The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview FedEx St. Jude Classic

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That was the ownership level for David Lingmerth this past weekend at The Memorial. Only around 900 lineups of 95,000 had Lingmerth. Fortunately, for the winner, there were not more Lingmerth owners as he managed to hang on with a score of 599 points. He played our top two picks, Rose and Matsuyama and parlayed that with the success of two amazing rounds to start the tournament from Jason Dufner. Just as we suspected, 600 points was the goal for building a winning team over the weekend so you needed to take Rose for the path of least resistance and then build around him with a slew of cheaper players who would go on to outperform their prices.

Once again, $12,000 proved to be a good cutoff point for salaries in building your rosters. Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson each played great golf over the last couple of days, and yet neither found their way onto many of the top rosters for the week. Fortunately, we were dead on with the top two players that we started many of our lineups with, but the message is clear: you risk much when choosing from among the highly priced players.

Now, in a field of 95,000, we must reiterate our position that much of our normal GPP strategy must be tempered in that winning an event of this size is a bit of a lottery ticket. Even with 200 entries, like many other top players had, it still takes a lot of luck to be near the top. Even daily fantasy sports star, maxdalury could not place one of his teams in the Top 500, which should just go to show you how difficult these types of contests are to win. While 200 lineups feels like almost too many, the number of possibilities is so much larger than most people imagine. In order to optimize your chances of winning, you really need to find a few sets of core players and then build almost every conceivable lineup around them.

Let’s demonstrate this concept just briefly as we created many lineups that started with Justin Rose and Hideki Matsuyama. In going this route, you would have spent $23,100 of your $50,000 leaving yourself with $26,900, or $6725 per player for the other four players on the roster. The next step is to pick about 10-12 players to build rosters around those two players.

$5400 – Erik Compton
$5700 – Adam Hadwin
$6300 – Scott Stallings
$6300 – Andy Sullivan
$6700 – George McNeill
$6700 – Tony Finau
$6800 – Shawn Stefani
$6900 – Russell Knox
$7000 – Daniel Berger
$7200 – Justin Thomas
$7300 – Cameron Tringale
$7900 – Jason Dufner
$8000 – Ben Martin
$8000 – Brooks Koepka

Once you build your core group of players, you just need to assemble as many teams around them as possible. All of the players from the winning lineup are right there for you to see, however, grabbing four players from the group without hitting a land mine is not as easy as it may appear. One wrong move and you would be outside of the Top 1000. But the process is what is important and hopefully you all got in some excellent practice last week in putting together your teams. If you were randomly building your lineups last week, look at this process and try to develop a strategy. If you are going to build 30 teams, 100 teams or 500 teams, go through these steps of selecting core players and having a pool of players to build around each of these groups. It will keep you more organized and also help you in keeping track of how much ownership you have of certain players.

Finally, we want to reiterate that tournament strategy for 95,000 entries is much different than 300 or 2000 entry GPPs. As it requires a near perfect lineup, ownership levels are much less relevant. Now, in weeks like last where several key player owned by large portions of the field, you will have more chances to be near the top of the field if you play a bit of a contrarian strategy. However, in the end, you are going to have to find the six perfect players so do not ignore players simply due to the fact that they may be highly owned. Blend your rosters a bit to gain exposure to the players that you believe will perform the best, but also put together rosters of players that will excel if many highly owned players miss the cut. There is a little bit of art, a little bit of science, and quite a bit of luck in getting paid off in a large GPP so do not worry if your efforts came up a bit short last week.

We here at Fantasy Golf Insider prefer to focus on events and formats where we can best exploit certain edges that we have over the rest of the field. We were able to do this last week in the weekly $35,000 Clubhouse event on DraftKings where we placed 5th out of 35 for a $3000 win. In avoiding Thomas, Henley and Berger, we were able to move up the ranks simply by having other owners crater out on a handful of popular players. In cash games, we continue to build solid, consistent teams with players who are proven cut makers week in and week out. The research is easy and pretty intuitive. In a GPP, you need to beat 80% of the field to double your money. In a cash game, you need to beat 50% of the field to win money. In a GPP, high levels of ownership overlap are incredibly significant and make it much less likely that your team will win a big prize. In a cash game, it’s fairly irrelevant. We respect our colleagues in the industry, but this is not an issue of opinion, it is one of data. If you are unconvinced, then ask yourself this simple question: If there is no difference between a cash game lineup and a GPP lineup, then when you build 50 teams for a large GPP, can you then simply select one or two at random to then play in your cash games? Of course not. No person would argue this when confronted with the question in that manner.

So how did our picks do overall last week? I was pleased overall with the players we selected. We hit it big with Rose and Matsuyama. One of our favorite core groups of Bill Haas, Billy Horschel and Kevin Na played really well and parts of that core made up two winning cash game lineups for the week. Brooks Koepka had a nice week, although his blowup on Sunday where he hit three double bogeys in a row did take out one of our stronger qualifier teams. That’s the joy of rostering Koepka. He is that player that electrifies and frustrates owners each round. However, due to the way that DraftKings rewards erratic, streaky play, Koepka will continue to be a fixture in our preview throughout the rest of the season. Ryan Moore, Rory Sabbatini and Patrick Reed also played well finishing in the Top 26 last week. In all, eight of our sixteen picks were in the Top 26 for the week. Shawn Stefani also played well for his price.

A few players did hurt us on Friday afternoon. Brandon de Jonge and David Hearn both looked to be in good position to make the cut before late bogeys on the back 9 took them outside of the cut line. Ben Martin got off to a rough start on Thursday and could not recover on Friday. Russell Henley played surprisingly poor golf both days and was never close to the cut line missing just his second cut of the season. We gave a little bit of a warning on Henley, Thomas and Berger last week and were shocked to see all three blow the cut. Thomas, having made the cut at Muirfield previously, seemed to be especially safe, but fell apart on three straight holes Friday and could not rally back at the end. Berger had a quick two hole collapse on Friday as well and could not fire up his putter enough to get back into the mix. Both Berger and Thomas were great GPP plays with the potential to put up some big numbers and the price was right for the risk involved. Hopefully, you did not get too cute by inserting either Berger or Thomas into your cash game lineups and if you did, consider it a good lesson learned as the young players just tend to be too volatile to put into cash lineups. Overall, we felt good about our picks. We had enough upside from our core guys so that even with using one or two other players that missed the cut, you still had a very good chance to win some money.

Now we head to Memphis for one of the least anticipated tournaments of the summer, the FedEx St Jude Classic. While most of the pros are taking the week off to rest or to practice up for the US Open, a handful of big name players, some journeymen and a few younger players trying to work their way up gather together to play in this tournament. Unfortunately, we have already had a number of key players withdraw from the event including Brendon Todd, Paul Casey and Robert Streb. When you see developments like this taking place, realize how that is going to skew ownership patters among other owners. Expect players immediately above or below them to pick up the extra slack generated from these withdrawals. Casey’s WD should give an ownership boost to Koepka, English and even Webb Simpson. Losing Todd will give another boost to Koepka on the high end all the way down to McNeill on the lower end. And finally, losing Streb will push ownership up for Bohn, Knox, Hadley and most especially to Will Wilcox. A lot of players do not take this into consideration, but it can change the dynamic of a GPP to such a degree that it may make all the difference between selecting or not selecting certain players.

An exercise that each of you can do to help yourself in looking at exposure levels is to go through the entire field when prices are released and try to project ownership levels for every player. Make sure that your percentages add up to 600 or you will be over or under total ownership. What this exercise will help you to do is to make you think one more time about your lineup before submitting it. Do you have a team filled with highly owned players that has almost no chance of winning? Or, have you gotten so cute with your lineup that although it will be totally different from the field, it also cannot possibly generate enough points to be victorious? In an event like this, it makes a big difference each time a notable player withdraws. We would anticipate this event playing out much like the Wells Fargo just a couple of weeks back where there were high levels of ownership among a small group of players. Weeks like this set up great if you have the courage to build a few contrarian rosters. If a couple of players like Koepka and Wilcox miss the cut, your path to winnings can open up quickly.

For this week, the players will be tackling the TPC Southwind course. The course is a Par 70 and measures out at 7239 yards with four Par 3’s and just two Par 5’s for the course. We will not be as focused on Par 5 scoring for the week as we were in previous weeks although longer hitters will certainly benefit here. The course has undergone some renovations over the years to add extra trees and bunkers so players will need to be a little more accurate than normal and not simply bombing away. Players that hit greens here also tend to be successful so we will once again be getting back to ball striking as a key statistic to start our research from for the week. Remember, Ball Striking is composed of Total Driving + GIR and Total Driving is composed of Driving Distance + Accuracy. The accuracy component and GIR components are the most important portions of the stat that we will be evaluating this week. Also, as there are 12 Par 4 holes, Par 4 scoring will be an important part of the mix for us this week. Water hazards, 96 bunkers and narrow fairways will make this a challenging course. As players try to steer clear of trouble, there will be plenty of work from off the fairways or in the bunkers. If we can add in scrambling to our stat mix for the week, we should be able to find a couple of players to help us have another successful week. Our evaluation process will look like this:

Course History
Recent Form
Ball Striking
Par 4 Scoring
Scrambling
Strokes Gained Tee to Green
Strokes Gained Putting

It will not be easy to find players that the rest of the field will miss this week. Often times, when tournaments like this pop up, it is just best to play conservatively with your bankroll and wait for events that will present better opportunities. On the other hand, if you follow the game week in and week out and have taken the time to really get to know the players on the tour and what they each bring to the table, this can also be a fantastic chance to take advantage of a field of owners that will be tightly clustered around only a small handful of players. As always, please keep us updated with how your teams are doing and send out a tweet or two if there are some exciting contests that are coming right down to the wire for you. We’re here to cheer you on and offer as much encouragement as possible.

It was not as exciting this week to open up the DraftKings app to check out the prices when taking a look at the field for the week. DraftKings did a few interesting things with its pricing that are worth discussing for a moment. Do you remember last week when we had so much value right around the $9000 mark? That seems like a distant memory this week. Above $10,000 we have several players that are worthy of our attention. Unfortunately, putting two of them onto a roster opens up some issues for us, which I will address below. So from 10k and up, we have some fun options, but we cannot have enough of them. Between $8300-$10400 we have a bit of a wasteland with only George McNeill at $8700 creating any sort of interest for us at all. Jerry Kelly might actually be a nice option just above McNeill, but we just do not want to pay that much for Kelly this week. He has been great for our teams in limited action and a great play when we find him in that low $7000 range, but we are not going to chase him this week. The next roadblock for us is at the $7000 mark. There are not many exciting plays below this price. There are a couple of names like Charles Howell III and Jeff Overton that get our attention, but we expect these two to be highly owned as well so the pickings are pretty slim down there.

What this means is that roster construction is going to be trickier than normal this week. You will be able to build plenty of solid looking rosters, but the players that you use are probably going to be a owned at a higher percentage than what we would normally see on an average week. We did our best to dig into this field to find a couple of plays that might work around that, but the pricing will force your hand a bit so anticipate higher amounts of overlap on your rosters with your competitors this week. The key to winning is going to be to find one or two players for each of your lineups that are not that highly owned and having them be successful to some degree.

Once again, we are going to bypass the top player on the board this week in Dustin Johnson. He has played some sensational golf this year and if not for a handful of meltdown moments, he may have had even more victories to add to his win at Doral back in March. He is a heavy favorite this week and with a field this soft there is no reason that he should not be near the top of the leaderboard come Sunday. However, he has a couple of big strikes against him. First off, his price of $13,000 makes him difficult to roster as the average salary for all five other players on a team like that would have to average $7400. Now, there are a couple of options at or below $7000 for this week, but they are going to all be heavily owned so that it is unlikely you will gain any diversification in your lineup. We also think DJ will probably be one of the highest owned players this week as some of our initial thoughts on ownership have him projected at 25-30% an maybe even higher if any other high profile players withdraw before the event tees of on Thursday. Also, as we have discussed at length in previous columns, it will be nearly impossible for DJ to earn his salary this week. Even if DJ duplicates his strong performance from a week ago where he tied for 3rd, it was only good for a 97 point output. That sounds like a lot, but 97 points this week for a $13,000 salary is not going to get the job done this week, particularly in these large field GPPs.

We nailed our prediction of needing a lineup to score 600 points last week in order to win the 95,000 entry GPP. This week, most outlets project the winning score to be right around -11, slightly worse than last week. If we want to set a good projection for how many points it will take to win the $100, 2700 entry GPP this week, our guess is somewhere around 570 points. That translates into roughly $0.88/point (taking our $50,000 and cutting off the last two zeroes and dividing by 570). DJ would need to score around 147 points to hold up his end of your team, or…you could hope to find 5 other players in the abyss of the lower priced players to outperform their salaries this week. There are going to be weeks where the favorite sets a new course record and crushes all valuation metrics and we will not be in a great spot to win a GPP in not owning that player. However, more often than not, the favorite will not win the event and we’ll be in a stronger position to capitalize on the ownership concentration of our opponents.

The top issue that fantasy players make a big mistake in dealing with week in and week out is valuation. DraftKings really has not adjusted the top level of prices up or down very much regardless of how difficult the course plays for a given week so $13,000 is much different for this week versus something like The Humana where a winning score might be in the -20 range. A player like Phil Mickelson is really difficult to own this week. Even a nice rebound performance where Phil ties for 15th would be a disappointment in a GPP. The more money you spend at the top of the salary chain, the bigger the risk you are forced to take with the rest of your roster. Now, Phil will be owned by very few owners this week, which is a positive, but his price, combined with his recent erratic play make him easy for us to avoid. We are going to need to take some chances this week, but we want the upside potential to match that risk.

BLUE CHIPS

Billy Horschel ($11,500) – Could it be that Billy has found his confidence again? If so, the rest of the field needs to be put on notice as Horschel tends to play extremely well in stretches. We felt like he had turned the corner coming into last weekend and sure enough, he delivered with a T11 finish for us. Were it not for three dropped strokes late on Saturday afternoon, he would have been right in the mix to win it on Sunday. Billy has been in the Top 10 here the last two years and is coming off of back to back Top 15 finishes in his most recent starts. He ranks 7th in Ball Striking and specializes in hitting greens where he ranks 15th. He ranks 46th in Par 4 scoring. Although he is just 99th in scrambling, his accuracy usually keeps him out of trouble so it should be less of an issue. His iron play is a little lacking as he ranks just 96th in strokes gained tee to green, but his strong putting (28th) leads to him being ranked 55th in total strokes gained. We think Horschel is hitting his stride and this week will be a great indicator as to whether his price for the US Open is a real bargain or if we will pass completely.

Webb Simpson ($11,100) – Simpson has so much going for him that it is a real shame that he cannot figure out his putting problems. Simpson has been strong this season in making 10 of 11 cuts with four Top 10 finishes. He also managed a 3rd place finish here a year ago. In his most recent event at the Wells Fargo, Simpson was in contention going into Sunday, and managed to finish in 2nd place. Simpson ranks 10th in ball striking, 69th in Par 4 scoring, 15th in scrambling (14th in sand save percentage) and 4th in strokes gained tee to green. Of course, then there his atrocious putting where he ranks 170th and loses .421 strokes per round. Simpson reminds me a lot of a beautiful woman that is perfect in all ways except for one really ugly scar that is visible along her cheek at all times. Can we ignore the scar and appreciate the overall beauty? My standards are high, but accommodating.

Brooks Koepka ($10,400) – In keeping in line with comparing golfers to women, Brooks Koepka reminds me of a distant memory of a young lady that I spent many happy times with, usually followed by times of annoyance, irritation and near insanity. Koepka plays some amazing golf each week. Koepka also plays some awful golf each week. No, awful is too kind of a word….hideous is more appropriate. We’ve watched Koepka 5 putt this year. We’ve watched him put up back to back quadruple bogeys. We watched in horror last weekend as he double bogeyed three consecutive holes on Sunday, rendering a promising GPP team irrelevant. And yet…there are the birdies. Oh, and don’t forget about the eagles either. Koepka leads the tour in eagle average and is 21st in birdie average. This translates into huge points each week on DraftKings with its unbalanced scoring system. Koepka ranks 36th in Ball Striking, 23rd in Par 4 Scoring, 44th in strokes gained tee to green and 21st in strokes gained putting. This balance has helped him to a ranking of 18th in total strokes gained. Outside of a rib injury that hindered his play for a little over a month, Koepka has managed to put up points in bunches in his other starts this year. Yes, like a crazy ex-girlfriend, Koepka is combustible at a moments notice, and yet, I can’t quit him. The blowup factor here is high, so we have only ourselves to blame for the pain we put ourselves through, but this kid has the talent to win any week and does too many things well to ignore him in this soft field.

VALUE PICKS

George McNeill ($8700) – He is not a flashy pick, but there is so little for us to work with in his range, that he is really the only reasonable play here offering enough upside to justify the price. McNeill has been surging as of late with five Top 20 finishes in his last eight starts and finishing no lower than 44th through that stretch. He has been a little mixed with his results at Southwind, finishing 28th last year, missed the cut in 2013 and 38th and 47th in the two previous years. His ball striking is unremarkable (105th), but his iron play helps him out, boosting him to 73rd in strokes gained tee to green. He putts well (32nd) and ranks 46th in Par 4 scoring. He does not excel in any one area, but is not especially weak in any part of his game either. We are looking for McNeill to continue his strong play this weekend. Considering that there are few other options around him, McNeill will be highly owned this week.

Shawn Stefani ($8200) – Coming out of the abyss, we find our old friend, Shawn Stefani waiting for us at a nice reasonable price. Stefani has missed only 3 cuts in 18 starts this year and has finished in the Top 25 nine times this season. Stefani is the epitome of value and has been a staple in our lineups all year. He has made the cut here in both starts and finished 7th in 2013. With a weaker than average field, Stefani should have a chance to make a strong finish this week. Stefani ranks 14th in Ball Striking, 23rd in Par 4 scoring, 55th in strokes gained tee to green and 36th in strokes gained putting. He is a little weak in his scrambling ability, but his overall game is sharp. He will be very highly owned this week.

Jason Bohn ($7900) – Bohn did his best Brooks Koepka impression last week starting off +6 in the first 8 holes on Thursday before rebounding back strongly to make the cut on Friday. He finished the weekend at Even par, but managed 23 birdies to create incredible value for owners who tore their hair out watching his score bounce down and then back up again. Bohn has finished in the Top 25 the last two years at Southwind and has two Top 10 finishes in his last three starts. Bohn ranks 44th in Ball Striking and is particularly strong in terms of his accuracy and GIR this year which is perfect for the course. He ranks 4th in Par 4 scoring, and although he is only 79th in scrambling, he is accurate enough and strong enough with his approach work that we feel very comfortable using him this week in out lineups. Bohn will have moderate to high levels of ownership this week.

Cameron Tringale ($7800) – We promised some options this week where ownership levels would be a little lower and Tringale certainly looks like that choice. After getting blown off the course last week at Muirfield, Tringale will look to redeem himself this week at Southwind. Tringale has made the cut in his last three starts here with a Top 10 finish back in 2011. Tringale has been a bit uneven this season with two Top 10 finishes, but also several surprising missed cuts as well. He is a decent scrambler (58th) and 44th in sand save percentage. His other stats are unremarkable but his tee to green game (65th) is just reasonable enough to make him a nice ‘buy low’ candidate for the week. He will be a nice option to diversify our lineups a bit as we do not think he will hit double digits in his ownership percentage.

Boo Weekley ($7700) – Weekley hit the MDF wall at The Byron Nelson a couple of weeks back, but has had a pretty decent year with four Top 10 finishes. He has not been able to finish strongly in any event as one bad round tends to wipe him out, but he has a great skill set for this particular course where he has made five straight cuts and finishing in a range between 27th and 53rd. Both Tringale and Weekley should make for a nice pivot from Russell Knox who will be widely owned despite three poor performances here. Weekley ranks 46th in Ball Striking, 69th in Par 4 scoring and 94th in scrambling. His putting is just average, but he is 51st in strokes gained tee to green which places him even higher in the current field. Normally, Weekley would simply be viewed as a cut maker, but he does have some upside potential and will not be as widely owned as a few others.

Brandon de Jonge ($7600) – The rotund Zimbabwean had been one of the hottest players on tour before disappointing owners by missing two cuts in his last three starts. de Jonge struggled many years back at this tournament, but has finished 34th and 39th in his last two starts here. This should be enough to keep owners at bay and chasing other players. de Jonge does not have a lot of length of the tee, but is accurate and hits greens leading him to a respectable ranking of 31st in Ball Striking. He also ranks 38th in Par 4 scoring and 52nd in strokes gained tee to green. Although his putting is just a shred above average, against a weaker field, de Jonge has a chance to excel and make a run at his first career win on tour.

Will Wilcox ($7600) – Wilcox will be a popular pick this week. With Robert Streb leaving the field at his price point, those owners will look to someone in a similar price range to fill the gap. He has four Top 25 finishes in eight starts this year. Wilcox is a strong play this week as he ranks 3rd in Ball Striking on the season punctuated by being ranked 4th in GIR. He is 16th in scrambling and 4th in sand saves and ranks 23rd in Par 4 scoring. His tee to green game is decent (70th) and he putts well (53rd). Wilcox will be highly owned this week. You should have one or two pivots in place around Wilcox as we can envision a potential Thomas/Berger scenario unfolding on Friday for owners who are not a bit cautious.

SLEEPERS

William McGirt ($7000) – Outside of a couple of small hiccups, McGirt has been a solid cut maker this season. He has been a little hit and miss at Southwind finishing 32nd in 2014 and 13th in 2012 around two missed cuts in 2013 and 2011. He has finished in the Top 40 in his last three starts overall and is at a favorable price in comparison with the Vegas odds this week. McGirt is accurate off the tee (23rd) and hits greens at a reasonable rate (62nd). He does not have a lot of distance to his drives, but manages most courses well. His tee to green game has been very good this year (37th) and he gets out of trouble through scrambling to get up and down where he ranks 36th. Given the attention that Charles Howell III will receive at $6800, McGirt represents a nice alternative play that will only be lightly owned this week.

Charles Howell III – He is back to where he started this year in terms of pricing. After making one cut after another and having a few nice finishes, CHIII hit a rough patch and missed a few cuts and has now largely fallen out of favor with owners….until now. His pricing this week is so far below the odds posted that he has the potential to be the highest owned player this week given the dearth of other options around him. CHIII has made five straight cuts at Southwind including one Top 10 finish. He does not have the accuracy we would like to see, but he does get good distance off the tee (17th) and hits greens (20th). Howell is a below average putter, but has a good tee to green game (35th). We have a great cut maker with upside potential in CHIII. Unfortunately, everyone is going to notice so be sure to take that into consideration when building GPP rosters.

Stewart Cink ($6300) – Back to finding low priced players that will go largely unnoticed, Stewart Cink is a quiet option that should stay just under the radar this week. Although he does not have any Top 10 finishes this year, he is priced so low that simply making the cut this week will be more than enough to deliver us some value. Combine that with a couple of key players missing the cut and we may have the recipe to gain a few extra points over the rest of the field. Cink is a wizard in hitting greens (2nd) and still gets a little distance out of his drives (59th). His tee to green game and putting are basically average, but will not lose it for him. He also scores plays Par 4 holes well (46th). It’s not an exciting play, but we think it will be effective and unnoticed by most of the field.

Greg Chalmers ($5900) – We have one play this week this is a bit of a deep sleeper. Chalmers has actually made five of six cuts here so we think that while folks will be crowding to Jeff Overton at $6100 with his record of seven of seven cuts made, we are rolling with Chalmers. He has made eight of ten cuts on the season. He has no Top 10 finishes, but we have another player in Chalmers that simply needs to make the cut in order to produce huge value for our teams this week. We shudder to look at his statistics. He has one good thing going for him and that is that he ranks 12th in strokes gained putting, which is not a bad area to excel this week. He is reasonably good on Par 4’s (69th), but mostly this is just a straight value play. Priced far below the Vegas odds and with limited options, Chalmers looks like a deal.

While some of these sleeper picks are probably going to disappoint us, we wanted to illustrate a key point that you do have options this week. You do not have to overlap every other owner in the field. There are high risk, high reward strategies that can work in your favor on weeks this where ownership is highly concentrated. Build a few contrarian teams to go with the other lineups that seem to line up perfectly in terms of price and statistics. It is easy to see what ownership trends are going to look like this week so use that information to your advantage. They Trevor Sanso’s of the world are going to make it obvious for you so be a little bold with your play this week even if you are a little cautious overall with your bankroll.

As always, good luck. We are incredibly excited about this week and especially next week. As you are reading this, our editorial staff will be putting together a preview article for the US Open for ESPN as they really enjoyed the coverage that we provided them for The Masters. We will be sure to post a link on Twitter in a few days when it is released online.

-Myzteriouzly