The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Quicken Loans National

I just woke up from a nice long nap, finished up my studies for the week, and am pretty excited to share my findings with you. I know that it gets tough between the majors to get excited for events like this when the field tends to get a bit thin, but there are plenty of opportunities to be profitable if you take the time to come up with a good game plan going into the event and understand how to make adjustments from tournament to tournament based upon the pricing and the golfers in the field.

This week, we again have a field without a lot of top players. In fact, there are really only three marquee players right up at the top of the pricing tiers. Much like last week, I think each of them will see high levels of ownership as there just are not that many dependable players in that top range. At first glance, our team of writers is estimating that each of the top three priced players will be owned by over 20% of the field. It will be difficult to stay away from those three players this week. I think this event could play out a lot like last week where those elite players in the field end up in the Top 10 on the leaderboard by Sunday. You are definitely going to need to take your shots with these guys in your GPP lineups this week. The strategy piece is going to be pretty in depth this week and the information so important, that I am actually going to save it for the subscription portion of the column.

With that said, let’s take a quick look back how how my picks performed last week at the RBC Canadian Open. I was really pleased overall with the play of our golfers as 13/16 made it through the cut and into the weekend. Unfortunately, so many players ended up making it through the cut that an MDF was needed to thin the field on Saturday (takes place anytime more the 78 golfers make it through the cut on Friday). JB Holmes took advantage of this second chance to blow the cut by playing a particularly miserable 3rd Round of golf where he started the day with two double bogeys and missed putts of 5 feet, 4 feet and 3 feet during the round on his way to an MDF finish, missing the modified cut by a single stroke.

For the 12 golfers that made it to Sunday, Bubba Watson really shined for us down the stretch. Each round, he fought his way through the first 12 holes, waiting for the three Par 5 holes on the back nine to make his charge. Had it not been for a 21 foot birdie putt by Jason Day on 18 in the final round, we would have been in for a real treat with Day and Watson battling it out in a playoff. As for our other picks, Chad Campbell really shined early on as a sleeper pick, vaulting his way up into 1st place before faltering in the 3rd Round and never regaining the ground he lost after hitting a water ball. He finished in 11th place. Jim Furyk and Matt Kuchar both performed as expected with 4th and 7th place finishes respectively. Charley Hoffman, largely forgotten by fantasy owners last week also managed to bounce back after faltering at the last couple of majors to finish in 7th place. Brooks Koepka flashed his usual brilliance throughout the event, and looked to be in contention late, before an all too familiar refrain played out on Sunday and he finished in 18th. Tony Finau nearly missed the cut twice, playing just above the cut on Friday and right on the line Saturday before firing a -7 on Sunday to finish in 22nd place. Ollie Schniederjans, another sleeper, and now popular rookie, continued his run of success with a 22nd place finish. William McGirt and Brian Harman both settled for 34th place finishes after looking to be in contention on Saturday. Finally, Scott Pinckney finished in 58th, also after a promising start.

All in all, it was a good weekend for my picks with a bit of ‘oh, what could have been’ left lingering with so many players struggling over the weekend. As far as those who missed the cut, Vijay Singh and Greg Owen were two sleeper picks that never woke up and failed to get close to the line. Value play, Jerry Kelly also never got on track and failed to make it to the weekend. In cash games, these picks yielded great results for most of you which is great as that is how you are going to steadily build your bankroll. We had a few of you in contention for big GPP wins going into the weekend (myself included), but without big finishes from more than Bubba, we weren’t able to close out any of the larger tournaments for the week. Fortunately, we do not have to wait very long for our next opportunity to pad our bankrolls.

The Quicken Loans National will make its first appearance at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia after being played primarily at Congressional Country Club for most years of its existence. This is one of only five tournaments given “invitational” status by the PGA Tour, which means it has a reduced field of only 120 players (as opposed to most full-field open tournaments with a field of 156 players). This is an important fact for you DFS players to note, since it will be easier for players to make the cut. This is a key strategy note for the week as it really allows you to get aggressive in selecting players with a higher percentage than normal getting through the cut. Robert Trent Jones GC is a par 71 course that plays 7,385 yards. The tricky part of this event is that there really is not much for course history to go off of this week. Yes, a couple of President’s Cup events were held here, but the last one took place in 2005, making it basically irrelevant for our purposes here.

In looking at an event like this where there is no true course history, it is important to get back to the basics in analyzing the players in the field. I am going to start with Total Driving as the first statistic of note. Reports from the course are that the fairways really are not so narrow as stated in some descriptions and that the rough is not particularly imposing. As it is a slightly longer course than average, the bombers are going to have a bit of an advantage. However, most of the greens are protected by bunkers and Lake Manassas lurks nearby to collect any errant shots so that iron play will be very important leading us to look at Strokes Gained Tee to Green and Greens in Regulation. Par 4 scoring, as always, provides a nice barometer for players as there are eleven Par 4 holes to work through. The Par 3 holes range from 175-210 yards so I’ll look at how players perform from approaches between 175-200 yards. Scrambling (particularly sand saves) and Strokes Gained Putting will also be useful in helping in our evaluation this week.

As always, best of luck to all of our subscribers and followers. If you did not get the chance to check out our first webcast yet, please make sure you do so. It’s packed with information on this week’s event and gives you some great players to start your lineups around. Also, be sure to hit me up on Twitter @fantasygolfers with any lineup or strategy questions this week before submitting your lineups on Thursday morning. I personally answer each and every one of you so please do feel free to reach out to me as one of my favorite parts of all of this is the interaction that I have with all of you. Best of luck, and if you are not a subscriber, the rest of this article is worth the price of admission so sign yourself up and enjoy!

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I want to talk a little bit tonight about strategy in different sized GPP fields. I know that most of you enter different GPP events each week. For myself, I am playing in everything from the $3 large field event with the $100,000 1st place prize all the way up the the $1060 Clubhouse event or $1000 Fantasy Golf World Championship Qualifier. In the first event, there are around 134,000 entrants into the field. In the latter two, 35 and 40 entrants respectively. The strategy for each event and all in between have certain similarities, but also a few very key differences that you need to pay attention to if you want to succeed in each.

In the $3 event, much like the Millionaire Maker events, you have to swing for the fences to have a shot at winning the event. The prize pool is so heavily concentrated at the top that to be profitable at this style of tournament, you are going to need some high finishes to compensate for the relatively small payoffs that come from just barely making it into the money. With these events, ownership levels do not have a lot of significance. You need to find six players that are either near the top of the leaderboard or who were able to put up a lot of points despite a lower finish. You definitely need two or three in the Top 5 as well. Last week, the stars and scrubs approach paid dividends for owners that took the time to explore the lower price ranges for those hidden gems.

In the scenario above, simply avoiding the landmines like Kevin Chappell or Scott Piercy was not nearly enough to put your teams into contention. In such a large field, the ownership distributions tends to be flatter so that while there is still a certain amount of clustering around some players, ownership is better spread across the field. A great example of this is Kevin Chappell who was owned by 18.6% of the field in the $3 GPP. If you dodged him in that event, you were certainly fortunate, but it did not differentiate you from the field nearly as much as in other events. In the $300 GPP, Chappell was owned by 35.4% of the field where there were 370 entries, nearly twice that of the $3 GPP. At the $1060 level, the number grows even higher to a staggering 48.6% level. You can actually extrapolate this out from the $3 level up to the $1060 level and see it climb in a fairly linear fashion.

Why is there such a large difference from a low level buy-in to a higher level? Well, there tend to be a lot more professional level players up in the higher dollar games that are monitoring and studying the game very closely. These players read the same information and talk to the same people each week. It’s high level groupthink. The problem with this strategy at the upper levels for players is that few of the professionals understand the true implications of their behavior. I talk to a lot of subscribers and Twitter followers about moving up to the next level and buying in for higher amounts and how to change up their strategy to exploit some of the weaknesses that are so glaring and there is definitely a way to do it profitably.

The first step is in taking a look at prices on Monday afternoon and assigning projected ownership percentages. Adjust those numbers throughout the week as players withdraw and redistribute those previously assigned percentages to other players. When you have done that, start to pick out the players that are going to be the most heavily owned. As you build your lineups, make an honest assessment of how highly owned each player will be on your roster. You can afford to have a little bit of overlap with some of the higher owned players, but generally speaking, you should be very sure of a high finish to own those players.

Kevin Chappell entered last week’s event on a nice roll over the last 5-6 events, but the way people flocked to him you would have thought he was practically guaranteed to make the Top 10. Now, if you were simply looking for a cut maker, the play may have made some sense, but there was almost no chance for Chappell to help your team to differentiate itself in a way to distance yourself from competitors, especially at more expensive GPPs. If you skipped him and he finished in the middle of the pack, which is really about what you would expect, your gain in a GPP would be minimal. If, by chance, he placed in the Top 10, maybe about a 5-10% probability, you would be excited, but it still would mean that 1/3 of the field was still right there with you. However, in the instance where you fade him completely and he misses the cut, a 25-30% probability, you have now gained a rather large edge over the field. Yes, you still need capitalize on it by finding players who make the cut, but if the odds of a 6% owned player and a 35% owned player are roughly the same to make the cut, which one do you want to own? I think it is fairly obvious.

I am not here to say that this is an easy strategy to practice. I am guilty of falling prey to owning those highly owned players at times as well so the discipline of building that spreadsheet early in the week is really key. If you can find a way to separate the names from the numbers a bit, that will help you out as well. Jeff Bergerson, my partner here at FGI is an absolute master of this tactic. It is not going to work every week, but in those weeks where highly owned players falter, which happens fairly often, you are going to have a great chance to capitalize. In each of the weeks that he won qualifier tickets to the World Championship, he owned multiple players on his roster that were owned by nobody else or just a few players. This was not an accident. It was not lucky. He executes a careful plan each week and it puts him in the running almost every week to win these large buy-in, small field events. Most of the time when I see his lineup during the event, I ask him how he arrived at most of the names and he just shakes his head and replies with some variation of ‘I can’t believe that is my team this week’.

The takeaway from this for you is that as the cost rises to enter a contest and the field shrinks, ownership tends to cluster more around certain players and gives us an exploitable edge. The converse is also true. As the buy-in gets lower, ownership distribution tends to flatten making it more difficult to exploit the clustering effect and your picks will have to perform better overall to compensate as the winning scores for smaller buy-ins tends to be much higher than that of a smaller field. Don’t be afraid to get a little off the grid with your picks in these small fields. This is really an area where you have a chance to display a little strategy beyond the norm, but unless you really put together a process for building your lineups, it will be easy to stray back to traditional patterns of play.

BLUE CHIPS

Justin Rose ($12,200) – Not much needs to be said for Justin Rose as the top player in the field this week. After a slow start to 2015, Rose has been in great form beginning with The Masters back in April. He won the Zurich Classic, took 2nd at the Memorial and 6th at The Open in recent action over the last few months. He ranks 9th in Total Driving, 27th in GIR, 26th in SGTG, 99th in Par 4 Scoring, 9th in Sand Saves and 82nd in SGP. He is the best ranked player on approaches between 175-200 yards and is also able to score a lot of points ranking 3rd in Birdie Average. As the most consistent player among the top three players in the field, he makes for the best choice and worth spending the extra money to roster this week.

Rickie Fowler ($11,700) – At the Players Championship and Scottish Open, Rickie flashed the brilliance of his game that made him a must own player in 2014. Unfortunately, missed cuts at The Memorial, Zurich Open and an embarrassing effort at the US Open have left fantasy owners a bit confused in trying to anticipate how he will perform week to week. If the field had a few more big names in it, he might be neglected and be even more attractive this week, however, given the limited options at the top, I do anticipate that he will be highly owned. He ranks 10th in Total Driving, 53rd in SGTG, 131 in GIR and 129th in Par 4 scoring. He’s good out of the sand (35th) and when he is in form, he scores a lot of points in a hurry putting up eagles and birdies. This should be a good event for him to get back into the Top 10 and he is worth owning this week.

Jimmy Walker ($11,000) – Walker could be the man at the top that is neglected by owners this week out of the three highest priced players. He started out 2015 on a tear, but has stumbled a bit in recent months. He sustained a wrist injury at The Masters that left him struggling until a 2nd place finish at The Byron Nelson seemed to bring him back into form. However, he was relatively uninspiring at the US Open (58th) and The Open (30th) so he has hardly been a lock to compete for a Top 10 finish. What I like about Walker is his propensity to shine in events like this where the pressure is off and the lights are low compared to other events. He does a lot of things really well that should put him into contention this week. He’s ranked 1st in SGP, 27th in SGTG and 42nd in GIR. He’s a little wild off the tee, but should not be penalized for that on this course. He also ranks 56th in Par 4 scoring, 73rd in Sand Saves, and 4th in Birdie Average.

Danny Lee ($9100) – I credit a conversation that I had with fellow contributor, Roger Casey, yesterday for this recommendation. I had a little bit of a worry that the length of the course might be tough for Danny to handle, but Roger pointed out that this course is actually somewhat similar to Old White, where Lee captured a win just a few weeks ago. Lee did miss the cut at both Chambers Bay and St Andrews, but I think that is largely excusable given the difficulty of each course and how they don’t really play to Lee’s strengths. Between those two events, he took 25th at The Travelers, 1st at Greenbrier and 3rd at The John Deere Classic. The theme for Lee is that he does not play well at challenging courses, but excels in most other events. Though he has missed 12 cuts this season, he also has ten Top 25 finishes and five Top 10s. he has been improving on his tee to green game (93rd) and putts well (33rd). He is also good out of the sand (11th) which will keep him out of trouble. He is a very good iron player from nearly all distances which should help his rather mediocre total driving rank (165th). Lee is not a terribly dependable player so I would say there are better cash game options, but he has tremendous upside as a GPP play as he tends to finish highly when he makes the cut.

VALUE PLAYS

Russell Knox ($8500) – With a missed cut and a WD on his DraftKings profile for the last two events, Knox could be a player that owners overlook this week. However, between those events, he did finish 10th at the Scottish Open. In fairness, Knox actually played okay at The Open, only missing the cut by a couple of strokes after being a late addition to the field. My hope is that enough people will avoid him to give us a little extra upside when he plays well here. He does not hit the ball long off the tee, but is strong in most other statistical categories. He ranks 61st in Total Driving, 10th in GIR and 23rd in SGTG. He is an average putter at 108th SGP but still manages to be ranked 66th in Birdie Average. He ranks 41st in approaches from 175-200 yards and 7th in Par 4 scoring average. If he can avoid a slow start, he should be able to post solid numbers for the week.

Pat Perez ($8400) – Hey, welcome back, Pat Perez. We missed him last week after DraftKings was unable to add him to the roster as a late entry. I am actually glad that they did not add him as it means that fewer people will have noticed the 18th place finish that he posted. Perez has had his most consistent season on tour to date, making 18 of 21 cuts this season, including nine Top 25 finishes and two Top 10s. He posts over 70 fantasy points almost every week and is almost a must start in cash games. He is a little short off the tee, but keeps it in the fairways and is ranked 83rd in Total Driving. His tee to green game is better than most in the field, even if his overall rank is only 71st, but he putts well (43rd), leading him to be 15th in Birdie Average on tour. He is 48th in our 175-200 yard metric and 7th in Par 4 scoring. Perez is a great play this week to balance out the middle of your lineups. He won’t win the event, but he shouldn’t blow the cut either.

Harris English ($8300) – Finally, we get a shot at Harris English at a reasonable price point. Harris has not been putting up a lot of strong finishes lately, but is on a streak of six made cuts in a row and does have the ability to leap up in the standings on about any given weekend. At $8300, I am comfortable taking English as he should make the cut so I think the downside risk is that he slightly underperforms his price. He is a great cash game play and marginal GPP play. Statistically, he looks great for the course ranking 34th in Total Driving, 57th in GIR, 65th in SGTG and 22nd it SGP. In terms of scoring, he ranks 58th in Birdie Average and 35th in Par 4 Scoring. He’s also ranked 18th in approaches between 175-200 yards. At some point, English is going to post a few top finishes, but even if he does not, this is a good risk versus reward price for him.

Jason Bohn ($8100) – At first glance, I really liked Jason Bohn this week. The only thing that has changed now for me is that I think a lot of folks are going to own him this week so we may have lost some of his upside in GPP events. He has missed just five cuts in 22 starts this year and has finished in the Top 25 nine times and four times in the Top 10. He comes into the event with consecutive Top 15 finishes and his game lines up well for the course. Like Knox and Perez, he is not a long hitter off the tee, but ranks 4th in accuracy leading to a rank of 83rd in Total Driving. He ranks 26th in GIR and 39th in SGTG. He putts well (49th) and puts up a lot of birdies (17th). He ranks 4th in Par 4 scoring and 9th in approaches between 175-200 yards. I predict a Top 20 finish is in store for Bohn this week.

Ollie Schniederjans ($7700) – I am not a huge fan of the players between $7000-8000, but Ollie stands out to me. I think a lot of owners will be on him this week as his price has reached a fair, but not crazy level. With strong finishes at Chambers Bay, St Andrews and Glen Abbey, Ollie should now be a fairly well known among fantasy golf fans. He gets good distance off the tee and putts well and although just a rookie, seems very composed given his lack of experience. Much like the other young players, it is fair to expect that Ollie will be a little volatile early in his career, but as long as he continues to play well, I am going to stick with him.

Andrew Sullivan ($8100) – Sullivan got people’s attention with a strong performance at the Memorial where he finished 13th, but then missed the cut at The US Open and people largely forgot about him. His 30th place finish at The Open did not garner much attention so owners may overlook him this week. He has been very good in Europe this year with two wins and five Top 10 finishes. Although his stats are limited, he is good at Total Driving and hits greens. His putting is only average as is his scrambling, but he should have some success on this course and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him have a quality finish.

SLEEPERS

Bryce Molder ($6900) – Molder has made the cut in 70% of the tournaments he has entered this year including 8 of his last 9 starts. He is more of a cut maker than anything else, but does have five Top 25 finishes on the season. Molder ranks 34th in accuracy although he does not get much length off the tee. His biggest strength is putting where he ranks 16th, which should keep him around for the weekend. He is also strong on Par 4 Scoring where he ranks 14th. The rest of his game is not that impressive, but he makes for a nice form play and should not be highly owned by others.

Chad Collins ($6600) – Coming into this event, Collins has made the cut in nine of his last ten starts with a couple of strong Top 15 finishes mixed in. He is primarily just a cut maker, but at this price, he does not need to do much more than that to provide value beyond his price. He is limited in terms of driving, but is reasonably accurate and a little above average in his tee to green game and putting. He ranks 6th in sand saves and 22nd in Par 4 scoring. Collins does not provide us with a lot of upside at his price, but is a safe sleeper play to get through the cut.

Vaughn Taylor ($6400) – Taylor is a sleeper with a lot of upside at this event. He is playing great golf and is well underpriced given his recent play. He has made the cut in 8 of 9 starts this season with two Top 10 finishes and five Top 25s. He has scored over 65 fantasy points in seven of nine events this season and should have little problem of outperforming his price so long as he makes the cut this week. He will be very highly owned so don’t expect to be alone in owning him, but in cash games, that should not matter to you much. He is not shown in the rankings for his PGA stats, but is a solid ball striker and has one of the best tee to green games on tour right now. His putting has also been above average so he is probably the best sleeper pick on the board this week.

Scott Brown ($6400) – Just a few weeks ago, Brown’s price had climbed up into the middle $8000 range. He has made the cut in 11 of his last 13 events and typically does finish in the mid 30s, although he does have the potential to sneak into the Top 15. His consistency makes him an attractive play for the week as the bar is pretty low for him to provide enough value to exceed his price. His stats are a bit skewed from a rough start earlier this year, but he is a good iron player, has a decent tee to green game and scrambles well. He is a less flashy play this week, but he should get the job done by making the cut.

Cameron Percy ($6400) – Percy is a form play, coming into the tournament having made six straight cuts. He has only one top 10 finish this year and four Top 25s, but his game has turned a corner. He ranks 120th in Total Driving, 74th in GIR and 96th in SGTG. From 175-200 yards, Percy ranks 52nd and is 99th in Par 4 Scoring. He makes for a good pivot from Brown and Taylor, both of whom will be more highly owned than others in that range. He makes for a good GPP play if building many lineups for the week.

Hudson Swafford ($5900) – Swafford actually has some statistics that are worth writing out instead of giving a vague description. It is hard to believe that his price is this low. He has made 8 of his last 10 cuts with five Top 25 finishes on the season and one Top 10. He ranks 10th in Total Driving, 43rd in GIR and 117th in SGTG. He should be able to put up some points as he ranks 34th is SGP and 23rd in Birdie Average. He ranks 57th in approaches between 175-200 yards and his long iron game is about as good as anyone in the game as he ranks 1st in approaches over 200 yards. Finally, he ranks 55th in Par 4 scoring so for his price, we are getting a player that checks nearly every category that we are looking for on this course. Unfortunately, this is Hudson Swafford that I am talking about so there is every reason to think that he has the potential to disappoint, but I think he outperforms his price by quite a bit this week and I will have him on more than a few of my teams.

That’s all for the week. That gives us 16 great players to choose from for the event and I feel quite confident that we are in for a successful week. As always, send us a Tweet if you are in the running for a big prize as we love being able to cheer you on.

Good luck!!

myzteriouzly

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