The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – St Jude Classic

What a week at Muirfield for Team FGI! We hit another Crystal Ball winner, marking the six winner from Jeff’s column since The Masters and the seventh overall this season as Bryson DeChambeau continued his ascendance towards becoming one of the best young players on tour after capturing his second win on tour within the last year. After working through issues with his putter for much of 2017, he seems to have the worst of it behind him and has really improved his tee to green game as well over that same time frame. With the majors coming up this summer, it seems likely that we have not heard the last of Bryson this season.

As far as results are concerned, I was incredibly pleased with my picks for the week and hope that you were as successful as I was for the week. I am such a big fan of the $5, 150 max GPP event when DraftKings elects to roll it out that having the chance to max out the contest without having to break the bank was a welcome relief. Having 150 lineups in play really helps me in terms of creativity as I can stretch my player pool out and also do not have to worry about having players at a low weighting the way you do when you play 20 lineups. With only 20 teams, if I elect to use 5-10% for a player, he may not make it onto a team or might only be on one roster. As Jeff and I have discussed a few teams, we always want to give our tertiary players a chance to flourish by getting them onto a few lineups so that when they really pop the way a couple of guys did last week, we have a much higher likelihood that they made it onto a lineup with a full team getting to the weekend and also doing some damage.

The players that I used last week performed really well with 23/25 making the cut overall putting a lot of us in position to capitalize over the final two rounds. I love weeks where my core and Jeff’s core hit hard and we see FGI logos all over the leaderboard like an invading hoard. I spent a lot of time on Sunday watching the scores closely as Jeff made a late hero charge up close to the top of the $5 Drive The Green as Kyle Stanley put together a birdie streak that nearly propelled him to another win. Going into the playoff, had Stanley won, I believe he would have finished in 3rd place, but as it worked out, with plenty of money bet on DeChambeau in outrights to win, it all evened out with a 4th place finish. For myself, I had a lot of teams inside the Top-1000 and made a few charges, but just missed the right combination to put me over the top. I had many shares of Bryson, An, Stanley, Cantlay and even Uihlein, but just did not manage to get four of them together on a single team for the week. I had a lot of great finishes overall and managed to get 98/150 teams through the cut all the way intact and when combined with my strong showing in the $44 GPP, I was able to have one of my more profitable weeks for tournament play all season.

For those of you who played cash games, things should have gone just as well. Out of the 17 players that I recommended, all of them made the cut for the week and although Adam Hadwin did hit the MDF on Saturday, if you started your rosters with the four players that I told you were ‘must plays’ for the week (Kuchar, Grillo, Mickelson and Finau), you were well on your way to a win. The other two players that I ended up using for my cash roster were Byeong Hun An and Patrick Reed which made for a relatively low stress weekend again in cash games even with a lot of chalk hitting for the week. Now, it was entirely possible last week to get 6/6 through the cut and not cash (I’m looking at you, MacNCheeseSwag) if you happened to gravitate towards Leishman on the high end and CHIII or Hadwin on the low end, but mostly, that is just a product of bad luck as well as the fact that in an Invitational field, a larger share of players make the cut, the field is stronger and the pricing compression makes it easier to dip down into the lower $7k range without feeling like you are taking on much additional risk.

As we put last week behind us and move on to the St Jude Classic down in Memphis, there are a few key things that I want you to be thinking about this week. First, it is the week before the US Open. Hopefully, you have not made your lineups yet as many notable players qualified for the US Open on Monday and have since withdrawn from the field including: Adam Scott, Russell Knox, Keegan Bradley, Patrick Rodgers, Lucas Glover and Ollie Schniederjans. Continue to monitor the situation carefully today as there were a couple of surprising names that did not drop out, like Steve Stricker, who I had expected to WD after qualifying. Typically, the best follow on Twitter for this information is Rob Bolton as he typically is the first to post about WDs and his information is typically very accurate.

The fact that you are seeing so many withdrawals here is nothing new. It happens every year following the qualifiers that take place around the country so it should show you that there are plenty of pros that do not take this event too seriously as they want to be fully rested for the following week at what is typically one of the most challenging golf experiences each season (outside of last year at Erin Hills). In an event like this before a major, I always like to focus my attention on players who make a habit of playing the week prior and who take it seriously. Although we see DJ here each year and this is an event he won in his younger days, we’ve also seen him flat out give up after nine holes like he did back in 2015 when he quit and then rushed off to Chambers Bay to prepare for one of the more unusual US Open setups in recent memory. We want to look at players that are going to take advantage of the opportunity to play for $1 mil, pick up much needed FedEx Cup points or even to shoot for their first tour victory. Focus on those younger players who have been close in recent weeks who are hungry to get over the top as well as a few cagey veterans who like to keep their momentum going all the way through the weekend and into next week.

Here is a quick weather check for the week. You will notice that it is going to be hot, but not much in terms of rain or winds. Last week, there was no clear advantage beforehand to either wave based on weather, but by the end of Friday, we ended up with over a three shot difference between the two which is as high as I have seen since Valero back in 2015 when it exceeded four shots. What this means is that you must be diligent about staying in the habit of making a few teams each week that are stacked towards tee times. If there is no apparent advantage, just do a few on each side. If one wave is clearly better, maybe make 25% to one wave and only 5% to the other. Most weeks, it will be a wash and you will not gain or lose an edge, but in a week like last week where it ends up being a huge difference, just giving a few lineups a little extra edge can make all the difference, especially when it comes as a surprise and few others think to make such a move.

In addition to the fact that this event takes place the week prior to a major, there are also a few other factors that help make TPC Southwind a course that most players like to avoid. First, it takes place in Memphis in June each year when the temperature is usually up in the mid 90 degree range which is exhausting to play through. The course is challenging with it being a Par 70 and over 7,240 yards long, there are not a lot of great scoring opportunities available although the two Par 5 holes should yield plenty of birdie or better chances. The biggest threat to players this week will be in getting wild and going into the water as there is plenty to work around which is a big reason why this event does not draw as many of the bomber types. The fairways are manageable, but many players will end up clubbing down again in order to work for position, rather than length off the tee to avoid any hazards. The greens are on the small side and are Bermuda grass so precision approach shots will be the key, particularly the middle ranges of 150-175 and 175-200 yards. This is a course that can hurt players who make too may mistakes so put a little additional emphasis on bogey avoidance this week as the winning score tends to come in right around -10 so par is a quality score most of the time, but you must score on the two Par 5 holes in order to be competitive.

Key Stats:

Birdie or Better Percentage: 25%
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Driving Accuracy: 10%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 5%

Finally, the salaries were released for the US Open next week so be sure to check those out on both DraftKings and FanDuel. Start looking over the players and seeing which ones stand out for value. Once the St Jude gets going, we will be hard at work preparing content for next week so check back to the site periodically for updates on everything that is going on as I am hoping to start getting some preview pieces out a little earlier than normal to give you all ample prep time for the big event and all of the great contests coming up.

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