The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Fort Worth Invitational
It was another great week for the FGI team with yet another Crystal Ball player taking down a tournament for the fifth time in the last seven weeks. I spent an extensive amount of time last week discussing the column that Jeff puts out each year in December and how much success it has had in the last two months, but it really has been unbelievably during this stretch. We’ve literally had subscribers out there turn a few hundred dollars in their account into well over five figures just hitting these players week after week during this run. Is it something that will continue indefinitely? Probably not to the level that it has, but if you have been with us over the last two years, you know that we’ve had incredible success on these plays so by no means do I think the run is over yet. Even in just looking at the field this week there are some names from the list that are popping in the model as well: Rickie Fowler, JJ Spaun, Kevin Tway, Bryson DeChambeau and Beau Hossler These are among the names in the field that have not won yet while several others playing this week are already winners.
I am excited this week as we get back to a great course with plenty of history attached and a field that is much better than what we had last week. I am always a little nervous when the field is weaker like it was for the Byron Nelson and yet again, my theory was proven correct that those weeks tend to be among the most profitable all season. I think a big reason for why we tend to really kill it on those weeks over some of the others is that we are actual golf fans that tune into the tournament all four days each week. We take note of what we are watching. We follow dozens of players on shot tracker. We know how most of the bigger names of the field played round by round throughout the year so that when events like the Byron Nelson pop up and the depth of the field is lacking, this is where some of the big data folks tend to falter while the analysts who watch the events every week shine a little more than usual. While many folks can make arguments until everyone loses interest in hearing them when it comes to course data, when there is a new course in play, there isn’t a lot of data to rely on to make projections. While we did not know exactly how Trinity Forest would play, here was how I saw it playing out:
The course itself is Trinity Forest, a landfill just a few short years ago and now one of the most unique stops on tour this year. Go ahead and take a minute to look at some images of the course online. My first impression is that it reminds me of a few of the other links style courses that we have seen in recent years at Chambers Bay, Whistling Straits and Erin Hills. Things are wide open off the tee with expansive, rolling fairways with strategically placed bunkers all around that will need to be carefully avoided. There is no rough to speak of here so if by chance you do get a little wild, you are going to be in one hell of a mess. Now, the key here, as is the case with other links style courses is whether or not the wind comes into play. There are no trees on this course so when the winds are up, they are going to create havoc for the players, but as we saw last year at Erin Hills, these types of courses can also be vulnerable to a lot of scoring if the winds stay away.
This is why weeks like last week provide us with great opportunities each year. When we have the chance to be playing in events where the data is more limited, our knowledge of courses and conditions gives us a greater edge than normal, especially in a weaker than normal field where you really need to dig to find some hidden value. It ended up a being a really good week for me and for many FGI folks last week. I was just a few shots away from contending for the top prize in the FanDuel $7.77 GPP where I was in 6th place late in the day before three late bogeys and a surge of scoring from chalky players dropped me back. On DK, I was one player swap away from finishing 2nd in the Dogleg contest. I will be kicking myself for a long time about Martin Laird last week. I knew all week that he would be chalk poison. Late on Tuesday night as I wrote my column I even tweeted out that he would be a disappointment and yet, I could not stop myself from playing him on many of my teams last week. I also played a lot of shares of Keith Mitchell who was the same price. Had I just put Mitchell in rather than Laird….. Oh well, that’s the same song almost anybody could sing in DFS on any given week! In any event, I was profitable across the board in GPP play and cash games as well. In fading all of those players above $10k and focusing in on the big values in the $9k range, there were a lot of paths to victory last week. With Kevin Na picking up his game as our big value play down in the low $7k range, it shaped up really well even with the Laird MC costing us a few dollars along the way. It was a lot of fun to see all the FGI logos up near the top of many contests last week. Let’s hope that we can keep the momentum going this week as we start to move towards some of the best events of the year over the next three months.
This week, as I mentioned before, we have a great field for what is usually my favorite event of the Texas swing each spring. This year, it is known as the Fort Worth Invitational, but previous sponsors included Dean & DeLuca as Crowne Plaza so if you are looking through the profile pages of each player, be sure to note the changes in names over the last few years. I like this event as it is about the only course we see in Texas that is aesthetically pleasing. Trinity Forest was different, but like Erin Hills, lacked personality. Houston does an okay job setting up some conditions to make the course play a little like Augusta, but Augusta it is not. San Antonio with Valero is challenging, but the thorny mess that serves as rough is painful to look at and even more painful to play through. Colonial has been hosting this event, under many names, since 1946. It is a Par 70 course and just over 7,200 yards long, which means just two Par 5 holes to work with. The first hole is the shorter of the two Par 5’s and at 565 yards, represents the best birdie opportunity on the course. The other Par 5 is over 630 yards long and barely even plays under par which means that scoring is at a premium this week. The fairways are narrow and tree lined with plenty doglegs which will force most player to club down off the tee to keep the ball in play this week. When you think of Texas courses, Colonial does not really fit in with the other three that we see for stroke play events so set your mind up to be thinking more along the lines of Harbour Town, Waialae or the Florida courses like Copperhead or PGA National where players have to leave their driver in the bag more often than not. We’ll see water in play again this week and some of the smallest greens of the season meaning that we will be focusing on accurate players with precision iron play for the week. The greens are bentgrass and as Jeff mentioned to me last night in the podcast, the first course in Texas to use it, but Bermuda on the rest of the course.
In looking at the weather for the week, I am always nervous about the winds in Texas, but it looks like a non-factor over the first two days so I will make 5-10% of my teams overloaded to each wave, but it is not a central concern for me as it is in other weeks.
The key stats for the week are as follows:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Scrambling: 15%
Proximity: 10%
Driving Accuracy: 5%
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