The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Safeway Open
Well that went fast. Did you enjoy the time off as much as I did? I needed an escape for a few days so headed out to Wyoming to see a little bit of this beautiful country and to let my mind experience a little bit of the quiet that it needs from time to time in order to be soothed so that I can get back to this keyboard to give you every bit of me each week throughout the season. If you have never taken the time to go to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons or Jackson Hole, bump it up on your list of places to go. I’m more of an indoorsman myself and although at one time I was trained for survival situations, I joke now that I would probably be one of the first to be eaten in previous centuries if travelling across the country with a group if conditions deteriorated.
It was a good week to be away, but of course, it always seems that tragedy surrounds us now. I always feel a need to express and share my thoughts and ideas on events as I have a rather restless mind and spend much of my time reading and pondering the madness of our existence, but Jeff and I always pledged to set those opinions aside with this site and how we want to engage with the wonderful folks that are a part of this very special community. As is the case so often, the world can be a place that overwhelms us with the images and the news we are confronted with on what seems like a daily basis. It is my hope that when things become chaotic that we can provide you with a respite away from the world even if it is just for a few minutes to help your minds to escape. My favorite part of writing each week is the meditative nature of the process. I want to thank each and every one of you out there for being a part of this with me and know that for those who have suffered from this tragedy that our thoughts go out to you and your families and loved ones.
The retreat that sports offers us is one that I always treasure. One of the best parts of following the PGA Tour is the cyclical nature of the year. We get to start the season off quietly each fall with a new group of prospects, a few journeymen trying to revive their careers, a few young players just starting to get their bearing and a couple of top names that randomly show up to some of the early events in the U.S. If you have been following along with the Web.com Tour and some of the other smaller regional tours, this is a great time of year for DFS golf. By the FedEx Cup Playoffs as the field begins to shrink each week and is filled more and more with top level pros that everyone is aware of, there is very little mystery to the tournaments. All of the players are fairly elite and there are a substantial number of golfers that could win from week to week where there really is not always a differentiating factor that you could pick up to predict an outcome. Xander Schauffele was a bit of a surprise to win the Tour Championship, but Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth were right there in the chase down to the final day as well.
The events each fall break down into two categories: North American and Asia. This year, we’ll end up with three tournaments in the US and one in Mexico that I think will be covered by DraftKings and FanDuel for contests. The other three events will take place in Malaysia, China and a new tournament in Korea. The Asian events will be stocked with top level players and are no cut events. They will play very similarly to what we saw in the final two weeks of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the one in China is actually a WGC event, which as we have learned from our years of experience, has a couple of interesting caveats, particularly for the weekend contests. As a night owl that does not sleep always sleep normal hours, I always love the Asian events on the fall schedule as the television coverage on the Golf Channel is at its absolute best at 2am when covering those events or the European Tour. I wish that big golf tournaments during the season could be covered in the same manner on the big broadcast networks. They seemed to have discovered an amazing secret for these events that CBS and NBC have yet to uncover. It’s a pretty revolutionary concept, but what they do for Asian and Euro events is that they actually show a lot of live golf….and then follow it up with….more live golf. Unbelievable results in terms of my satisfaction. It’s almost like I don’t even miss the human interest stories.
What we really want to focus on as the season starts are the events in the US. Do you ever feel like the playing field is really unfairly tilted in some of these fantasy sports (I am looking at you NBA and MLB). The big name players have all the information, they are watching every day and constantly fine tuning their models. The rookies that come into these leagues get assimilated quickly into the algorithms and the DFS regulars beat these markets down. The NFL is a much more even playing field if you are paying attention. You have a full week to prepare yourself and there is information everywhere to digest so that by Saturday, no stone should be left unturned, you watch for the injury report on Sunday morning and you have some very strong, competitive lineups to work with where the edge of the the pros, at least in cash games, is very small.
The golf season is a different story. I am going to tell you up front that the biggest names in the fantasy industry have no idea about the new players joining the tour this fall. Most of the guys who are putting their funds into the Thunderdome or the $1500 GPP are not going to be as well prepared as you are if you do your homework. It’s not because they are not sharp players and at some point, they will catch up, usually quickly, but it is NFL season, the end of MLB and NBA is just a few weeks away. These guys are not looking at the Web.com Tour or seeing who is coming over from the Latin American Tour or the Mackensie Tour. They will have their models, but the numbers are not going to be substantial enough to take the sort of dramatic positions that they will have once the heart of the season rolls around next year. Don’t be afraid to get in there to mix it up a little bit.
There are plenty of solid pros in these events over the next few weeks so that you can start by focusing on those players who took care of you last season and then slowly building around them. These new rookies are rarely that highly owned in the first couple of events so you don’t need to overdo it. As long as you can own just a slightly larger share of a player than the rest of the field, you are gaining leverage. We’ve always had some of our best results in the fall. Use this time to make small gains in your bankroll while also building your mental encyclopedia (yes, in my childhood days, we had wikipedia, but it was a 50 pound stack of books that ended in 1968 from my grandparents) of who all of these young players are and how they adjust to the tour now that the pressure is cranked up a notch and there is an extra zero added to the payouts each week. Just remember not to fall in love too much this fall as the game shifts again when the big boys return full time in 2018. It’s a long season and many who start fast fade by the end of their first year while others, like Xander, take longer to figure it out, but then finish with a flourish. If I have not told you enough already, go back to Jeff’s column introducing (or re-introducing for some) some of the players who are coming back to the tour this season after finishing up with the playoffs on the Web.com Tour. Many of these names will be familiar from DFS contests this past season, but a few are making their pro debut this week.
The course for the week is in Napa Valley, another hardship stop on tour for these guys. I wish these guys had to work their way up to Napa, maybe start them off in the fall in Fresno or some other random spot on the map. The west coast swing and Mexico are pretty nice locales to start off the season and Silverado Country Club is beautiful. It is a short Par 72 course that plays under 7,200 yards with plenty of scoring opportunities on the Par 5’s and mostly shorter Par 4’s. The only real impediment is that the fairways are on the narrow side, but as Adam Daly mentioned in his excellent course writeup, the rough is trimmed to the short side so as long as players are not behind some sort of obstruction, they should not have too tough of a time with their second shot. We’re on the west coast which means that the greens will be Poa which as many of you know, is much more favorable to certain players. Some of the more notable names that are much better on Poa/Bentgrass vs Bermuda are: Tony Finau, Chez Reavie, Emiliano Grillo, Patrick Rodgers, Smylie Kaudman, Brandon Hagy and Jonas Blixt among others. Basically, if players live in or are from the western part of the US, they generally putt better on Poa/bentgrass. If you need a little help on tracking down where players are from, go ahead and consult our player database.
There is going to be a lot of scoring this week for this event. It may not be quite as wild as the John Deere Classic, but -15 to -20 wouldn’t be that much of a stretch. The cut is usually just a stroke or two under par so finding birdie makers will be important this week. While we want players who can keep the ball in the fairway, distance won’t be something that hurts players so long as they are handy with their irons as recent champions like Brendan Steele have shown in recent years. Another key stat that popped up prominently in analyzing the course was scrambling and being able to get up and down from the many greenside bunkers that are in play around the course.
One thing to note this week in doing your research is that the rolling stats tool is probably not going to be as accurate as it was down the stretch last season. As I mentioned on the podcast, rolling stats are a great tool once the season gets moving and players start to show up for the same events so that it is less of an apples to oranges comparison than right now with many new players, some who played in the FedEx Cup, others who played in the Web.com playoff events and those that are completely new. While I love to see how guys compare over their most recent rounds, the less the tournaments overlap, the more you need to be wary of being swayed too much in one direction or another. The best example of this takes place during the summer when the best players in the world are participating in WGC and major tournaments while the rest of the tour is playing events like the Barbasol, the Barricuda or any of the other numerous events that get skipped by the elites. If you are not careful, you may end up seeing a lot of names near the top who may have played well, but on far less challenging courses, thus giving them a huge statistical boost which may not be warranted. I will frequently try to address this at certain points in the year where it makes sense to bring to your attention.
The key stats for the week as brought to us by our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics are as follows:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Scrambling: 10%
Proximity: 10%
Par 5 Scoring: 5%
Driving Accuracy: 5%
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