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

It’s so strange when the playoffs come around each year for the PGA Tour. In every other sport, the level of excitement is like a crescendo building to its peak and ready to explode and yet, with golf, it almost feels like an afterthought. Perhaps many of the players on tour are like yourselves and eager for the football season to arrive. With the amount of money that most of these guys make during the year both on and off the course, $10 million still does not seem like it moves the needle all that much in terms of a motivating factor. However, I will say that over the last few years, we have seen some exceptional golf during these playoffs so perhaps all hope is not lost.

After getting used to dealing with large fields over the last few months with a rare exception here or there, you will need to make some subtle adjustments to your play these last four events in order to improve your chances for profitability. For the uninitiated, the FedEx Cup Playoffs take place over four tournaments with a little portion of the field getting sliced away each week like a nice Easter ham. The Top-125 players from the season in FedEx Cup points qualify to play this week, but with a couple of injuries and a couple of players choosing not to participate, we should see a field of around 120 golfers this week. There are not a lot of big adjustments that need to be made for this first week. We essentially have ourselves an invitational tournament much like The Memorial and a handful of others where the field is smaller, but the cut rules are the same, meaning that the Top-70 players and ties will make it to the weekend. All formats for DFS purposes are in play this week and I will not hesitate to pull the trigger in cash games as there are plenty of good options available in this rather stacked field.

Once the Northern Trust Open finishes up, the Top-100 players left in the standings will move on to Boston next week where things start to change as the cut that takes place is as small as we see all year, but the field strength and competitiveness around the event still make it playable across the board. When the field shrinks to 70 for the BMW, that’s typically the point where I saw goodbye to cash games and I lighten up a little overall as it is a tournament without a cut. The Tour Championship rounds out the season, but with only 30 players, it is one that I generally enjoy watching more than actually playing on the DFS side. The pricing structure and small field does not give you much opportunity to get creative in your play and the overlap among the rosters makes it very tough to gain a competitive edge against your opponents. In weeks like that, I prefer to play singe entry events and will make a concerted effort to differentiate my roster by leaving additional funds on the table and playing in small field GPPs so that I actually have a unique team to root for over the weekend.

Before we leap into the playoffs this week, I did want to take some time to recap the Wyndham Championship as it was a nice profitable week for me as well as many of you who reached out to share your success stories. I am still a little irritated with myself over what could have been a historic week for me. Many times throughout the season, I will play a lineup or two in the $444 GPP, especially during the majors as well as a handful of other big tournaments throughout the year. I never get terribly creative with my lineups when I do this, many times playing either my cash lineup or a variant of it. In most of those GPPs, there is usually only 10% of the field that gets 6/6 through the cut so with a field of 800 or so teams, if I can get 6/6 and am playing against only 80 full squads, I feel like I have a chance, which is why I usually am not chasing too many fringe players.

Last week, as Erik and I sat down to do the podcast, we looked over the model together and a natural cash game team came together very easily. Some weeks, it is much more challenging than others as I will have 3-4 players that are locks, but then I battle in my head over the other two for hours. That was not the case last week and if you read my column, I really did my best to walk you into the team that I used. I wrote about Webb up top as he seemed like the most sure fire play of the week with his excellent form, elite course history and the fact that it was in his home state. As the pricing was loose through the $7k range and the field did not have a lot to offer at the top, I was not going to pass on him, even in a cash game where I rarely ever pay up that high. We used Ryan Moore at $9k, who seemed like a remarkable bargain given his play for much of the season as well as his tee to green game which has been much better than at any point in his career. From there, we raided the middle and lower $7k range and picked up a treasure trough of bargains in Johnson Wagner, Chris Kirk, Brian Gay and Ryan Armour.

I was surprised at the price of each of those players which seemed off for a number of reasons. In Johnson’s case, his form, history and connections to the area seemed to make him an easy selection. Chris Kirk has undergone a resurgence this season, although his price has yet to catch up. Brian Gay had me frustrated early on Thursday with his opening round. I texted Ryan Baroff midway through it and asked him, “Why does Brian Gay suck at this course?” His history at Sedgefield was less than stellar and it looked like he would leave early until a huge Friday morning put him into contention and the world suddenly made sense again. Finally, Ryan Armour came in at a very low price for us which I loved last week. He had missed three straight cuts on courses that made no sense for his game so getting him at such a ridiculous price on a course perfectly suited for his style and spot where he finished 4th last year was just way too good of a deal to pass on.

In my cash game column, I recommended starting with Webb, Moore, Kirk and Wagner. If you started with those four, then you were able to dodge our biggest grenade last week in Steve Stricker who had one of the worst outings with his putter that I have seen him have in quite some time. The last guy I wrote about directly was Ryan Armour so I am hoping that most of you took those top four, grabbed Armour and then were pushed into using Gay in the final roster spot. If you did that, you would have scored 603.5 points for the week and crushed your competitors in cash and most GPPs as well.

Unfortunately, last week, the bigger contests filled up quicker than normal for some reason, even without many big names in the field. By early afternoon, the $444 had filled up and was long gone so honestly, there was not even that actual moment where my finger hovered over my mouse with the cursor on the submit button. It was interesting that it would have scored as well as it did in that contest considering that it did not even have Snedeker on the roster. In looking back, there was really no way I was going to pay that much for Sneds after the up and down season that he’s had this year. I knew Webb was as near to a sure thing as we would see at the top so it forced my hand and pushed more of my shares towards the value that I saw below. It was disappointing in that I knew after Thursday that there was no chance of winning the $5 GPP even with my massive exposure to Webb, CT Pan, Ryan Armour, Brian Gay and Chris Kirk. However, my cash team would have been able to take down the $444 which provides us with some interesting lessons for the week.

1. Always play your cash game team in GPP contests. In chalkier weeks, this team could be as good as any and if you’re building it for the purpose of each player’s ability to make cuts, getting 6/6 is obviously the starting point for any team that wins a big GPP.
2. As the buy-in rises, you do not need to be as worried about taking big risks with your GPP lineups. The lineup that I built would have had an aggregate ownership of 128% compared to 76% for the $5. I did use that team in the $5 and in finished somewhere in the mid 300 range out of well over 100k entries. Not bad, but not special. It won me a few dollars, but $100k sure would have been nice.
3. Don’t be afraid of some of these smaller events during the season. I really enjoy the Wyndham each year as it is always competitive from start to finish for the players at the top as well as for those fighting for their tour lives. When we get a course that is on the schedule every year and plays towards a specific skill set, it gives us a great opportunity to profit when compared to events where the course changes each year and we have to go back to the basics in just trying to understand how it will play and what type of player can succeed. Keep the Wyndham Championship high on your list next season as an event that you make a concerted effort to put the time in on as I think it is an event that we can consistently profit from.

The first stop in the playoffs takes us back up to the northeast for the Northern Trust Open, which is held at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey. The last time the playoffs came through here was back in 2014 when none other than Hunter Mahan won The Barclays and ruined a nice run for me that had me leading a large GPP until late into the weekend. The course is challenging, playing at over 7,300 yards as a Par 71. It has long, narrowing fairways that will force some players to drop down from driver off the tee. There has been a good deal of rain in the area over the last few weeks and the rough will be thick and difficult to hit out of for those that do miss the fairways. The greens are mostly poa annua with a small amount of bentgrass  mixed in and should play fast. This will be a welcome shift for players like Tony Finau who excel on this style of grass as opposed to Bermuda. The greens are heavily guarded by bunkers and getting up and down will be of importance this week as there are not a lot of great scoring opportunities available. This is a course that demands a perfect combination of ball striking as driving distance showed up in the key stats this week with a heavier weighting than normal, but with the thick rough and tough conditions on and around the greens, accuracy and precision iron play are just as important. With many long Par 4’s in play this week, we need to find golfers who are able to avoid mistakes, but who can also take advantage of the three Par 5’s as well. Obviously, not everyone can play like Dustin Johnson or Justin Rose, but that is the type of ball striker that I want to be focused on this week.

Key Stats:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Driving Distance: 12.5%
Proximity: 12.5%
Scrambling: 10%

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