The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Dean & DeLuca Invitational
In terms of tournament names that I dislike more than any other, the Dean & DeLuca Invitational stands out like a guy wearing cargo shorts and flip flops trying to get into a dance club. It really is too bad that such a classic stop on the PGA Tour should have to bare such a ridiculous name for this tournament that has been played at the Colonial Country Club for the last 70 years. However, if it is a choice between having a great name and a terrible course or a terrible name and a historic gem of a course, I will learn to deal with the D&D for a few years.
Last week at the Byron Nelson, things looked a bit gloomy in the opening round for many of our teams. Russell Henley led the charge down early with his worst round of the year and the then JT Poston, not to be outdone, finally imploded after several months of consistent success. It seemed like it was going to be a tough road back, but gradually, the tide turned enough to give us a little value in cash games as the balanced lineups that I generally played were able to battle through to make some money as once again, a good 5/6 lineup was all that was required to get into the green again. Although Poston and Henley succumbed on Friday, we still stayed generally in the chase in the mega multi entry events for the week with a couple of bullets doing reasonably well.
The weekend only contests were really good for Team FGI last week. We had about 5-6 GPP winners and each tweet that came along only go bigger and better with regards to prize money. I was in contention late in the $8 large event and needed just one birdie from Louis Oosthuizen on any of the last three holes to crack the Top 5, but Louis was not having it and spurned me down the stretch, keeping me just outside of the Top-20. I was surprised to be profitable as I owned plenty of Charl Schwartzel who pulled the ultimate cooler on weekend player on Saturday with the mid round withdrawal after making the cut. For some of you, this has been incredibly unlucky with Rahm and Kucher landing on their brains the week prior to hit the MDF wall and then a mid round withdrawal this past weekend which crushed a lot of lineups. Do not get discouraged. You can more or less toss out anything that happen at TPC Sawgrass in terms of results each year and post cut WD’s are so rare as to not even merit consideration as something to worry about from week to week. Stick with us here, I think we still have plenty of room to roll in these contests while other players are trying to figure out the proper strategy.
This week, as mentioned, we head to Ft Worth for the D&D Invitational. Keep that last word in the front of your mind this week….Invitational. You have to EARN your way into this tournament and there are only going to be around 120-125 golfers teeing it up for the week. However, the cut process is still the same as normal weeks with the Top-70 and ties advancing to the weekend which means that we should end up with around 60-65% of the field making the cut. This means that you really have some big decisions to make when constructing your rosters. More than likely, you will need a 6/6 team or a very strong 5/6 team to win in cash games for the week. I recommend playing very conservatively in those contests as any mistake could lead to a losing week. However, you should plan to ope things up in your GPP contests as having more golfers get through the cut allows us to take a little extra risk than normal.
With less players in the field, ownership will be more heavily concentrated than normal so finding ways to diversify your teams is important. Realize that our ownership parameters in terms of total ownership should be stretched this week. Normally, I am shooting for around 75% for total ownership for my GPP rosters. However, given the smaller, weaker field in play for the week, I think we need to aim for a higher target. Most of the chalk will be even chalkier than normal, but that should not scare us away. We simply need to understand the event, make an upward adjustment and realize that unless a bunch of big chalk plays blow up, total ownership for winning GPP rosters will be higher than what we are normally used to seeing each week.
Once again, weather will play a big part in the outcome this week. While there are no storms in the current forecast for Thursday or Friday, winds are not looking too promising for the first two rounds with gusts of up to 31 mph projected for Thursday afternoon and gusts all day on Friday at around 25 mph. Fortunately, there is a small window early on Thursday between 7am-10am where things should be reasonable with steady state winds starting at 10 mph and gradually increasing to 15 mph by 10am when the gusts are projected to kick in. This is definitely going to be a week where I think that stacking 30% of your teams with an AM/PM emphasis should pay off. The winds look to be about the same all day on Friday, potentially even being a little lighter on Friday afternoon than Friday morning, although not dramatically so. For those of you that specialize in the larger buy-in GPP events, Thursday AM rosters are an absolute must this week for a large portion of your teams. As good as some of the top players are, many of them still neglect this technique. Again, you are not doing it with all of your teams and you are not going out of your way to select marginal players simply based upon wind and tee times. Use the players you genuinely like in those opening groups. Here is a quick list for reference of some of the key players that will be leading the way out on Thursday morning. There are a few others who are somewhat playable, but as you can see, the list is already plenty long. The earlier the better this week, although as a disclaimer, always check the weather before lineup lock to make sure it is similar to what is projected right now. Very few owners will be awake early and checking wind updates, but you will gain yet another slim edge over opponents if you can train yourself to be disciplined enough to do it every week.
Ollie Schniederjans – 7:11
Kyle Reifers – 7:22
Bud Cauley – 7:22
Kyle Stanley – 7:22
Ryan Moore – 7:33
Kevin Kisner – 7:33
Steve Stricker – 7:33
Bill Haas – 7:33
Danny Lee – 7:44
Graeme McDowell – 7:44
Scott Piercy – 7:44
Nick Watney – 7:44
Sergio Garcia – 7:55
Jon Rahm – 7:55
Emiliano Grill0 – 8:06
Wes Bryan – 8:06
Matt Kuchar – 8:06
Phil Mickelson – 8:06
Chris Kirk – 8:06
Cam Smith – 8:17
Graham DeLaet – 8:28
Sung Kang – 8:28
Martin Laird – 8:39
Colonial Country Club in Ft Worth, TX is the site for the tournament this week and it sets up as another course where players will be forced to drop down from their driver in order to keep it in the narrow, tree lined fairways which are some of the hardest to hit on tour. The course is a Par 70, 7,200 yard course with two Par 5’s. You will notice that most of the bombers stayed away this week as this course really does not suit the games of the ‘grip it and rip it’ crowd. The Par 5’s are reasonably challenging with the 565 yard 1st hole providing some scoring opportunities, but the other is 635 yards long, making it impossible to reach in two shots and making it a very difficult hole to even make birdies with regularity. There are five Par 4 holes that are 410 yards or less, making short to mid range iron play more important than usual this week and with the extra Par 4 holes, it makes sense to take a closer look at some of the players in the field that handle them the best even if Par 4 Scoring did not pop up n the key stats for the week. Finally, the greens here are among the smallest on tour all season. This again will put emphasis on players with strong iron play and those who can scramble out of trouble to avoid the big numbers. For an even better and more in depth look at the course, check out Adam Daly’s weekly article, The First Tee. His course summary each week is an absolute ‘must read’ and it is where I start my research.
A lot of people ask from week to week what my process looks like. I know that it gets tough when time is short to think about each step, but if you make a short list and stick to it, you will find that it gets easier over time and the names that start to pop up will come to you quicker and will make a lot more sense when you see them. I often found myself forgetting certain parts of my process each week as I rushed to put together everything that I have for duties with the website. When I finally wrote them down, it helped me to pause to look back to see if there was anything that I missed that could give me an edge on my research.
1) Course History and Recent Form – Who has played well at the course and is playing well going into the tournament
2) Odds versus Pricing – digging here for large discrepancies like Billy Horschel last week
3) Player Database – Check to see who grew up in the area, went to college in the area, now resides near the course or is a member at the course
4) The First Tee – My study guide for the course
5) Weather Check – Looking for adverse conditions and favorable tee time scenarios
6) Fill out my ownership projections – Figure out who is chalk and who we can pivot to in order to balance out our total ownership numbers
7) Read Pari’s preview for the week and then look over Jeff’s preferences in his weekly GPP piece
8) Consult the FGI Model to get a clear picture of how everything looks from a pure numbers perspective and make adjustments to see how certain variables highlight certain players
9) Get some basic industry buzz – I don’t want too much as it clouds my better instincts, but I want to know if I have overlooked someone or if someone is more popular than previously thought
10) Start paring down the player pool to select my players
11) Build my rosters with the Lineup Generator
12) Watch for news on weather, withdraws, injuries or other circumstances that arise before lineup lock
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