The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Sanderson Farms
Another season is off and running and another young champion is crowned to kick off the fall swing in Joaquin Niemann, the 20 year-old Chilean phenom who we have been excited about since he broke onto the tour last year with a number of great finishes. While the tee to green game has been there from the beginning, it has really been his improvement on the greens that has taken him to the next level. While he started the year deep in the hole to the negative side on Stroke Gained Putting, by the end of the year, it was just as strong as the best parts of his game. In looking back over the lat 36 rounds among the field in play this week, Niemann ranks 4th in SGP. He finished the season ranked 141st in SGP so it shows you just how much he improved over the back half of the season. While the attention this summer was on newcomers like Viktor Hovland, Matthew Wolff and Colin Morikawa, Joaquin Niemann is arguably already the best of the group and also the youngest.
After winning his first event on tour, I would have expected Niemann to take a little time off to enjoy his success, but his motivation is there to push through and keep playing his schedule as planned. With the Presidents Cup just a few short months away, Niemann still has until the beginning of November to showcase his skills to Ernie Els, the captain of the International team, who still has discretion on making the final picks to fill out his roster. With the way that young Niemann is playing right now, there are not many other names that I think would make a better choice than him. Most of the time, after such a big win for a player, I would back off in their next start, as there is usually a hangover that lasts for an event or two. However, in Niemann’s case, it still feels like he has a lot to play for so I do not expect a notable drop in play his upcoming starts.
Hopefully, the week worked out well for most of you at the Greenbrier. I took the advice that I shared with all of you last week and went pretty light overall, steering away from cash games and taking my shots in smaller GPP contests. On the positive side, I was very fortunate to own close to 50% Niemann in my lineups which gave me some nice lineups to work with. He did end up being 25-30% owned in most of the contests which meant that going to 50% did give me some leverage. My other core plays of Im, Hovland and An worked out okay, though An slipped back late.
I really liked my strategy for the week overall in building around those players. The only thing that kept me from having a shot at a top finish was my lack of exposure to Scottie Scheffler and Robby Shelton. These are both young players to watch and I have even been pretty aggressive with Scheffler, using him as a core play back when he jumped onto the tour and was only $7900 earlier last season. The $9,300 salary was just a little too high for me last week right off the bat. It was tough for me to divert shares away from An, Im or Niemann right in that same price range for a talented, though yet unproven player in Scheffler. Not utilizing Shelton for 5-10% was a clear mistake on my part last week. He had been a little up and down since winning twice on the Korn Ferry Tour in the middle of the season, but he was way too cheap to keep out of my player pool last week. He is still probably too cheap again this week, but it is unlikely we will ever get him at such a low ownership number again.
If you are just jumping back into PGA events after taking a few weeks away, be sure to read the column that Jeff put together on the top newcomers on tour this season. If you missed it, the top player he wrote about was Scottie Scheffler and the 4th player was Robby Shelton. It is a great piece that he writes every single year and without fail, a bunch of the players that he features there explode out of the gates and make some noise immediately upon joining the tour full time. There are not a lot of edges to be gained in an environment where there is so much information available and that is one we’ve been able to capitalize on each of the last few seasons.
This week, the tour heads down to Mississippi for Sanderson Farms. If you are scratching your head about this one, knowing it is familiar and yet not having played it as a DFS contest, you are not alone. This tournament used to be held the same weekend as when the tour was also in Asia so our main focus has always been over there on the stronger field. However, this year, Sanderson Farms is the only event taking place this week so it will mark the first time that most of us have really paid attention to it other than to check it out on Sunday to see who gets the win as it has been a great spot for young players to get a breakthrough win over the years with golfers like Cameron Champ, Nick Taylor and Pete Malnati all getting it done there for their first tour wins.
The course is one of the easier layouts that we’ll see during the fall and plays as a Par 72 at around 7,450 yards with four Par 5s and only three Par 4 holes that are over 450 yards. The fairways are narrow, but there are not a lot of trees and the rough is thin so most players are going to be using driver off the tee as it is not at all penal typically to miss here since players end up hitting the greens about 70% of the time. Given the range of players that have won this event in recent years, ranging from a true bomber like Champ, down to some of the shortest hitters on tour like Ryan Armour and Pete Malnati, I would not classify this course as being geared more towards any specific type of golfer. It’s been a combination of either strong play off the tee and solid short game play or steady iron play all weekend leading to success. The large, Bermuda greens have not proved to be much of a challenge in recent years so getting the putter to heat up at the right time is also important. When using the model this week, be sure to elevate Birdie or Better Percentage up a little more than normal.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 25%
Per 5 Scoring: 15%
Proximity: 5%
Scrambling: 5%
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