The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – GPP Plays for The Safeway Open

It’s the fall swing season for the PGA Tour, and that means that the field is filled with new faces to challenge the regular names we’ve come to know and love over the last year. Golf really does a great job of forcing players to keep their game sharp from year to year as the PGA is constantly pumping new blood into the tour each season and forcing those players on the fringes to step up their performance. This process is both a blessing and a curse for fantasy owners as the most dedicated of us can take extra time to study the different tours around the world to be prepared for these new players, but it is also a burden in that the database of potential players that can pop up at some point during the tour season is literally hundreds of names long.

The fall is where this convergence of names really plays into your hands if you are prepared, or it can wreck you if you have been more focused on the NFL over the last couple of months. Those players that are coming over from the Web.com Tour are not going to be totally under the radar when they arrive in Napa this week for the Safeway Open. If you think you are going to be sneaky by looking at the money leader, Wesley Bryan as your sleeper, prepare to be disappointed. Everyone who plays PGA in the fall is usually a pretty die hard type of owner so you are going to need to dig a little deeper in your research if you want to find those hidden diamonds out there.

This week is really a double edged sword in terms of the players in the field. There are so many talented young players at this first event and most of them are priced really affordably. That is the good news. Unfortunately, it is still unclear as to who will step up and embrace the spotlight and who will wilt under pressure, or play the season with the Mahan-esque attitude of ‘just happy to be here’. My suggestion is to take your time this week. There is no need to get crazy with your bankroll exposure this week in GPP events. Take time to study the field this week.

I am looking at two types of players this week for information. Obviously, the shiny new toys are exciting with all of the young, up and coming future stars set to make their presence felt immediately. However, the other players that you should also zero in on are those golfers that are coming back onto the tour after a full season on the Web.com Tour or who struggled last season, were forced to go over to the Web.com Tour for the final few events, and played really well to earn back their place on the PGA Tour this season.

A great example of this type of player from a year ago is Lucas Glover who really faltered down the stretch, finished outside of the Top 125 in the FedEx Cup standing and had to go finish the year in the playoffs of the Web.com to try to earn back his tour card for the season. Well, Glover ended up playing really well in finishing in the Top-25 in all four events which spurred him on to having success this past season on tour. In 2014, Glover missed 19 cuts, in 2015, he missed eleven cuts, but this past season, Glover missed just eight cuts, posted six Top-25 finishes, with two inside the Top-10. Everyone is going to be watching Wesley Bryan, CT Pan and Grayson Murray this week and rightfully so, but be sure to check out a few of the veteran golfers that were able to right the ship after being forced to step down to the lower tour to save their status going forward. There is certainly nothing that would guarantee that these players will continue to play well in their return to the tour, but we had a ton of success with Glover last year who seemed to fix his putter…albeit not completely and went on to be a reasonably reliable player for us, particularly in the early to middle stages of the season before he sustained an injury which slowed him throughout the summer.

Did I mention that Tiger Woods is in the field this week? No? Oh, he withdrew after seeing his ridiculous salary of $8,800 on DraftKings? I have to say that I am incredibly disappointed by this development. No, I was not excited to see him get out there to play again. I was pumped up to see the 8% of suckers that put him on their rosters this week helping to grease the skids for us towards winning some extra GPP dollars this week. I am not sure what caused the late withdrawal after declaring his intention to play last week on Friday, but he says he needs a few more months to get ready. His plan is to play in the Hero World Challenge where he’ll have a reasonable shot at a Top-20 finish versus the other 17 players in the field… Eventually, Tiger will return and a media circus will ensue. We will be fading him until he shows us something more than what he had left during his last stint where he struggled week after week just to limp towards the completion of two full rounds of golf. Tiger is good for the health of golf and the extra viewers tends to give our game a bit of a bump as well so we are rooting for his return, regardless of whether it is a return to glory, a complete dumpster fire, or somewhere in between.

The event this week, The Safeway Open, is not exactly the type that folks marvel at for its pageantry or traditions. It has the even more unfortunate name of, The Frys.com Open the last few years so at least this feels like an upgrade. The event is held at Silverado Country Club in Napa out in California where it has been held since 2014. As a result, we do not have a lot of course history to work with so as you are working through your model this week, you should be lowering your weighting there and probably give a little bump to Current Form and Vegas Odds to compensate. It will take several more years before we have a good enough sample size to start drawing better conclusions about the course and proper weightings for the key stats so we do not quite have the perfect archetype of a player who should succeed here as of yet.

From what I have gathered about the course, along with the data gathered by our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics, this Par 72, 7,200 yard course sets up well for players who are strong in their approach game, particularly in the mid to long iron category. Tee to green play and putting have the usual weightings this week, along with birdie or better percentage, but there are a few key areas of focus that stood out:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better %: 20%
Prox 150-175 Yards: 15%
Par 5 Scoring: 10%
Strokes Gained Approach: 5%

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My philosophy this week is to fire away at those players that best fit my model this week at the top and middle salary tiers and from there to sprinkle in my favorite new players in small doses around them. It is always tough to say which of these players will join the tour and then immediately have success, but I have no doubt that throughout the fall swing season, we are going to see some of these players in the Top-10 and hopefully they will be able to differentiate our lineups well enough to give us an edge when they go off for a big finish.

As a reminder when constructing your GPP rosters, the place to start if you are going to be entering a lot of lineups (Mega Multi Entry – MME) is our ownership projection page in the toolbar above. For a tournament like this one, outside of a handful of players at the top and a few in the middle, I anticipate that ownership levels will be pretty well distributed for the week. So what does that mean for a target for total ownership per roster?

For those of you that are brand new to The Daily Spin, as well as friends of old, let’s talk for a minute about total ownership per roster, or what I like to call, Aggregate Exposure (AE). This is a term that a couple of us coined here at FGI last year when studying the rosters of the weekly winners for the big GPP events each week. We wanted to take a look at the data to see what it revealed about lineup composition to see if there were any patterns that we could pick out that set those rosters apart. I did a lengthy write up for members at the end of 2015 that we made available for a limited time and we collected even more data this year so we should have an even better idea of what the ideal lineup should look like before you hit submit each week.

Most GPP rosters are dead before the first golfer has teed off. A quick look at total ownership percentages nearly guarantees that a lineup that is way too chalky, or not chalky enough will almost never win a big GPP event against a large field. I won’t dig too deep into exactly why this is the case, but the easiest way to understand it is in balancing risk versus reward. If you take big risks across the board with lower owned players, your likelihood of hitting a landmine along the way is much higher. Likewise, if you do not take any chances and have lineups that are near mirror images of most of your opponents, you make it impossible to outscore them as there is nothing that differentiates your team, good or bad for the week.

To keep things simple, which is really our aim here overall, you do not need to take a crash course on statistics or spend hundreds of hours pouring over the data to find these optimal numbers. When I build tournament lineups, my goal for a normal tournament is to try to keep my teams in a total AE range of 60-75%. That means, when you add up ownership levels for each player, the total should be somewhere between 60 and 75. If you are at 85% or 55% with your estimates, don’t get paranoid about it. Ownership projections are never perfect. All we are looking to do when thinking about this is to gauge where our teams are at and if we’re thinking too chalky or not chalky enough. Obviously, depending on the tournament, things can change to a degree. When the pricing is a little softer, adjust your AE totals up a bit as the quality of your rosters will be higher. And in those rare weeks where pricing is really tough, adjust your AE totals down to compensate for weaker lineups in the field.

Here are our picks for GPP play at The Safeway Open:

CORE

Jon Rahm – 60% ($10,200)
Kevin Na – 60% ($9,900)
Tony Finau – 40% ($8,300)
Hudson Swafford – 40% ($7,800)
Emiliano Grillo – 35% ($10,900)
Brendan Steele – 35% ($8,700)

The core group is full of mostly veteran player this week outside of the extremely talented, Jon Rahm who starred at Arizona St for several years before turning pro this past summer where he had an immediate impact on tour. He’s a 300 yard plus hitter off the tee, plays well around the greens and can putt at a high level. He should be able to take advantage of the short Par 5 holes this week and should be in position for a lot of birdie and eagle opportunities. Rahm should be considered an early favorite to win Rookie of the Year honors this season.

Kevin Na is not quite the big hitter that many other picks are this week, but he is accurate, his mid range iron play is incredible and his putter usually is there for him unless he is in contention on Sunday. Na had a shot to win here a year ago, but crumbled and lost in a playoff against Emiliano Grillo and finished in 2nd. Outside of the Tour Championship, where he was terrible, Na has been playing well of late so I anticipate he starts the season strong as he tends to excel against softer fields.

Tony Finau started slowly last season before a win in Puerto Rico jump started him and got him going the rest of the year. Finau is a bomber off the tee who can score often on these shorter Par 5 holes. In terms of putting, Finau is a real Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to how he performs on the greens. When he is on Bermuda grass, it is a horror show. When he is on bentgrass, he is a rock star. This weak, the grass is Poa Annua, a variation of bentgrass so Finau should be in good shape. Finau has done well in both starts here with a 12th and 32nd place finish to his credit.

Hudson Swafford will be a popular pick this week and for good reason. He is below the average price in a soft field, he has played well in both of his starts at Silverado, statistically, he is a nice match for the course and finally, Swafford has made twelve straight cuts. I am anticipating higher than average ownership numbers so you could certainly fade him here. He has finished 17th and 8th here in two starts so the fade is not without risk, but typically Swafford is not a contender so even if he finishes reasonably well, it doesn’t necessarily hurt you. I used him as I think the upside is there to justify it and also because in an event like this, making the cut gets a little bit of a premium for me.

Emiliano Grillo got his first win here a year ago after emerging from the Web.com Tour and since we had studied him last summer before the fall season, it did not come as a huge surprise. Grillo is an excellent ball striker with great mid range iron play which helps to give him a lot of birdie opportunities. His putting stats are not great, but like Finau, Grillo is much better on bentgrass so we should have less to worry about. Grillo is also very stable in term of making the cut and missed just three cuts in 26 starts last season.

Brendan Steele is probably going to be someone that I end up cussing out many a Friday afternoons over the next year. His numbers show a player with a solid tee to green game with good irons. Unfortunately, his putter was atrocious last year and seems to be deteriorating over the last few seasons. However, this is course where Steele should be in good shape as he ranked 13th in Par 5 scoring last season. If he can keep the blowups out of his game the first two days, he should be able to give us a repeat of what he has done the last two years with consecutive Top-25 finishes.

SECONDARY

Lucas Glover – 30% ($7,400) – 17th here a year ago, excellent tee to green and a good Par 5 scorer, putter still suspect
Charles Howell III – 30% ($7,600) – Great season w new clubs last year w 14 Top-25 finishes, strong tee to green game
Jason Kokrak – 30% ($8,100) – Finished the season strong w 3 Top-20 finishes in the FedEx Cup, bomber w strong irons
Keegan Bradley – 30% ($7,700) – Seemed to fix his game by the end of the year, great ball striker, struggling w putter
Adam Hadwin – 25% ($7,100) – Elite putter, has made the cut in both starts here, finished season by making 11/13 cuts
Jhonattan Vegas – 20% ($9,100) – 12 Top-25’s and a win last season, much improved in all areas, finished 10th here in 2015
David Hearn – 20% ($7,300) – Accurate, hits a lot of greens, has finally adjusted to new putter
Wesley Bryan – 20% ($7,900) – 3 time winner on the Web.com Tour this year, very elite with his putter
Jamie Lovemark – 15% ($7,300) – Struggled mid season, but started to find form recently, big hitter, can score on Par 5’s
Robert Garrigus – 15% ($7,100) – Turned his game around mid season, big hitter, tremendous mid and long iron player
Chez Reavie – 15% ($7,000) – Good ball striker, good iron play, below average putter, made the cut in both starts here
CT Pan – 15% ($7,400) – A top prospect from the Web.com Tour, finished 30th at US Open, Excellent ball striker and putter

TERTIARY

Kyle Reifers – 10% ($7,400) – made the cut in both starts here, good Par 5 scoring
Stewart Cink – 10% ($6,100) – Cheap option for a solid veteran player, hits a lot of greens and scores well on Par 5’s
Grayson Murray – 10% ($7,500) – 8 Top-10’s and a win on the Web.com Tour, bomber, excellent putter, #1 in Par 5 scoring
Scott Stallings – 10% ($6,900) – Finished his season on the Web.com Tour and had two Top-10’s, bomber w scoring ability
Seamus Power – 5% ($6,200) – win on Web and finished 15th at Olympics, hits a lot of greens, balanced game
Aaron Wise – 5% ($6,400) – #4 om MacKenzie Tour, 2 wins, finish 16th at John Deere, NCAA Individual National Champion 2016
JJ Spaun – 5% ($6,800) – 7 Top-10 finishes and a win on Web, excellent ball striking ability
Xander Schauffele – 5% ($6,100) – finished strong on Web.com making 10/11 cuts to finish the year, 4 top-10’s, good putter
Trey Mullinax – 5% ($6,500) – win and six Top-25 finishes on the Web.com Tour, bomber who can putt

Good Luck this week!

-Myzteriouzly

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