The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Northern Trust Open

The playoffs are upon us after nearly a year of struggle for the 125 hopefuls left that are eligible to compete this week, although only 120 will actually participate this week. It’s a rigorous schedule all year and requires players to be either very consistent all season with regards to making cuts to slowly accumulate points, or to find a way to win an event or come close to gather up the big points that are available at the top of the leaderboard each week. It’s a completely different dynamic than what we have seen throughout the regular season in terms of who moves on each week and what is at stake.

If you are unfamiliar with how the playoffs work, let’s take a quick look at how things will go moving forward. The first week, the Top-125 players in the field are allowed to participate and earn points. Now, if a player does not play in any one round, that does not mean they cannot return to play in other events further into the playoffs. However, that player will still need to make sure they have enough points under their belt in order to move on to the next round. For example, Adam Scott is set to miss the first two playoff events while his wife has a baby. He is currently inside the Top-70, which would allow for him to return at the BMW if that event were held today, but by the looks of it, he will probably be leapfrogged in the standings enough to fall outside of the mark by the time he is ready to return which would for all intents and purposes, eliminate him from the playoffs. If you are interested in seeing where everyone left in the playoffs would need to finish this week in order to ensure they advance, check out this helpful guide from the PGA Tour.

After the first event, only players inside of the Top-100 in FedEx Cup points will advance to Boston next week. Regardless of who opts into the event next week, you must be inside the Top-100 to play in Boston so any withdrawals or just skipping the event itself will not allow anyone else to enter the event so more than likely, we’ll probably see 95 golfers in the field or something along those lines under the full compliment of players who are eligible. From there, the next cut brings it down to 70 players for the BMW and finally, the Tour Championship is for the Top-30 players left in the field based on the cumulative number of points collected throughout the season and the playoffs. You do not have to actually win the Tour Championship to win the FedEx Cup Playoffs so it isn’t a situation where just getting into the final event can give you a shot at the title and the $10 million.

As we move through the playoffs, you will want to consider the cut down that is coming each week and adjust accordingly. For those of you that are playing in the Fantasy Golf World Championship (since DK can’t possibly figure out a live final anymore), this is going to mean playing somewhat cautiously in the first two rounds, a little on the aggressive side for the 3rd round and finally, should you make the finals, you’ll need to find a way to get creative with only 27-30 players to choose from to build your roster for the week. It’s a tricky way to crown a champion in that there is no benefit to finishing well in any of the first three rounds and rewards a title for the season in an event with a very small group of golfers where there will be a ton of overlap among the rosters out there. Avoid names in the opening rounds that have obvious blowup potential. You will not be rewarded for the risk. The 3rd round is really the key to the whole tournament and probably the toughest round to work through as only 42% of entries move on. If you get to the finals, it’s truly a tossup. You will have a small field to work with and a limited ability to differentiate. If you manage to hit upon a lower owned play who fares well, it will still only matter if you have the winner, which I am very certain many teams will have within their ranks.

Before we get too carried away with this week’s event, we should look back over the last two years of the FedEx Cup to see if we can spot some trends among the winning players at these playoff events. In 2016, the winners of the four tournaments were as follows: Patrick Reed, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy. In 2015, the winner of the four events were: Jason Day, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day and Jordan Spieth. What becomes obvious at first glance is just how good the players are that have been winning these events over the last couple of seasons which I am fairly certain is what the PGA is looking for in terms of the courses that they select and the way that they are set up. Three years ago, Billy Horschel went on the run of a lifetime is finishing 2nd, 1st and 1st to finish the season and claim the title, but it’s been largely the stars that have dominated of late.

What this means for us as far as how we should approach each week is that we will need to find the winner, which more often than not, has come from the top tier or two of players in the field. This should push us towards more of a stars and scrubs approach throughout the playoffs overall. The first event, the Northern Trust Open, will play out much like an invitational event, where the Top-70 players and ties make the cut which means that we could see upwards of 65-70% of the field could make the cut. However, you should also be aware of the fact that there is no MDF during the FedEx Cup playoff so that if your golfers make the cut, they will be playing four full rounds (unless they pull a Paul Casey and inexplicably WD after making the cut, thus costing me a cool $80k). With so many more players getting to the weekend, it’s incredibly important for normal GPPs to get a little more aggressive in terms of trying to find the winner. Last week, my 6/6 $333 team did not even make it into the money and this week that could easily happen as well unless a lot of chalky golfers get wiped out, but that’s never easy to figure out.

With so many stars playing well late in the season to compete for the $10 million on the line, my strategy in these opening weeks will be to grab a few stars near the top at a large percentage with the hopes that I can hit the winner and then to largely take my chances in overloading on a few value plays below in order to balance things out enough so that I can afford a few quality players in the middle ranges. That’s really how you have to think about constructing your player pool. If you want to load up at the top, you will need to load up on a few key players near the bottom as well. The other thing to really look for during the playoffs is to see who gets hot early on. The last three seasons we’ve seen guys really go on tears during the playoffs. Billy Horschel, Jason Day, Henrik Stenson and Rory McIlroy are a few names that come to mind when looking at golfers who have had dominating performances in multiple events of the playoffs within a given season. There are so many points available for winning in these events that it makes the field of potential title winners very small along the way, giving a lot of extra motivation to those who get off to a hot start.

The tournament this week will be played at Glen Oaks in Old Westbury, New York. It’s a Par 70 course that plays at over 7,300 yards on Poa greens. It’s been compared to Augusta in terms of the pristine, well-manicured course conditions as well as the length and wide fairways. However, it certainly is not a scorers course as there are only two Par 5’s and only one of those is reachable in two shots by most players at 540 yards while the other is close to 630 yards which will be very difficult to get on in two for all but a few of the bigger hitters. This means that I think we should be looking at players who can handle a US Open type of setup as well which also helps to explain the comparisons with Bethpage Black. I am not going to try to judge this course for being too harsh without having seen an event played there, but I would guess the winning score should come in somewhere around -9 to -12 with most of the Par 4’s playing above 440 yards, there just are not going to be a lot of obvious birdie opportunities so limiting mistakes will be one of the keys to success this week.

In looking at the weather this week for the area, we may be looking at the nicest weather we have had all year for an event. The first two days look absolutely perfect with no rain and sarcely a cloud in the forecast. The winds appear to be a non-factor at this point, hovering around 3-6 mph Thursday and 8-9 mph all day on Friday. I see no advantage to either wave, but as always, you should put together a couple of teams around each wave just in case one side ends up with a noted advantage over the other.

Here is a look at the key stats for the week as shared with us by our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 35%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Proximity: 15%
Par 4 Scoring: 10%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 10%
Scrambling: 10%

Good luck to all of our members this week and as always, if you fly our avatar for your DK teams, you’ll receive some extra swag when you take down a big score to commemorate your week. Let us know if you are in the FGWC and if you want any help or assistance in going over your lineups. We are happy to take time with you to talk strategy in going over rosters and players each week while you advance. It’s a totally different style of contest so we are here to make sure that your mind gets reset to the right place each week as the FGWC unfolds.

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