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

The first week of the Asian fall swing of the PGA Tour is in the books and I sure was glad to see it go. Although I worked some magic in the limited number of cash games that I played, the GPP effort as positive as I would have hoped. While I owned plenty shares of Justin Thomas, my lack of Leishman or Woodland shares took me down after what had been a decent start for my teams through the first round. It was the second week in a row where the most expensive players in my lineup did me in as Billy Horschel started off strong and looked like he would continue his steady play, but then fell back over the weekend as his putter gave out on him. Ryan Moore somehow was never able to get on track last week at a course that he has dominated over the years with two wins. Perhaps losing the weekend prior in a playoff to Kevin Tway at the Safeway caused him to have a little more of a hangover than I would have expected. In any case, in a no cut event, if you miss on a couple of key players at the top and then the other one that you do use is owned by nearly half the field, it is going to be a struggle. Without a cut, if you do not have the winner and the field is small, it becomes tough to make up ground as every lineup with the winner is a 6/6 as opposed to most weeks during the year when it is just a tiny fraction overall. That is one of the reasons why no cut events can be so boom or bust on the GPP side.

Moving on to the next event, we arrive in Korea this week for my favorite event of the fall, The CJ Cup. Last year was the inaugural event for the tournament and it proved to be a challenging and exciting tournament for the players and came down to a playoff between Justin Thomas and Marc Leishman which JT was able to finish off as the cherry on top of an incredible 2017.

I remember last year in doing my research for the course that I did not see the tournament playing out as one of the tougher events of the year. In looking at the course, it is a shorter, Par 72 setup that is around 7,200 yards with several Par 5 holes that should not be all that difficult to score on. The fairways are rather wide and players really did not have that hard of a time hitting greens either. As I watched the first round last year, I felt vindicated in my prediction of plenty of scoring as the field got off to an excellent start and the average score was well under par. However, things began to change during the second round as the winds became a big factor for the rest of the weekend and players really had to fight to stay below par. Justin Thomas won the tournament at -9, making Nine Bridges the fourth toughest course on tour for the season. Now, the course is definitely well designed, but I took a look at the weather for Jeju Island this week and the first few days of the tournament, winds are expected to e between 8-10 mph, with some potential gusts of around 12-14 mph depending on the day, a far cry from the 20+ mph gusts that took over the last three rounds a year ago. Obviously, we only have a single year of data to work off of at this point, but it was clear that the winds were to blame for most of the struggles that we witnessed a year ago rather than anything in terms of course construction or setup. Most years, I anticipate that there will be higher winds encountered at this venue based upon its location alone as the course sits on a mountainous island at an elevation of over 2,000 feet. Much like the events over in England, Scotland or even in Hawaii, the winds and overall weather are usually the biggest impediment for the players to deal with when battling to make birdies. Also, as with those events, you would be well advised to take a late, last minute check of the weather before submitting your final lineups on Wednesday evening. Island weather forecasts can change dramatically by the hour so look for any open windows if the winds do start to pick up in the next day or two.

My strategy for the week will be somewhat similar to what I used in preparation for the CIMB Classic last week as well as how I approach the WGC HSBC event next week. With a field size of about half of what is normal and no cut, we lose a little bit of our edge. There are probably 20 players in the field this week that nobody will be interested in using which means that we’re really only selecting our player pools from a group of 50-60 golfers. It’s an event where the winner is more likely to come from near the top tier of players teeing it up which means that you will need to consider how you want to approach those golfers. Most weeks during the season where there is a normal sized field we can make money by getting players through the cut. That won’t be the case this week. We will need to find the winner and several other players who outperform their salaries in order to be successful this week. With that in mind, I like to keep my bankroll exposure to a slightly lower amount than normal. I will play in a few cash games, but mostly GPPs for this event.

Key Stats

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Proximity: 10%
Par 5 Scoring: 10%
Scrambling: 10%

 
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