The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Farmers Insurance Open
I think I am almost beginning to recover from the Minnesota Massacre that took place at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. I wanted to do my best to clear my head immediately by exiting the state the following day and yet, the weather came and closed down the state under a blanket of snow that allowed me to get all the way to the gate at the airport before finally kicking up to such an extent that all flights were cancelled and kept me here for another couple of days. It’s a fitting way to end the season, but I must say, the timing could not be much better in terms of having the perfect spot to transition over to golf for the next eight months. For the last three weeks, the PGA Tour teased us with a short field of elite players in Hawaii followed by a couple of events with decent, but not elite fields. Last week, we had to deal with a rotation of three different courses the first few days as well as an odd rule in dealing with the cut. Hopefully, most of you took advantage of our weekend coverage as these types of events offer a clear cut opportunity to crush the field if you are paying attention at all and are capable of thinking about how to adjust your strategy.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I always like to map out my approach to managing my bankroll and I like to do that to avoid chasing after events where we have less of an edge. Typically, that means treading lightly in events on easier courses with lots of scoring and really low numbers to make the cut. Easier courses tend to level out the playing field which gives way to seeing a lot more random names up and down the leaderboard. Obviously, the one major exception last week was the winner of the event, Jon Rahm. Rahm played his college golf at Arizona St and really thrives on the west coast portion of the tour each season, particularly on these desert style layouts. He had played in the event the previous year and made the cut, but was not exceptional. This year, however, it appears that Rahm is locked in and will be contending in most tournaments that he is a part of. He has all the tools of DJ and all he lacks is experience, but the gap is closing quickly. I thought I could get away with the fade last week and took a more balanced approach to my teams, which was a reasonable way to go and worked fine in cash games, but with Rahm being as highly owned as he was, it obviously ruined any GPP potential for the week.
This week, the tour heads to one of my favorite events, the Farmers Insurance Open played out at the beautiful Torrey Pines Golf Course (North & South). We do end up getting another week of rotations with players hitting both the North (easier) and South (tougher) courses in the first two rounds before playing the final two rounds exclusively on the South Course. If you have not been there before, it is gorgeous, set along the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla with many scenic holes that sit alongside the cliffs with beautiful views in every direction. The US Open was played here on the South Course back in 2008 and will be there again in 2021 which should give you some clues as to what skill sets are most important. In typical US Open fashion, we have a very long course (South, over 7,700 yards) that is highly favorable to bombers with very tough fairways to hit with lengthy rough. Not only do players need to be long off the tee, but they will also need to be elite in their mid to long range iron play, particularly when dealing with the many lengthy Par 4 holes out on the course. There are four Par 5 holes on the South Course and they do provide some scoring opportunities, but two of those holes are over 600 yards, so nothing will come easy. To make matters worse, the winds come whipping off the ocean and have created some hideously memorable rounds over the last couple of years with 2016 being among the most famous as winds tore down trees and pushed the final round to a Monday finish. Brandt Snedeker played the round of the year and finishes his round on Sunday while the leaders went back out to finish on Monday and all slid back behind him.
It’s a different story on the North Course, which while still challenging, does not play nearly as tough as the South Course. It is also a Par 72, but only a little over 7,200 yards in length. It was remodeled after the 2016 tournament to lengthen many of the holes and also to make the layout such that players would finish their rounds going towards the ocean and some of the more scenic views. A key difference in the courses is that on the North Course, there are bentgrass greens while on the South, it is Poa Annua. You’ll see the west coast players shine this week as they are more used to the grainy consistency of poa. It’s very key in the opening two rounds to take advantage of your turn on the North Course. I also read an interesting article earlier today by Rob Bolton that mentioned that the last seven winners had all started on the South Course the first day. I am not sure if that is just a coincidence, but it is something to consider. Finally, the winds for the week do not look to be a huge factor this year from what I could see at WindFinder. It looks like things could be slightly gusty by the late afternoon on the first two days, but nothing to make me think that either course would be more favorable to start on. With two courses in the mix, we will again see truncated tee times with all players starting between 9-11 am. Right now, I am not seeing a big advantage to starting early or late, but be sure to give our Wednesday night email a quick read as Jeff and I usually go over weather in the hours before the final e-mail update gets sent.
As mentioned above, I am headed out to the tournament this week and will be joined by Erik ‘Statboy’ Dantoft along with our website developer and customer support specialist, Aaron Johnson. We’ll be out on the course for at least a few of the rounds and certainly out and about in the San Diego area all weekend. If you plan to be in the area, please let me know and hit me up with an email or a note on Twitter. We’d be more than happy to get together with any of you to walk a few holes, talk some golf and grab a drink. I’ll be in a great mood as I love getting out of the cold for a few days every winter so as soon as the temperature starts to drop, I circle this weekend on my calendar as a nice reprieve from the nasty weather.
One other thing I briefly wanted to mention here is that we heard from a few folks when we changed up the presentation of the model. Obviously, many of you had gotten used to being able to download the full model into an Excel spreadsheet and while that was great, and something I used myself quite often, we simply had reached a point where we needed to put in place some stronger protections of our intellectual property which is why the model is presented as it is right now. Having it web based also allows for quicker updates when the field changes or when the odds get updated each week which makes it handy on our end. We also have a lot of new features that we are planing to add throughout the year and the only way we could integrate them in was to go to a web based version. However, I do understand having a spreadsheet to work off of and how pulling some parts of the model could be very helpful so we came up with a small compromise that did please most of the folks that asked about it. If you look on the model now above the weighted score, you’ll notice a small CSV download button which will allow you to set the model how you want it and then export the names, salaries and weighted scores to a CSV file for you to use and sort how you like. Obviously, it’s not the entire model and all of the formulas, but it is something to work off of and does help for those of you who enter the weighted scores into your own spreadsheets and models.
Also, please feel free to email us with feedback on the different tools as well as features that you would like to see incorporated in the future. I can’t promise that we’ll be able to do everything, but we do genuinely care about what you want out of the site and will always do our best to make improvements based upon your thoughts and ideas. Aaron, Erik and myself will be spending a lot of time this weekend going over some of the ideas we have compiled and should have some goals to work towards over the next few months.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better %: 20%
Proximity: 15%
Par 5 Scoring: 15%
Scrambling Prox: 10%
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