The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – OHL Mayakoba Classic
I had a good feeling about Las Vegas last week and the Shriners ended up working out really well for my picks again, which was great as we’ve now nailed the winner in two of the last three events as a core player when they were not that highly owned relative to our shares. It surprised me last week that there was not a lot of talk surrounding Bryson DeChambeau entering the tournament after the run he had in the fall. With two wins in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, he was someone that I thought would play well, especially against a weaker field. Fortunately, there are some key factors that I have watched closely over the last couple of years that are starting to help me in understanding ownership trends at the upper salary tier, particularly in events where the field is more on the soft side.
Often times, you will hear us reference recency bias when discussing certain players each week. Typically, this happens after a particularly popular player misses the cut and it takes out a good chunk of owners for the week. The expected response the following week is for that player to see a significant dip in his ownership number, allowing the wounded to heal up their pride before considering using that golfer in their lineups again. This is the type of recency bias that most players think about, but time away also tends to cause some apprehension as well.
In the case of Bryson, he had a mediocre finish at the Tour Championship and then did not play outside of the Ryder Cup in the lead up to Vegas. That was all that it took for people to forget just how talented of a player DeChambeau is and how incredible he played leading up to that final event. If we look at the highest owned players near the top, what do we notice? Gary Woodland averaged around 35% for the larger GPP contests, Patrick Cantlay was near 25% and Tony Finau came in around 20%. A quick check of each player reveals a strong start to the fall season prior to playing in Vegas last week. While they all put great numbers down, Bryson was away getting some rest which created just enough uncertainty to keep his ownership in the 13-14% range. This is not something we can figure out precisely all the time. Much of it depends on the field, how tightly it is priced and how much history players have at the event, but if we take some time to study the trends, we can use them to our advantage.
What was also interesting in observing the ownership trends was just how much the upper end of the industry picked up on some of the same trends that we noticed. The lower priced events paid for Finau like they would any other week with his ownership coming in at around 20%. In the $555, it dips to 13% and in the $1500, it fell all the way down to 7%. Ownership also came in quite elevated in that contest for Woodland and Cantlay. This tells me that DFS players putting down big dollars are thinking about some of the same things that we do when it comes to fading certain players. They all witnessed the heartbreak of Finau the week prior and the lengthy trip back to the states and elected to be out on him for the week. I also think this is why Woodland grabbed so much attention as opposed to Cantlay. With the travel from China back to the states, it capped his number when normally, I do think he would have been the preferred play to Woodland who had an extra week off to get his body ready for the Shriners.
Overall, I was happy with the way the picks worked out for the week. I hope that most of you took my cash game advice last week. If you pay close attention, there are going to be weeks where I spell it out for you in a way that makes it impossible to fail. Last week was one of those times as the six players I wrote paragraphs about all just so happened to be the exact six players that I used for my cash lineup. A few of you figured it out as I noticed that I had a few friends along for the ride in some of the double ups that I played and won for the week. The only miss on that team was Austin Cook who surprised me with a poor round on Friday where he started really poorly through the first eleven holes before finally waking up to hit a few birdies down the stretch, but came up short.
Beyond that, the recommended stack of Cantlay and Woodland both caught fire over the weekend and made big moves up the leaderboard. Piercy and Tway both gave us great performances for their respective prices and Joel Dahman….well, at least he made the cut and added some points to his total over the weekend. What I did notice was that people are still not afraid to get a little silly with some of their cash game picks. There were a bunch of folks who played Brendan Steele despite his recent inconsistency. Sam Burns, while a rising prospect, is still all over the place when it comes to actual results and yet, he made a lot of rosters in cash games. Anders Albertson surprised me the most as he was owned at over 20% in some of the larger buy-in double up contests. I know he is coming off of a great season on the Web.com Tour and he showed his talent the week prior at Sanderson Farms, but two events into his rookie year, I am not taking the plunge to use him in cash games. Now, I am not saying you don’t sprinkle these guys onto your GPP rosters and in fact, Albertson is a player that Jeff has been talking about since before the fall swing season started as a player to watch. What I know is that young players like Burns and Albertson are going to be volatile all season. Nearly every player who starts out on the tour goes through some big highs and lows during their first year. I’ll take steady and predictable for cash games and let others have the highs and lows that come with the rookies early on.
This week, we have the second to last full field event of the fall season. Next week, is the RSM Classic in Sea Island, GA and the following week we have the big Pay Per View extravaganza match between Tiger and Phil. December has a fun event with the Hero World Challenge the week after Thanksgiving and then after that, we get a couple of weeks off to rest up, dig into the data for 2019 and then put together a few columns about our observations on GPP play over the last year as well as Jeff’s highly anticipated Crystal Ball column which he usually finishes up in the middle of December before Christmas. Also, if you have yet to check out our NFL coverage, take a look over the next couple of weeks. We’ve really been rolling lately and our tools and columns make your research so easy each week. You get just the right mix of data as well as expert observations from what we actually observe on the field to get you moving in the right direction for approaching cash games and GPP contests.
The course this week sets up as one of the easier courses that we will see all season. Much like last week, it is on the shorter side and El Cameleon is under 7,000 yards. It plays as a Par 71 with three short Par 5 holes that will offer plenty of scoring opportunities regardless of how long players hit it off the tee. The course is right next to the ocean so if the weather picks up, winds can be an issue, as of now, I am not seeing anything that would indicate any issues this week. The fairways are on the narrow side and surrounded by hazards. This is where my favorite type of hazard can be found every year, the mangroves. They are basically thick shrubs and trees that grow around and near the coast that are an absolute disaster to hit out of and must be avoided at all costs. While the fairways here are narrow, with most players leaving driver in the bag and dropping down to their 3 Wood or an iron, it is not that tough to keep the ball in play. A quick glance at the course history chart will show you a few names of players that are not exactly known for their accuracy that still manage to thrive every year at this event. The greens are seashore paspalum, which is similar to bentgrass, but a type that we do not see often. It was previously used at the CIMB Classic in Kuala Lumpur, but even that has been changed to Bermuda so there are not many places to use as a direct comparison. There are three courses that come to mind immediately for looking at comp courses this week. I already mentioned Kuala Lumpur where the grass was the same until recently and where weather can also be an issue. I think Harbor Town is a fit with the shorter course with fairways on the narrow side that tends to be more accuracy focused. I also think that TPC Summerlin from a week ago is a decent fit. Though it’s a desert versus seaside course, both are on the short side, have easier than normal Par 5 scoring opportunities and tend to favor the shorter ball strikers over the bomber type players.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Driving Accuracy: 5%
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