The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Dean & Deluca Invitational

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Daily Spin and the Dean & Deluca Invitational. I wanted that to sound more inspirational, but having the name of a grocery store attached to an event just does not quite pull at my heartstrings the way that it does for The Masters. The wonderful thing that we have to get us through these slower stretches is the constant competition of fantasy golf. Each week brings forth a new and interesting challenge and at this point, the strength of the field is less and less of a concern for me so long as we have just enough high quality players at each pricing level to make it an enjoyable puzzle to figure out at the beginning of each week.

Last week, our puzzle got a bit jumbled. Things were looking okay going into Friday until our golfers moved towards the final holes before the cut. At that point, it all went a little off the rails and our group of picks found many creative ways to miss the cut, most in incredibly excruciating ways. In all, when the damage was done, seven of our players missed the cut right on the line. Daily fantasy golf can be a cruel mistress, but the nightmare will be short lived as we move on to the next event just a few miles down the road.

A lot of you have become very observant in recent weeks about the types of golfers that big name players are using each week. I received a number of e-mails that ranged from confused, to shocked and even those throwing around conspiracy theories. I received a lot of questions along the lines of, ‘How did Player X know to stack Tom Hoge and Johnson Wagner?’ read one on Friday, before both players fell back. I received several other incredulous inquiries on Sunday asking about how one particular high level player ‘knew’ to own so much of Bud Cauley this past weekend. I am here to help clue you in on the secret to what made them select these players.

The truth of the matter is that the high roller players had no idea how well these guys would perform. They certainly were not in on Bud Cauley feeling confident that he would be finishing in the Top 5 over the weekend and they certainly were not anticipating that Johnson Wagner and Tom Hoge would hang around the Top 10 for as long as the did through the first few rounds. Tom Hoge was not a terribly unreasonable pick given the fact that he went to school at TCU and is familiar with the courses around that part of Texas. Having finished T9 at Valero just a few weeks prior, Hoge had shown that there was some upside potential and for the price ($6,100) gave owners that started with Spieth, DJ or both, some room to maneuver when building their squads.

Johnson Wagner started to appear on the radars of players that track recent form when looking for sleepers in the lower ranges to fill out their rosters. Wagner is a very streaky player and tends to go on long stretches where he either makes or misses every cut. After having missed four straight cuts, he entered last week having made five in a row (MDF at Valero). Although his history at the Byron Nelson was generally not very good with only two cuts made in seven starts, the two times he made it through he finished 27th and 12th showing some amount of upside potential. Mostly, he served as salary cap relief for players looking to use a lot of Spieth or DJ.

Bud Cauley was another player that folks asked about as he appeared in a couple of big lineups for one key player in particular. Again, this player did not see something particularly special about Bud last week. Cauley entered the event on a cold stretch and with no history there outside of one missed cut two years ago. About the only thing that he has going for him is a sense of desperation as he plays out the last few events of his medical exemption and tries to make enough money to hold onto a spot on tour. However, his price of $6,000 made him fit into the lineup parameters that this particular owner was looking for as he was nearly all in on Jordan Spieth in most of his contests.

This player had many rosters that looked good with the old Spieth/Cauley stack the first few days, but further examination shows that this was mostly just fortunate circumstances for this player combined with the fact that he plays the maximum number of lineups per GPP allowed. He made big bets on Patrick Rodgers, David Toms, Cameron Smith, Bud Cauley and Hudson Swafford last week, with Rodgers being a particularly large holding. Three of the five picks worked out well and the other two missed the cut. Had any one of the other three fallen out and missed the cut, it would have changed things around for this player quite a bit. In all, if you look at his rosters, you will see that only 11 out of 200 made it through the $33 Dogleg completely intact with 6 players getting through the cut. He just happened to be focused enough on the right key players at the top and it carried him to success. But is that always the case for players like this?

I will wager that most of you have not watched the high level players as closely as we have over the last year so when a player jumps up, seemingly out of nowhere and is all over the leaderboard for most GPP events, it can be startling. What many of you miss though, are all of the weeks that players like this go bust and lose large chunks of their bankroll. That is not to say that these folks are playing poorly on the weeks that they lose, what it shows us is that they execute a very precise strategy week after week. They know full well that most of the time their strategy will blow up, but they are indifferent to that because they know that on the weeks where they hit, they are going to clean up in every contest they enter.

I know a few of you out there are poker players and with the World Series of Poker (WSOP) coming up in just a few days, I will explain the philosophy of these high risk/high reward players. Just over a decade ago, No Limit Hold’em took over the poker world and set off a craze that still to this day has not entirely died down. It brought forth a new wave of players that looked at and played the game in a totally different manner and as such, the strategy of the game has evolved tremendously over the last decade. Aggression became king and conventional play became tougher to succeed with. This has happened to a large degree in daily fantasy golf over the last two years.

In the initial stages of DFS golf, nobody had any tools for doing their research outside of searching through page after page of data for old events and scrolling through countless player profiles to look at statistics. It was easy to gain an edge by meticulously looking at tournament history and recent form as only the elite players had cobbled together the data to track down those players each week. However, with the advent of sites like ours and all of the podcasts, Twitter accounts and freelancers out there, the market has become saturated with information making certain player picks more obvious and thus overowned every single week. It should not shock you that Jeff and I can consistently be pretty close in terms of predicting player ownership from week to week. The data points very strongly towards who will be heavily owned and when combined with the knowledge of who the touts are backing from week to week, it becomes a reasonably predictable task to figure out.

These same things took place in the poker world around 2003/2004. Players like Gus Hansen came along and started to exploit conventional play by executing a hyper-aggressive game plan that involved playing more hands and confusing players trapped in the style of the previous generation of play. These players that came up through online poker have changed the game dramatically over the years so much so that the game is barely recognizable from where it started at just a few decades ago. Now these types of players are not entering events thinking they are going to win every time. Their strategy is to play fast and aggressive and to either accumulate a large stack of chips in the early stages or bust out early and move on to the next event. The same strategy is at play now in daily fantasy sports among certain competitors.

In getting back to the owner of Bud Cauley last week, I have also watched this individual sink his ship for many weeks by being all in on some unlikely player that misses the cut. In fact, I venture to say that if you took him on in cash games from week to week, you would probably fare well as his lineups in cash do not change much from what he uses in high dollar GPP events. In fact, I am not even sure that this player posts any head to head match ups at this point. As I said last week, there are many style of play in DFS, just like poker and one is not necessarily better than another. You just have to find the one that feels comfortable for you and that you can execute consistently.

This particular player embraces a high variance style where he is prepared to accept large swings in his bankroll from week to week. He knows that he is going to strikeout often, but he also knows that if he sticks to his strategy throughout the course of the season, he is going to have three or four really big weeks that more than make up for the losses. So it is not that he has a special knowledge on certain players or any kind of inside information. What he has is a well thought out strategy that most novice players will have a difficult time executing as they only see the current tournament in front of them when they prepare, rather than crafting an overall strategy to follow throughout the season.

This is the reason that I always talk about working on your process and thinking about the game as a long term journey rather than just focusing all of your energy on any single event. When you are able to step back and play a strategy as opposed to individual players, you will slowly begin to pare away the biases around you and start to play the percentages as much as the actual players in the game. If this sounds like an emotionally detached way to view the game, then I am starting to get my point across. This is a game of numbers, probabilities and percentages. The human element makes it complex and entertaining, but can also be a distraction if you let it dictate the way you play the game.

Alright, now that I have babbled incessantly on the strategy side, let’s get back into focus and the tournament at hand. Colonial Country Club hosts this week’s event in the Forth Worth area and is one of the older events on tour, even if the sponsor name changes hands every few years. It’s a Par 70, 7,200 yard course that challenges players with narrow, tree lined fairways, which consequently leads many of the bombers to take the week off. Players like Zach Johnson, Chris Kirk, Matt Kuchar and Jim Furyk have all done well here over the years and fit the prototype for the sort of player who succeeds here consistently. These are all shot makers who tend to stay out of trouble and handle the Par 4 and 5 holes better than others. The field is on the soft side this week, but there is still plenty of value in the pricing. Since the most expensive players available are not overly dominant, there are a number of way to play in terms of strategy for the week without feeling like you must own anyone in particular at the top. Also of note, this is an invitational so only around 120-125 players will be in the field which means you can be a little more aggressive than usual in selecting players as the cut rules remain the same (T70 or better).

The key stats for the week are as follows (Fantasy Golf Metrics):

Strokes Gained Tee to Green – 30%
Birdie or Better % – 20%
Strokes Gained Putting – 15%
Proximity – 15%
Par 4 Scoring – 15%
Par 5 Scoring – 5%

We’ve had a couple of huge wins for subscribers over the last couple of weeks with Andre Panneton taking 7th lat week in the big $3 GPP and Ryan Lewandowski winning a ticket to a 10 man contest to compete for a FGWC seat so let’s keep up the good work this week and make sure to let us know through e-mail or Twitter if you have something that looks promising as I always enjoy cheering on our members.

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We had a winning week at last week’s event with two of our three optimal lineups coming through for us. Remember, if you are struggling with your cash games, lower your volatility a bit by creating five lineups instead of three and if you are getting stuck, build all of your GPP lineups and eye test a few for cash with the lineups that look like they have the best chance to be consistent. This looks to be a week where a balanced option again will make the most sense for cash lineups. There is not a lot of need to jump up to the upper tiers as the value in the middle look good enough to build around. Therefore, I will build only one lineup that utilizes a more high dollar player.
 

Kevin Chappell – $9,600
Jason Dufner – $8,400
Ryan Palmer – $8,100
Danny Lee – $8,800
Marc Leishman – $7,800
William McGirt – $7,000

Chris Kirk – $9,700
Danny Lee – $8,800
Bill Haas – $8,700
Colt Knost – $8,300
Boo Weekley – $7,400
Bryce Molder – $7,100

Matt Kuchar – $11,000
Patrick Reed – $10,000
Ryan Palmer – $8,100
Bryce Molder – $7,100
Daniel Summerhays – $7,000
Scott Piercy – $6,800

Tons of great value all over here. As I mention every week, some landmines are out there as well so be sure to balance your exposure in cash games. As I told our stat guy when he became enamored with Will Wilcox a few weeks back and wanted to go all in on him, you’re going to learn a hard lesson if you go in 100% on a player in cash. We have seen players miss the cut at all salary tiers throughout the season. Do not get greedy because you fell in love with a player’s statistics or course history. I am a stubborn individual so I have had to learn the hard way on more than one occasion.

Before I get into my column, I want to discuss my fades for the week. These are based primarily on ownership trends and price and not necessarily anything in particular about the course or skill set that these players possess. At the top, I will stick to my Jordan Spieth fade. This always makes me nervous as I really do think he will break out at some point this year and look dominant in several events. However, as I mentioned in my intro this week, it is important to remain somewhat consistent in your approach and laying off the highest priced player has worked well all season. I may break trend with Jason Day this summer as his recent record of seven wins in his last seventeen starts is tough to ignore, but at this point, Spieth is not dominant enough on a consistent basis for me to eat up the extra salary cap space combined with the fact that in this field, I still expect his ownership numbers to be rather high. I know there will be a week at some point where we will get snapped off by fading Spieth, but if he had troubles hitting the fairway last weekend, it will not get any easier this week so I feel okay about passing on him again this week.

Kevin Chappell is playing well and has made four straight cuts at Colonial. His price is high, but not overwhelming and yet I am not going to roster him on my GPP rosters this week. My concern here is that Chappell could see his ownership levels creep up to 30% by the time the hype train has kicked into full gear leaving us to either severely overweight him on our rosters or to fade him outright to take advantage of this information. I think the play in this case is to fade him and let the field take their chances. I could be wrong, but I am not totally sold on Chappell as an elite level player quite yet although he is having an outstanding season. If you want to own him this week, I would not blame you for doing so, the numbers make him a compelling play. My fade is an aggressive GPP play meant take advantage of potential clustering of ownership, particularly in the higher dollar, smaller field events with the hope that he underperforms and gives my rosters a little extra boost.

CORE

Patrick Reed – 60% ($10,000)
Bill Haas – 60% ($8,700)
Jason Dufner – 60% ($8,400)
Ryan Palmer – 60% ($8,100)
Bryce Molder – 60% ($7,500)

We are taking an aggressive approach again with our $3 GPP lineups this week, putting half of our overall weighting on our core players in the hopes that we can find five players to make the cut and spur a lot of lineups on and into position to do some damage over the weekend. This is my process and one that I use in smaller buy in events like this one. Obviously, at the $300 GPP, things change a bit with only 18 roster spots available for the three teams that I typically play, but this is a good way to attack the smaller GPPs, particularly if you can afford to put in 50-200 lineups. As I mentioned last week, if you want to be a little less aggressive, use additional players and spread the weightings out. You will have less swings in your bankroll, but it will be a little tougher to hit that big week with more cut risk among your pool of players.

Our core players this week are all golfers with pretty established records at the course and in their form. Patrick Reed might be the player near the top that gets overlooked a bit compared to others in his price range so I started with him. He’s a strong talent on tour and has missed just two cuts all season while also posting seven Top 10 finishes. He missed the cut at The Players Championship, but that is always an odd event where you never know who will surprise by missing the cut so it does not concern me. He has finished in the Top 10 in both events in Texas this year and added another Top 10 at the Valspar which compares well with Colonial.

I like owning Bill Hass in events where the rest of the field is relatively soft. As he is never one to stand out in major events, he has most of his success in these sorts of events where many of the top players are off for the week. He has played well here in making four of five cuts and looked good at The Heritage (14th) and Valspar (2nd). His tee to green game is strong and he scrambles out of trouble well. I think people will skip over him this week which gives us a nice opportunity.

Jason Dufner does not excitement me very much this week and yet here is in as a core player. Over the last three months, he has missed just one cut (The Masters) and although he has not had a lot of high finishes, he also has not disappointed us too severely either. He is a talented ball striker with a great tee to green game and mediocre putter. In terms of Par 4 and 5 scoring, he is well above average against this field and he is very capable of scoring a lot of birdies. We just want him to make the cut and give us a little push over the weekend rounds.

Ryan Palmer ruined dreams last weekend with his water ball on the 18th hole Friday afternoon. As he was owned by around 30% of the field, it proved to be a crippling blow to a lot of rosters and provides yet another great reason to consider fading the higher owned players each week. Interestingly enough, Palmer pulled the same trick on owners at Colonial last year when he choked on the last couple of holes and missed the cut on his home course. I am hoping that people will be a little gun shy with him this week, although I think 15-20% ownership still seems likely. He has played well here over the years and has missed just two cuts this year so he is my bounce back play for the week.

Bryce Molder just keeps making cuts and doing so with better finishes as the months roll on. He has finished in the Top 25 in four of his last five starts and made eight straight cuts overall. He does not hit it long off the tee, but tends to keep it in the fairway and his tee to green game has been better than average this year. His scrambling and putting has really set him apart from competitors this season and should help to lift him to another made cut this week at a course where he has made the cut in five of six starts in his career.

SECONDARY

Adam Scott – 30% ($11,300)
Chris Kirk – 30% ($9,700)
Danny Lee – 30% ($8,800)
Marc Leishman – 20% ($7,800)
Boo Weekley – 20% ($7,400)
William McGirt – 20% ($7,000)
Daniel Summerhays – 20% ($7,000)
Scott Piercy – 20% ($6,800)
Adam Hadwin – 25% ($6,600)

At the top, we are going to add Adam Scott who will more than likely see lower ownership numbers than the players around him. He has not finished in the Top 10 since his back to back wins earlier in the year, but he is again trending in the right direction after a 17th place finish at Quail Hollow and a 12th place finish at The Players Championship. If we are looking for shot makers, Scott is about as good as they come and though his putter has slightly fallen off since a strong start, his game set up well here and he did win this event just two years ago.

Chris Kirk is the defending champion at Colonial and though he burned us badly two weeks ago at Quail Hollow, we are going to be buyers again on a player who has made five straight cuts here with four finishes inside the Top 16. He has five Top 25 finishes in his last seven events overall. His tee to green game is sharp, but his putter has not been great so far. He should be good enough to make the cut and challenge for a Top 10 finish.

Have I figured out Danny Lee yet? I will never go that far, but it has been a little while since he has let us down which is a nice change. This was about the time last season where Lee heated up and went on a tear. He has made five of his last six cuts and is three for three at Colonial. He’s a golfer who can score in stretches when he gets hot so the upside is there for the price this week.

I am sure most of you are ready to string me up for mentioning Marc Leishman again, but at least I moved him out of our core this week. He started off great and then faded, pushed back inside the cut again, and then ultimately faded. His stats really line up again this week and after letting people down last week, it is not the time to be fading him yet. He has made the cut here in all five starts so his familiarity with the course should bode well for us and his price is back in a range where he does not need to have a huge week to pay off his salary.

Boo Weekley can no longer be ignored by this column. After looking awful on Thursday last week, he rallied with ten birdies in the second round to make the cut and pick up a respectable number of points for the tournament. Since a miserable stretch early this season when he missed six of seven cuts, Weekley has rallied back to make six cuts in his last seven starts. He is a former champion here (2013) and has made the cut six straight times. Although his stats on the year are skewed due to his mid season slump, he is still a very talented ball striker who’s game is trending in the right direction.

William McGirt is a favorite within our model from week to week. I always have to go and actually see his stats again each week just to prove to myself that he is worthy of his high ranking. Sure enough, the numbers still show him to be a solid play this week. He plays well from tee to green, has putted well all year and has scored a lot of birdies for a guy who does not hit it that far off the tee. He has made four of five cuts at Colonial and twelve of sixteen on the season and his price makes him one of the best values of the week.

Daniel Summerhays will never blow anyone away with his tee to green game, but manages to make a lot of cuts with his putter and his ability to score on Par 4 and 5 holes. He has made four straight cuts and three of those in the Top 25. His finishes have not been thrilling here, but he has made the cut in three straight starts. We need a little salary relief in this tier and he offers that along with a high degree of cut making potential.

Scott Piercy burned us last week. He started off hot and looked like an early contender, but then collapsed in the second round and shot a 75 to miss the cut. Piercy is a good ball striker with an above average tee to green game who hits it well enough to give himself plentiful scoring opportunities. He shows up this week in out pricing vs odds chart as one of the most undervalued players of the week and for a guy that has missed just two cuts this year, he is at a great price this week.

Adam Hadwin quietly made his fifth cut in a row last weekend although his final round pushed him far down the leaderboard. Hadwin has been one of the best putters on tour this season which has helped him enormously as his tee to green game is below average. He keeps himself out of trouble for the most part and scores more birdies than the average player in the field. He was 5th here a year ago and is well priced to help us out this week.

Tertiary

Colt Knost – 15% ($8,300)
Patton Kizzire – 15% ($7,900)
Emiliano Grillo – 15% ($6,700)
Brandt Snedeker – 10% ($8,900)
Chez Reavie – 10% ($7,300)
Jhonattan Vegas – 10% ($6,600)
David Hearn – 10% ($6,400)

Colt Knost – One of the hottest players on tour, only one missed cut all year, consecutive Top 5 finishes the last two weeks, excellent putter

Patton Kizzire – First time here, but has done well at a variety of courses, missed only three cuts all year, excellent putter

Emiliano Grillo – bounce back play this week, good price, very accurate, Top 10 ball striker, above average birdie or better percentage, only three missed cuts this season

Brandt Snedeker – Contrarian play this week after missing three of four cuts, 2nd here a year ago and 5/5 making the cut at Colonial, solid tee to green, scrambling and putting, excellent Par 4 player, good birdie or better player

Chez Reavie – bounced back well a week ago after three straight missed cuts, very accurate, excellent tee to green, good proximity play, excellent scrambling and Par 4 scoring, 4/5 cuts made here with two finishes in the Top 11

Jhonattan Vegas – made seven of his last eight cuts, made the cut last year in his first start at Colonial, good tee to green game, improved putter, very good Par 5 scoring average

David Hearn – Improving form, made three of last four cuts, made four of five cuts at Colonial, low salary offers cap relief, accurate, good tee to green game, excellent proximity play,

Good Luck,

-myz
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