The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Barclays

We made it through another exciting weekend at the Wyndham and are now into the postseason for the PGA Tour. It is a bit anticlimactic for golf considering that the majors tend to bring the most excitement to the season, but there is still $10 million on the line at the end of the Tour Championship next month so we should be in line for some drama as the field of 125 is whittled down week by week until a champion is crowned.

Obviously, this means that fantasy owners need to consider their strategic approach to the format and all of the little nuances that go with the playoffs. Each week is going to play a little bit differently. The first week kicks off with The Barclays and the top 125 ranked players (actually only around 120 will play this week). The tournament should end up playing out like an invitational as the rules are the same with the Top 70 players (plus ties) making the cut. However, the twist that makes The Barclays different than a regular invitational event is that in addition to playing to make the cut, golfers must also pay attention to where they will land in the rankings at the end of the event, which is determined through accumulated points throughout the season plus whatever points are gained over the weekend depending on where each player finishes. For players currently sitting between 100-125, the pressure is on to finish strong as only the Top 100 ranked players will move on to the next event.

As a fantasy owner, I am not going to look too closely at the current rankings when making my decisions on who to draft this week. At this stage, the field is stacked and there is enough on the line so that there really should not be a big letdown in play from the top golfers in the field. A couple of these golfers will play inspired over the next couple of weeks, but I am not willing to weight that too heavily in trying to guess who those individuals will be. The one aspect of that is worth considering is which players near the 100 spot are in really good form. Currently there are a couple of golfers just above and just below that mark that are in exceptional form. If you are looking to play the rankings game from week to week during the playoffs, those are players I would give a slight edge to in situations where I was deliberating between a couple of different players.

Many of you out there are also entering the Fantasy Golf World Championship this weekend…an event I did not try to qualify for in protest to DraftKings dropping the live final event this season. Last season, despite an extreme case of bad luck which potentially cost us a championship, Jeff and I still had the trip of a lifetime in terms of being able to take in a tournament in true VIP fashion. Hopefully, DraftKings will bring the live final back into the mix next summer as it was an incredible event that really cannot be duplicated in other sports (MMA and NASCAR, but those are over in a few hours).

I have had a few questions from folks in terms of what strategy to embrace from week to week for the FGWC. It is not quite the same as the FedEx Cup, which makes the choice of contest that much more baffling. During the first three weeks, the whole goal is to not finish near the bottom. So in the first week, your entire goal is to finish in the top 80% of teams in play. In the second week, you need to finish in the top 70% to stay alive. The strategy in both of these situations should be to minimize risk as much as possible. You want to look for golfers that are fairly consistent and if you really want to be smart, you should probably even chase the chalk to a large extent.

If one of your players misses the cut, you want it to hit a maximum number of your competitors. The only way to really bury yourself is by rolling the dice on an ultra low owned player who blows the cut. In terms of game theory, you gain very little in making the pivot in this scenario. When your low owned player makes the cut or does something really special, you gain no extra bonus for a high finish in the standings since the points are not cumulative from week to week.

The second week, the Top 70 finishers move on, but the tournament, The Deutsche Bank, is a little odd compared to any other event all season. Only 100 golfers will be in the field, but the cut line will still be the Top 70 (plus ties). Here, you really have to worry about the possibility of using a player who is a little riskier than average as a missed cut in a field where so few players get cut can be devastating. You are not going to want to dip too far down in the sleeper range and again should be looking to mirror what most other players are doing with their lineups in order to avoid the situations where you own one or two players that only a couple of other owners have shares of for the week.

The strategy really shifts during the week of the BMW Championship in the third week when the FGWC plays from 70 teams down to 30 and you need to play slightly more aggressive than your normal cash game style in order to be a part of the 43% that move on that week. Here you are going to need to get a lot more creative with your lineup choices, specifically in response to the much smaller number of teams advancing and also due to the fact that the BMW Championship is a no cut event. Here you should be looking to build your lineup very aggressively, utilizing a stars and scrubs approach. Since the cut is no longer a factor, you want to pick players in the lower price range that have the potential to score a lot of birdies and also have some upside finishing potential. What you are really hoping to do is to nail down one or two of the top finishers in the upper salary tier by conserving your dollars near the bottom as much as possible.

Once you reach the Tour Championship, you are back playing in a semi-normal GPP event again as now finishing position is everything for taking down the big prizes. Again, there is no cut at this event, but the real problem is that there are only 30 golfers in the field to choose from. This was where I really took issue with the format of the FGWC. The world championship will be decided in a field of 30 golfers in a no cut event allowing for very little differentiation between lineups and taking a lot of the skill out of the competition in its most crucial moments.

There is no doubt that you are going to need the winner of the Tour Championship tournament in order to win the competition. You will want to give yourself the maximum number of chances to pull this off so again, the stars and scrubs approach is important. However, you will want to try to find a way to differentiate your team if you are able to do so. By the time this event takes place, there will be one or two very obvious front runners to win the tournament. Last year it was Jason Day and the year prior it was Rory McIlroy. What happened? Each of those players came up short so it is never a lock, even with the best players in the world.

The odds of winning the FGWC are obviously stacked against regular players. Close to half the entries are controlled by just a handful of players which will allow them to really pressure the single entrants, especially in the closing round. If you are sitting on a single entry going into the championship, you are really going to need to get creative and take some chances to make your lineup stand out in a contrarian manner, but if that situation arises, you have us here as a resource to help you to get through it so please be sure to reach out if you need us.

Well, I know that the above explanation may not have applied to too many people, but I wanted to get some ideas across for suture reference if there are other big contests like this in the years ahead so you will not feel blindsided if you are involved as the style is quite a bit different than most other contests that you are used to on a weekly basis.

One area I do want to cover tonight before I get to our picks (I just drank a Red Bull so settle in today, kids), is to cover something that popped up with contest selection last weekend that ended up being a huge factor for myself and many subscribers who play the optimal lineups each week. When the last shot dropped on Sunday and Si Woo Kim became another one of this season’s many first time champions, I looked at my phone and let out a small sigh of relief as I had managed to cash on all three optimal lineups in both the $5 double up and $25 double up that I entered. However, as I had waited until Wednesday to enter any contests, each of these were secondary contests, thus a good degree smaller than the originals in each of those categories.

All season, when asked about which cash game contests to enter each week, I have always answered that you should pay up to higher buy in and get into a smaller field. The rationale is simple, but can be a little perplexing to people who wrongly assume a correlation between size of buy-in and the need to score more points to beat tougher competitors. Now, I am not saying that you need to attack 10 man fields with all expert players, but if you can play in a 227 player field for $50 rather than a 919 player $25 contest for cash games, pick the bigger buy in and smaller field.

Now, if the field size is comparable for each, then it really will not be all that relevant, but typically, as the buy-in goes up, the field shrinks…unless it is a secondary offering like last weekend which gives us perfect control variables to measure my hypothesis. I have always started from a premise that is evident from simply tracking the results in the $3, $33 and $300 GPP each week. You will notice that in each event that as the field grows larger, you need to score more points to cash and in almost every case, you need a higher score to win. This happens even with the $300 GPP being filled with the toughest DFS players in the world every week. It just illustrates that as the sample size grows, more of the field is in play and more of the hidden gems emerge on fully intact lineups.

Now, cash games are a little different as ownership trends are not nearly the same as in GPP contests, but the principal still holds true in most circumstances, just with less variation among the highest and lowest scores. Most weeks I will make a point of entering the $5, $25, $50 and $100 double up contests just to watch how the results play out. Typically, the lineups are not going to finish right on the bubble, but more often than not, when they are close, I tend to get paid on the bigger buy-ins and fall just short in the smaller double ups…and all due to field size.

Last week this proved to work out well for me as buying in late allowed for two of my lineups to cash across the board while my final lineup returned a profit, but not quite a full win as it was tied for the final spot along with many other teams in both contests. I was so pleased to see my own win that I tweeted about it and immediately heard from a few unlucky folks who had played in larger fields for the same buy-ins and had their final one or two lineups finish just outside of the money. Now the lesson here is not to stretch your bankroll to play beyond your means as that would be foolish and subject you to volatility that you are not prepared for, but rather to examine contest selection each week. If you are going to enter the same lineup five times in the $5 double up, just go ahead and enter it once in the $25 double up instead. Most of the time, it will have no impact on how you finish up, but in bubble situations, it could make the difference once or twice a year which is not insignificant for your overall results over the long haul.

Now that your mind is on strategy, we can address the course this week as it is one of the more challenging stops for the PGA Tour this season. Bethpage State Park hosts The Barclays this year as it rotates from year to year and the tournament will be played on the iconic Black Course, which hosted this event in 2012 and the US Open in 2002 and 2009. There are some small differences in the setup for this event versus the US Open. For The Barclays, the course will play as a Par 71 (as opposed to a Par 70) at over 7,400 yards. The fact that the US Open was played here should lead you to the conclusion that scoring will not go that low for the week with there being a good chance that the cut will be above par. Birdies are important, but so is saving par. The greens will be fast, although probably not ‘US Open fast’ and the lengthy Par 4 holes will really push the field and favor the bigger hitters off the tee.

The key stats for the week from our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics:

Strokes Gained Putting: 30%
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
Driving Distance: 15%
Birdie or Better %: 15%
Par 3 Scoring: 15%
Strokes Gained Approach: 5%

Certainly, it appears that the bombers should be favored this week, but do not discount the shorter hitters who excel once past their initial tee shot as the leaderboards from past events here are littered with plenty of shorter hitters as well as bombers. For those types of players, take a look at bogey avoidance as well since many of these players will hold ground by simply making par all weekend rather than having to worry about scoring on all of the Par 5 holes.

Good luck this week! I was out of town for a few days taking in the lovely summer weather down in San Diego, but am on my way back home tomorrow morning and should be able to be home in time for Periscope tomorrow night at the usual time of 9pm-ish CST. Each event is going to play a little bit differently over the next month so be sure to re-cage the gyros each week when starting your process so the little details do not slip your mind. Please also be sure to hit us up anytime on Twitter with any questions and always feel free to email me directly.

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The optimal lineups have been pretty solid the last few weeks save for a little bit of bad luck due to ending up in the wrong contests for some folks. This week, there are a lot options for our teams so I took a slightly different approach for each of them. I think there are enough cut makers at the lower levels to take on what would normally be extra risk, but if you look at the players in the scrub range that we are using this week, they include: Ryan Palmer, Francesco Molinari, Kevin Kisner and Harris English. Each of those players have been very consistent all season as far as making the cut and each one lines up well for the course this week. Realize that there will be some high quality players that miss the cut over the next couple of weeks in these tough fields, but I fell really good about the players that popped in the model this week so I am confident in what we are putting forth this week for our three optimal lineups.

UPDATED
Jason Day – $12,400
Brooks Koepka – $10,100
Zach Johnson – $8,100
Daniel Berger – $6,900
Jason Dufner – $6,600
Ryan Palmer – $5,900
UPDATED

Adam Scott – $9,500
Bubba Watson – $9,100
Patrick Reed – $8,800
Charl Schwartzel – $8,500
Zach Johnson – $8,100
Ryan Palmer – $5,900

Dustin Johnson – $11,900
Adam Scott – $9,500
Bubba Watson – $9,100
Steve Stricker – $7,100
Harris English – $6,300
Francesco Molinari – $6,000

Player Pool – The Barclays

CORE

Jason Day – 60% ($12,400)
Ryan Palmer – 57% ($5,900)
Bubba Watson – 54% ($9,100)
Daniel Berger – 48% ($6,900)

The core is a stars and scrubs mix this week in keeping with our philosophy for GPP action this week. When we last saw Jason Day, he was making an attempt to run down Jimmy Walker at the PGA Championship by eagling the final hole, but coming up just one shot short. Day is a statistical marvel and will be in contention this week. He seems like the least likely of the top players to implode as his tee to green game and putter compliment each other really well. There will not be a break on ownership here, but we would not get one with DJ or Stenson so I am prepared to diversify elsewhere.

Ryan Palmer is here for salary relief and cut making ability. In fact, he has missed just three cuts in twenty starts this season. He finished 24th here back in 2012 and he fits the bomber mold for success. His putter will be critical this week, but if he makes the cut he will have done his job for us.

Bubba Watson has quietly worked his way through the season without missing a cut in sixteen starts. Since he has not had a big finish in the last four months, most people will have forgotten about Bubba, but this seems like a likely spot for him to pop up again on the leaderboard with his long ball style of play. He has had success at Bethpage Black in the past, finished 10th in 2012 and 18th in 2009.

Daniel Berger is priced well this week and he is the perfect player to mix into our core as he gets a lot of distance of the tee, putts well and scores often. He has a win this summer and has been in contention on several other occasions. I am frustrated in the expected ownership numbers, but he is the best player in this range that has a shot at some upside so I am willing to deal with it and will diversify in the lower pricing levels.

SECONDARY

Adam Scott – 39% ($9,500) – 15/15 cuts this season, 2/2 at BPB, bomber w precision irons, low owned
Patrick Reed – 32% ($8,800) – 22/25 cuts this season, 6 straight Top-25 finishes
Paul Casey – 26% ($7,800) – 12/17 cuts this season, 4 Top-10’s, good history at Tillinghast designed courses
Henrik Stenson – 22% ($11,700) – 16/19 cuts this season, 2/2 at BPB, Excellent recent form
Jordan Spieth – 20% ($11,000) – 15/17 cuts this season, 6 Top-10’s, should be low owned in this range
Emiliano Grillo – 20% ($8,300) – 19/22 cuts this season, won earlier in the season, cut maker w upside
Steve Stricker – 20% ($7,100) – 10/14 cuts this season, 2/2 at BPB, made 7 straight cuts, minimal mistakes
William McGirt – 18% ($6,100) – 17/24 cuts this season, 10th at BPB in 2012, low price w upside play
John Senden – 18% ($5,600) – 16/26 cuts this season, 19th at BPB in 2012, excellent at Tillinghast courses
Zach Johnson – 16% ($8,100) – 17/20 cuts this season, 38th at BPB in 2012, good value for cut maker
Harris English – 15% ($6,300) – 19/24 cuts this season, 24th at BPB in 2012, cheap scrub cut maker

TERTIARY

Ryan Moore – 14% ($7,700) – 14/18 cuts this season, 2/2 at BPB with two Top-25 finishes, good form
Charl Schwartzel – 13% ($8,500) – 16/17 cuts this season, 24th at BPB in 2012, 3 wins this season
Hideki Matsuyama – 12% ($9,900) – 13/18 cuts this season, turning his game around, putter is only challenge
JB Holmes – 12% ($6,400) – 12/18 cuts this season, 3 straight MC, 2/2 at BPB, upside potential
Kevin Kisner – 10% ($6,400) – 17/22 cuts this season, making a late season surge
Robert Garrigus – 9% ($5,700) – 13/19 cuts this season, one MC in last 10 starts, game fits long course
Russell Knox – 9% ($7,300) – 20/25 cuts this season, 2 wins and 6 Top-10 finishes, in great form
Justin Rose – 8% ($10,300) – 12/15 cuts this season, comes in off Olympic gold, always low owned
Phil Mickelson – 7% ($9,700) – 13/18 cuts this season, six Top-10’s, 2/2 at BPB, stats are a fit
Brooks Koepka – 7% ($10,100) – 13/17 cuts this season, six Top-10’s, great form, big driver & can putt
Francesco Molinari – 7% ($6,000) – 16/19 cuts this season, 27th at BPB in 2009, playing steady golf, cheap
Hudson Swafford – 6% ($6,200) – 19/27 cuts this season, 10 straight made cuts, has the long irons to compete
Jason Dufner – 6% ($6,600) – 20/23 cuts this season, steady cut maker w upside and cheaper than normal
Blayne Barber – 5% ($5,600) – 14/25 cuts this season, made 7 of last 8 cuts, cheap, low owned
Roberto Castro – 4% ($5,700) – 19/23 cuts this season, 10 straight made cuts
Ricky Barnes – 3% ($5,800) – 17/26 cuts this season, 2/2 at BPB including a 2nd in 2009, good form
David Hearn – 3% ($5,600) – 17/27 cuts this season, 10th at BPB in 2012, cheap, some upside potential

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