The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Honda Classic
Welcome back to Bubba Watson. A tearful Bubba collected his 10th win on tour last Sunday rolling to a two stroke victory over Kevin Na and Tony Finau, marking his third win in the last five years and his first win since his previous win at Riviera two years ago. For Bubba, he has now won seven of his ten victories at all of three courses, winning three time at Riviera, twice at Augusta and twice at TPC River Highlands at the Travelers. The embers of the great course history debate have been stirred up of late again on Twitter and it’s worth discussing today from what I would consider to be a middle ground position.
As Bubba cried during his interview on Sunday, I tweeted out something that I still do not think is all that controversial in saying ‘That’s one in the column for Course History’. It seemed pretty benign by any standard, but it caught the eye of a player whose fortunes had not been so good over the weekend who immediately began a series of challenges wondering about all of the players with some good course history who had not done well. It’s a common sort of debate tactic, to take your opponents words, present them in the most extreme light, and then to try to pin you to that extreme without really ever having to engage in any sort of nuanced discussion of any ideas. It’s misguided and intellectually lazy, but it’s become a popular tactic, particularly in our rabid political arena here in the U.S.
Before you ever get caught in trying to have this debate over 280 characters per tweet, let me just stop you right there and save you the trouble by telling you that it is not worth your time. When you are dealing with what I would call a ‘statophile’, they are almost always going to be deeply entrenched in the numbers and there is absolutely no point that you are going to make to them to change their opinion in the least. They would rather tell you that it is sheer coincidence that seven of Bubba’s ten wins happened at three courses rather than admit to their being any sort of merit to the predictive powers of course history. Most of these fellows on Twitter are deeply adamant in their beliefs on this point, almost with some degree of religious fervor. They’re not wrong either, if you are examining the full stream of data that is available on course history and its reliability in predicting future results. All in all, when you look at all of the data points available for all of the players who play in every tournament, when you run your regression models, you will see, without a doubt that course history is mostly noise with a slightly positive correlation when it comes to making predictions about future results.
Now, you might be scratching your head right now thinking to yourself, ‘didn’t he just say that he is a believer in course history? And then he’s conceding that the data on it is mostly just noise?’ Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you to both of those questions. While it may seem like I’ve given a very political answer here, I want to dive into this a little deeper since I think that being too far to the extreme in either case will leave you in a tricky position when trying to analyze the available data each week.
I think the way that you have to be able to see this debate is to take it down to something so easy and so simple that even the most die hard of believers on the side of the numbers would have to concede some ground. Let’s use two golfers in our example. Your friend wants to make a hypothetical bet with you on who would win a heads up matchup between Bubba Watson and Luke Donald and he’ll let you pick the player, but he gets to pick the course. We’ll pretend that we hold God-like powers and can command them to play in whichever tournament we choose. Would you want to make this bet? I sure would not have any interest at all. Bubba is obviously still the better player overall and so if the wager was blind to the course, you’d probably take Bubba. However, if your opponent can then select the course and chooses Harbour Town, you’re suddenly not feeling too good about your position. You can look at Adjusted Strokes per Round all you like or even recent form, but you’re lying to yourself if you tell me you’d take Bubba there. The course matters. These players are not picking their schedules at random each year. They know where they can best compete to win each season. It’s no accident that Bubba knows exactly how to shape his shots at Riviera to put himself into the best possible position on most of the holes.
However, we do not want to fall into the trap of being blind slaves to course history. We absolutely have to view it IN CONTEXT. Yes, Corey Pavin has won twice at Riviera. Would I select him now for one of my DFS teams if he came back to play there again on the PGA Tour? Of course not. That would be absurd. If a player finishes in the Top-10 the first time on the course am I automatically going to select him the next year based off of a solid one year track record? Again, one good year is nice to see, but it’s not something to weight too heavily. This is where things get a little bit tricky and where the statophiles will aim to break your argument. In their world, it’s black and white. They listen to what the numbers alone tell them and follow their model. They can’t comprehend that you would do anything different. They try to pin you down to where you must apply course history the same way to every player and if you don’t, they try to claim victory since if your process is not as easily replicable as theirs, then you are simply picking and choosing among the noise.
What you have to remember at this stage of the debate is that you’re never going to win the argument base off of sample size. We’re never going to get 1500 rounds at a specific course for a specific golfer. You’ll get nowhere near that so you’re never going to be able to claim with any scientific merit that course history is useful. However, just because a player only has a certain number of recorded tournament rounds at a course does not mean they have not played many more rounds at that course. Consider players with local ties to certain areas or players who make their residency near certain courses. While they may not have the competitive rounds to show, there’s a chance they may have played a hundred or more rounds at a particular stop on tour.
Another area where things get tricky is in using aging players that have consistently performed well on a particular course. KJ Choi at Riviera is a great example of that. Coming into this year, KJ had made 17/17 cuts at Riviera with most of his finishes coming inside the Top-30. In try number 18, he finally came up short. Every golfer is going to hit a wall at some point in their career. Yes, Mike Weir was one of the top players in the world at one point and in his first ten starts at Augusta, he finished in the Top-25 six times and won in 2003. However, once he hit the wall, his game never returned to form and that’s often the case for many players on tour. I pushed the limits with KJ last week and was deservedly burned for starting a player on a few rosters that was not in good form over the short or long term and who has obviously played his best golf in years past. Obviously, I don’t think that takes away from the first 17 cuts in a row that he made, but you have to also understand that players change. Some will get older or just lose their game and never get it back. You need to keep your eyes on the game each week to watch this unfold.
There is also the opposite effect which is worth mentioning. Many times, when a new player makes his way onto the tour, he will struggle at certain courses and may miss the cut a couple of times. For the players who develop and improve, this gives us a nice opportunity to pounce after a year or two. If you look at a player like Tony Finau last week, you get a good example of a guy who had not been great at Riviera in his first three starts with a 56th place finish and two missed cuts. When you look at his game though, and where he’s improved, you see a player who should do well as he gets great distance off the tee, is impressive with his long iron play and does his best putting on Poa greens. This is probably the best type of example to look for in studying course history every week. You already know that it’s a resource that everyone else is looking at so when most see a poor or checkered history and you see a player that has made strides in their game, that’s a low ownership opportunity with upside type of play that you should look to capitalize on. This is why context is so important.
You have to be able to look at each player and know what is going on their game in order to use course history as either a benefit in buying or selling a player. Another great example of where course history supposedly failed us last week was Sang Moon Bae who had played well in all three of his starts at Riviera before returning home to Korea for two years of military service. I wanted nothing to do with him and will continue to avoid him. Coming into the event, he’d made just one cut in nine starts (he did play four rounds at the cut free CJ Cup) and does not look like he’s even close to being the player he was before. This is understandable given that he was out of competitive golf for two full seasons. It will take him some time, perhaps all season to regain his former prowess. Until then, I’ll wait patiently while others try to catch the falling knife in trying to be ahead of the moment. Again, it’s another issue where there is outside information that you need to factor in with your decision.
Hopefully, my point is getting across in all of this. You want to avoid having the data manipulate you into seeing something that is not there, but on the other hand, when there is strong evidence of a course fit, it’s probably at least worth examining to see if there is an opportunity to either be a buyer or seller based upon everything you know from watching the game each week and knowing what is going on with the players. The long term stats and form are going to get you close, but knowing how a player fits on a specific course and why their game translates into so much success at certain events will help to put you over the top if you’re willing to invest the time to watch a lot of golf and learn about the players on tour. Am I ever going to convince the quant guys with my rationale? Probably not. And that’s okay. If you find it useful and it is helping you out, then stick with it. If you are a numbers driven player and want to let the data do all the talking, there is nothing wrong with that approach either.
Now that I have written way too much about that topic, I am going to try to bring us back to this week at the Honda Classic where we’ll look to keep things moving in a positive direction. The Honda Classic is one of the most challenging events all season. There is water in play on nearly every hole, the rough is unforgiving and the winds are always tough to deal with. The scores tend to stay in the middle to high single digit range and avoidance of mistakes and hitting greens are probably the two factors that most help in getting players a title here. It’s a Par 70 course that plays at 7,140 yards and has Bermuda greens, a nice switch for those players from the southeast, not so nice for those who putt better on Poa or bentgrass greens. We also get our first collection of difficult holes that are tough enough to earn a nickname. The Bear Trap encompasses the 15th-17th holes and has two challenging Par 3’s and a Par 4 in the middle. It’s among the toughest stretch of holes we’ll see all year and getting through it without losing a stroke is very difficult. It makes for a fun finish on Sunday in a close tournament as fortunes can and do change very quickly. For the best course preview each and every week, I invite you to check out Adam’s column, The First Tee for a more in depth look at PGA National.
The first thing I want you to look at this week are the winds which I will link to here. As usual, it’s going to be a real challenge with steady state winds of around 12-15 mph and gusting up to 21 mph on Friday morning before dropping back to 14 mph in the afternoon. The way I read the weather right now, I am giving the AM/PM wave the advantage this week, but I don’t think you have to avoid PM/AM players by any means. If you are stacking some of your lineups by tee times, perhaps 15-20% should be AM/PM with maybe 5-10% being PM/AM and the rest neutral overall. I’ve included the tee times with my recommendations below this week to help give you a good starting point.
This is going to be a tricky week as always. Rickie paid us off last year as I rode him to a nice win in an outright bet. For DFS purposes, I had someone ask me the other day if I thought this was more of a cash or GPP week. Based upon the tournament, it is typically a little more GPP oriented for me, but based upon the values offered by the pricing, I actually was able to make a cash team that I really liked within about 5 minutes. Usually this is a much more slow and painful process that can take a session or two of study before I am ready to lock it down, so don’t be dissuaded from cash games this week. Another viable option if you’re having trouble with the full four day event is to give weekend golf a try. We’ve had incredible success with weekend contests over the last ten months since DK rolled it out and I think we are still one of the few sites that really dives into the strategy behind how to build your lineup each week. The results we continue to have are tremendous and I am not seeing many other dive too deeply into the space so I think the opportunities are there for the taking this year.
KEY STATS:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green – 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Par 4 Scoring: 15%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 5%
Strokes Gained OTT: 5%
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