The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Safeway Open
After an offseason that seemed to stretch on endlessly, we are finally back for the 2018-2019 PGA Season. For many of you, this will be your first time trying out PGA during the fall portion of the season, but for others, you know well the joys that come with this time of year. While not every one of the tournaments during this portion of the season will have you on the edge of your seats, there are some really fun events on the calendar that I always look forward to with anticipation each year. The Asian swing portion of the tour is excellent for all of my fellow insomniacs out there as we will get three straight weeks of late night fun at some excellent venues and with some very talented fields. The CIMB Classic gets us started in Malaysia and as I was reminded by long time subscriber, Lane Orttenberger that the tourism commercials for Malaysia will be back in full force. Take a small sip of alcohol each time it comes across the airwaves next week and then let me know how many bottles you went through for the tournament.
The following week, the tour heads to Korea for the CJ Cup and Nine Bridges which was a fantastic addition to the schedule last year. The course is beautiful, provided a great challenge for the players and had a relatively strong field. I really think the addition of a third event in Asia made a lot of sense from a logistical perspective. The final week is the WGC HSBC Champions in Shaghai where many of the top players in the world who qualified will show up to round out the last week. The extra event gives many of the players an extra week to get to Asia, acclimate for a reasonable amount of time, play in a couple of events to make it worth the extra travel and then get on with the rest of the fall schedule. The only real change for these three events is that they are all ‘no cut’ events which keeps the field size to round 70 players give or take, but does allow everyone to play through in one wave which helps to condense the viewing experience into something that is easily manageable for one sitting.
Once the tour returns to North America, we have three additional events to look forward to leading up to the Thanksgiving Weekend showdown between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. The tour stops in Vegas for the Shriners, the OHL down in Mexico and then the RSM out in Sea Island. Each of these are regular stops for the tour each fall so the data is really strong for those courses and there are some local ties that help to get some of the better players out and participating which livens things up for us during these seven big events. Once we hit Thanksgiving, we have the HERO World Challenge, another Tiger invitational type of event with a tiny field of just 18 players and then we get a few weeks off before 2019 kicks into gear right away and we’re off and rolling again.
What is key to remember this week is not to get yourself too lathered up about all of the new faces that have just graduated from the Web.com Tour. Many of the players that are making the jump will have a very nice record in terms of form coming in, but it is never easy to guess who is going to start off fast and who is going to need to get a few events behind them before the better finishes start to show up. When in doubt as to which players might be able to make the biggest impact in the least amount of time, refer back to the route that they took to get them this far. Have they spent some time on other tours? If they have already had success on the European Tour or if they are a former PGA Tour player that took a year to figure out their game on the Web.com Tour and is now reemerging on the PGA Tour, those are risks I am more willing to take. If you look at last year, the best example of a player who returned to the tour and was ready to go was Chesson Hadley. He absolutely destroyed his competition on the Web.com Tour throughout 2017, winning several times and leading in many major statistical categories. When he returned in the fall, he was immediately in position to contend in a number of events and much of that carried over through the first half of 2018. In all, there ended up being five winners on the PGA Tour for last season that finished in the Top-11 of the Web.com Tour money list for 2017 so this is definitely a group to keep an eye on during the year.
Before I talk about the course and the players in the event this week. I want to first discuss some strategy points to be thinking about as the season begins. While I tend to think of my year long strategy in terms of calendar years, I have received some questions over the last couple of weeks from our FGI community about approaching cash games and how to improve in order to match some of the results that they have had with GPP contests. It’s an important question for those of you who look at this as a long term pursuit as I think it is a good thing to have a portion of your bankroll set aside for cash game purposes to take away some of the volatility that comes from playing in GPP contests every week. However, when we talk about that portion, I think many times people are too quick to assign a flat percentage each week in coming up with rigid rules to follow.
When people talk about cash games, many are quick to say that you should be using 50% or 70% or 80% of your bankroll for cash games each week as a guide. While in theory, this might end up being something to shoot for as far as an average over time, it is never something that is going to be constant for me every week. When people have the most success with cash games, it is very much due to a deliberate planning process through analyzing the schedule throughout the year. What exactly does this mean?
When I have a few weeks in December to recap and focus on the year ahead, the first thing that I do is lay out the calendar for the year ahead. So many people get so excited to get back into golf after NFL DFS dies down that they take their bankroll and start firing away without any real regard for the event taking place, the course, or the field for the week. They love the action that they had every week in the NFL and they just want to see the good times keep rolling when PGA takes back the spotlight on Sundays. This is typically not how I like to approach the year for golf. Remember, with the PGA, we have probably 45-47 weeks out of the year where we can play some form of DFS so take your time with it.
As I analyze the schedule of events, I really try to target the tournaments during the year where I feel like I have the best advantage possible. Sometimes, it is due to the overall strength of the field, other times it comes from having a certain level of comfort with the course, and other times, it just might be a tournament that I really enjoy. What I want to do for these tournaments is to try to be more aggressive in cash games where I feel that I have an edge. Think of it like counting cards at Blackjack. If you sit down and make the same bet on every single hand, regardless of how you play, you are set to slowly hemorrhage money over time. You may show up during a particularly juicy portion of the shoe and start winning right away, but you probably have no idea why this is happening. If you can learn to count cards, you start to flip the game on its head. You have a small standard sized bet that you make each hand, but as the count moves to your favor, you increase your bet by several multiples to take advantage of the situation and swing the edge to your favor. This is really how I want you to try to look at cash games for PGA this upcoming year.
Play a certain amount in cash games each week. Make sure you are involved to take a lay of the land and get a general idea of how your strategy matches up with what others are doing each week. Was somebody 40% owned that you had not considered? Make a note of it and try to figure out what you missed. Are the pay lines shifting in a similar way to what we have seen in NFL so that it is harder to win in cash games than GPPs? Store that information away for further use. What you want to stay focused on as the year progresses are when your best moment arise to put more money towards cash games based on the tournament being played in a given week.
I like to focus my efforts in cash first, and foremost, around the majors each year. Of course, you will see Jeff and I take some shots at some of the bigger contests that pop up during that time, but cash games around majors are usually profitable for us. There are a couple of reasons for why this is true. First, there are many more people that play PGA contests around the majors. With the return of Tiger Woods, viewership for golf is off the charts right now, especially for the biggest tournaments. You have to take advantage of this phenomenon while it lasts. If you are the guy that studies every week and knows the field better than the novice, you should have an edge. Now, that is not to say that this is totally foolproof, as it is still golf and trying to account for Sergio Garcia hitting it into the water four times in the first round on the 15th hole at Augusta is impossible, but the way these fields set up and with the compression in pricing, you should have a much easier time putting together strong teams.
I take a similar approach to the rest of the season in evaluating tournaments. How strong is the field? Has the tournament been played on the same course for many years or did it just move to its current location? Is weather typically a major factor in the outcome of the tournament? Is pricing generally soft or tight for the event? We want to focus on tournaments during the year with stronger than average fields, especially for DraftKings. If you look at the algorithm that they are using for pricing, you will notice that between $8k-12k, no two players will ever share the same price. For especially strong fields, this forces DK to push certain players much lower than normal. Obviously, DJ is always first or second in salary regardless of the event, but other player may see as much as a $3000 swing in price depending on the event. You might see a player like Matt Kuchar be above $10k for the RBC Heritage, but for the Masters he is $7,600. It isn’t that he is less capable of a strong result at Augusta, it just means that the field is loaded with talent so he gets pushed down into a lower salary tier. While some of his luster wore off for cash games last year, you will see this pattern again and again with many good, but not elite players during the year.
I also have a list of events during the year that I will generally try to minimize my cash game exposure to during the season. This week, the Safeway Open will probably be an event where I do not get too involved in cash games. The field is on the weak side, there are a lot of newer names in the tournament and the pricing pressure is pushing names up rather than down for the week. Most of the players that you see in the middle range this week are typically on the lower end of the pricing structure. Where $8,500 might get you one of the most consistent cut makers on tour in the middle of the season, this week there is much more uncertainty about that range in general. I am sure that a few of the players in this range will do well, but the range of outcomes is wider and there is a higher chance than normal that players in this range will blow up and miss the cut.
The other consideration for the fall swing when thinking about cash games for the week is that the contests are smaller during this time each year. Many people depart for the fall to focus on NFL and do not come back until January. The people who do stick around are generally the ones that follow the PGA very closely throughout the year. While we may know a little bit more about the younger players on tour, we still tend to come up against more seasoned players during this time of the year. This is also a great reason to take your time in diving into too many cash games at this point. In the weeks ahead, I am going to start organizing my calendar for 2019 and will let you know how I plan to approach the year from a cash game perspective.
For a great look at Silverado Country Club, take a look at Adam Daly’s, First Tee column this week. As is the case every week, this is always a great place to start your research as understanding the course is one of the key components in finding players who have a strong course fit, especially early in the year. This will mark the fifth year that Silverado has hosted this event so we do not have a lot of course history, but there is enough to give us a good idea of what type of player to look for this week. In beginning your research this week, the first thing I would direct your attention to is finding players from the area, or at least players who have lived in or play out of the west coast. Check out our Player Database tool for a list of guys that have some ties to the area. Obviously, a few names pop out like two time defending champ, Brendan Steele, Phil Mickelson and Patrick Cantlay. You also have a couple of younger Stanford alums like Patrick Rodgers or even my old favorite, Maverick McNealy. If you extend your search a little further to Arizona, a few other names will pop up that seem to play well here on a regular basis.
The course is a short Par 72 at just over 7,100 yards. All four Par 5 holes are on the easier side which means that we do want to get some strong long iron players on our rosters to set up birdie and eagle opportunities. The course is known for being narrow and has some of the toughest fairways to hit on tour and trees line the course. Fortunately, the rough here is never all that punitive so as long as players are not crazy wild off the tee, they should not find too much trouble. The Par 4 holes are almost all exclusively on the short side, with just one playing longer than 450 yards. This means that we should see plenty of shorter approach shots for the week from inside 150 yards, a star departure from the tournaments that we’ve focused on in recent months. The Poa Annua greens are a fixture of California golf courses on tour and this is no different at Silverado. Truly, this is the biggest reason why the locals and west coast players tend to have an advantage during the early portion of the season as they are much more familiar with playing on these slower, more grainy greens than those that grew up and played on faster Bermuda surfaces in the southeast.
Key Stats:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Par 5 Scoring: 5%
Driving Accuracy: 5%
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