quick look at the key stats this week, the boys over at Fantasy Golf Metrics were put to the challenge this week with the new course in the mix, but they did an admirable job and at first glance, the numbers look very reasonable based upon the setup and expected conditions for the week:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Proximity: 15%
Scrambling: 10%
Par 5 Scoring: 5%

If you’ve been hesitant to jump into the fall season, don’t wait any longer. These are fun events with unique, but strong fields that offer a nice blend of stars, veterans and up and coming players. Unlike the mid season WGC events without a cut where it feels like anything can happen some weeks, generally these fall no cut events are more predictable and usually, as long as the player has made the trip all the way to Korea, Malaysia or China, they generally are taking the event a little more seriously than normal. Furthermore, there is no upcoming major, no playoffs, nothing on the near horizon that they need to rest up for so they can totally focus on the tournament at hand with the knowledge that there is plenty of time off ahead before the 2018 portion of the season starts up which most players ease into over the first couple of months anyway.

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