The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Deutsche Bank Championship

The Barclays jumped out and surprised a lot of golfers and fantasy last weekend. With players like Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth all struggling and missing the cut, Plainfield proved to be a much more difficult challenge than it was back in 2011 when Dustin Johnson was able to get to -19 after only three rounds of play. Softer greens certainly made putting much easier than it was last week as the course played much closer to a playoff type of course for much of the weekend with players struggling to hold ground throughout the event. When players made a mistake or two, it seemed to snowball on them if they were not able to regain their composure immediately.

Watching players breakdown actually gave me an idea on strategy that is worth passing on. It is certainly not a seismic shift in play or strategy and something that most of you may have considered, but take it as a small adjustment that you can make to your game that may help you to swing the odds in your direction ever so slightly. Obviously, one of the things that should be on your weekly checklist is to look over tee times and then check the weather for Thursday and Friday. Obviously, if one of the four groupings of tee times looks treacherous, you want to avoid that as much as possible. This is fairly obvious and something that most of us do without a lot of thought. However, if all factors are equal, what is the best plan of attack when trying to decide what times to favor?

Most people are going to answer this question by shrugging their shoulders and answering that if conditions are similar for both days that it really does not matter. To some degree that is true, but I want you to start thinking about it a little differently. Now, typically, the weather in the morning is calmer than later in the day. Not always, but typically the winds are not as bad and the greens are a little softer. It is not unusual in these instances, for the opening morning players to race out into the lead and the scores slowing up a bit as the day wears on. If conditions remain the same, play theoretically should even out on Fridays and the scoring should even out. And yet, that does not always seem to be the case. I think a couple of key factors are at work that are worth discussing.

The first factor that contributes to this is pretty obvious. Since our best shot at predicting the weather for the four rounds will be for Thursday just before rosters lock down, we have the ability to choose the best conditions for our golfers in that opening round with the most certainty. Use this to your advantage. If there is troublesome or even a small chance of poor weather in either the morning or afternoon on Thursday, take advantage of this and build your teams more towards avoiding those conditions. However, when all things are equal, just go ahead and build a portion of your teams for the week with players starting in the morning on Thursday. You should have a large enough list of players so that building 25-30% of your teams with morning players should not be too difficult. Since we know that conditions are usually good to start, take advantage of what we know with a fair amount of certainty and use the Thursday morning players. If conditions are the same of Friday, you will not have lost anything by implementing this approach. However, if the weather shifts at all on Friday, by having those scores locked in from Thursday, you will gain an edge over opponents that just blindly mix and match all of their lineups.

Jeff used this strategy perfectly when he won his second seat for the Fantasy Golf World Championship. The event was The Open at St Andrews where the weather is as big of a factor as any feature on the course itself. So many owners were worried about how the weather was going to look on Friday afternoon that they avoided Thursday morning players. However, when Jeff was doing his research, the biggest factor that he noted was how fast conditions could change from one day to the next. As he studied the weather before tee times Thursday, he noticed that for a few hours on Thursday morning, the weather actually looked pretty good. He built his qualifier team with all Thursday morning players and sure enough, the conditions during that time proved to be the best overall in the first two days and as a result, he absolutely smoked his competitors that week. The first lesson here is to weight players on the first day where conditions are best. The second part and most important part is that if conditions do not seem dramatically different between the first two days, tend to weight Thursday morning players a little more than Thursday afternoon players. The worst case scenario is that conditions even out. The best case is that conditions play a little tougher the next day and result in you gaining a small edge.

There is an additional lesson in selecting Thursday morning players that is less about conditions and more about psychology. While I have not taken a deep dive into the data, it is my personal belief that a poor start on Thursday can break a player going into Friday. How many times have you seen a player shoot a terrible round on Thursday where they come out on Friday and essentially take a knee, seeming to have moved on psychologically to the next week. It is a rare sight to see an effort like Justin Rose’s last week where a player rallies back against seemingly impossible odds after a terrible first day. And although conditions on Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon could end up being about the same, I think that a lot of the time, if a player struggles on Thursday afternoon, they are shot emotionally the second day. I think the same thing could be said of the player that starts strong on Thursday morning when they enter Friday afternoon and start their round feeling just a little bit less pressure than their counterparts. It may be a small factor, but if you watched the majors throughout the summer, the morning players on Thursday fared a lot better overall than those that started in the afternoon for the US Open, The Open, and the PGA Championship.

One last thing to mention before we move on to this week is that if conditions look miserable all day on Thursday, punt it to Friday and pick the time of day when conditions look best. If things looks okay all day Friday, pick Thursday afternoon players and play the odds that the morning will play better than the afternoon the next day. In a game where any little edge can be the difference between winning and losing, this is one variable that you can take some control over in terms of when your golfers tee off and one that the majority of players will ignore. It takes a few extra minutes, but I promise you that you will have a few extra weeks a season where you profit if you spend the extra time to have a solid game plan for the weather.

Okay, enough about tee times and weather since that is probably not the reason you checked in with me this morning. Let’s talk a little bit about our results from last week and get on to our picks for this week. When I woke up on Thursday after catching a little nap after lineup lock on Thursday morning, I was dismayed to see that my $1060 Clubhouse GPP team was already done for the weekend. David Lingmerth made a mess of his first round and for all intents and purposes had eliminated himself before the end of the morning. It looked like it could be a tough week as a few guys really struggled with the course on Thursday. Fortunately, things ended up working out okay for us here and 17 of 22 players ended up getting through the cut which was a really respectable result. 10 of 12 cash game recommendations made it through the cut as well so hopefully, you had two to three teams like I did and were able to cash on more than half of your cash games. I managed to get two full teams through the cut and won about 70% of my cash games for the week. We mentioned Lingmerth, the other notable cash game mix was Brooks Koepka. While it was frustrating the see Brooks’s streak of great play hit a bump in the road, we all knew this would happen at some point. Think of it as a gift for this week as his price has come down while his skill set fits this course as well or better than most others. Other notable misses in GPP picks included, Jordan Spieth, William McGirt and Chad Campbell. Obviously, Spieth was a surprise to everyone, but hopefully, you did not load up on him in cash games and kept your exposure to him limited to just a few GPP lineups.

We had some players that really shined for us as well. Jason Day continued to separate himself from competitors in winning the tournament by six strokes. Bubba Watson had a few ugly miscues, but managed a 3rd place finish. Jim Furyk and Jason Bohn each quietly worked their way into the Top 11 and Tony Finau and Justin Thomas each finished strong to take Top 20 finishes. Most of the other players were steady and had nice, if not spectacular finishes over the weekend with only a couple of notable players who struggled over the last two rounds.

Now it is time for the biggest week of the Fantasy Golf season. We have reached the week of the Fantasy Golf World Championship which will take place in Boston during the Deutsche Bank Championship. It is the culmination of all the work that Jeff and I have put into the site over the last year and we could not be more excited about it. Jeff mentioned that he has been a little anxious in his column and the feeling has been mutual. I woke up last week late on Thursday/early on Friday at around 1am. All I could think about were the key stats for TPC Boston. I got out of bed, loaded up some spreadsheets for the week and started pouring over data. At around 3am, I had the funniest feeling that Jeff was awake doing research as well. Now, if you know Jeff, you know he is not in any way a night person the way that I am. But somehow, I knew when I sent him a text message, that he would be right there. Sure enough, he answered instantly. We spent the next few hours going over lineup possibilities and ideas on price predictions for the following week. There has not been another week all year where we have done more research so without making you wait too much longer, let’s talk about the course this week.

TPC Boston is a Par 71 course that plays just over 7200 yards. There are three Par 5 holes with two of them being very reachable in two shots. The course has not changed much since going through an overhaul in 2007, so we have finnally returned to a course where tournament history should be a useful metric for us. There are 99 players in the field this week (no Sergio), with a cut down to 70 taking place after the 2nd round on Friday. Getting six players through the cut will be easier, but also will not guarantee a win. Knowing this, lean towards getting at least one higher dollar player on your rosters to help put up a few extra position and scoring points this week. The statistics that stood out most in going over the data were: Strokes Gained Tee to Green, Par 5 Scoring, Par 4 Scoring, Birdie or Better Percentage and Approach shots from greater than 200 yards. Other peripheral stats that we also considered were: Par 3 scoring, Green In Regualtion and Strokes Gained Putting. It is a course that will require players to score often so longer hitters that can efficiently chop up the course and put themselves into position to score should fare well this week. To win here this week, a player is going to need to shoot around -8 on the Par 5 holes in order to keep up with other competitors.

Good luck to all of you this week. Send us some good vibes for our trip to Boston. We want to do everything that we can to bring home the big prize for Team FGI and all of our members. We could not have gotten this far without your support and I want you to know that it has meant more to us than you will ever know. It has been a fun year and we hope that we can cap it off with a big win.

Please be sure to send us a message if you have a team that gets into the running for a nice prize this weekend. We will be rooting for you from afar this week. We will do our best to bring you some extended coverage this week and hope to have some extra footage for editing next week from the trip to bring as much of the action to you as possible. We will do our best to try to talk to our competitors although I suspect there may be a few that do not want to give away their strategy.

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One of the new things I did with the column that received a lot of great feedback about was the addition of recommendations that were specific to cash games for the week. Generally, my philosophy on cash games is to keep your teams boring. If you are stacking two or three star players with a few guys near the bottom of the pricing structure you are more than likely not having the sort of success that I have enjoyed this season. For cash games, you want to look up and down your roster and see steady players.

This week, it makes more sense to stretch your budget a little bit. Using a blue chip player in one or two of your lineups is important this week as few players will miss the cut and getting too conservative could end up costing you as getting six of six through the cut will not necessarily win your cash games. However, that said, there is no need to get carried away by deploying two or three sleepers in your lineup. If a player on your roster misses the cut, the consequences will be devastating. With that, I wanted to present you with a list of mid tier players that can safely be used in cash games. The Blue Chip players featured later on in the column can be played with these players, but this list should make up the core of your two to three teams this week.

1) Zach Johnson ($9,300) 17/22 Cuts this season and 7/8 at TPC Boston
2) Jim Furyk ($9,000) 14/16 Cuts this season and 8/8 at TPC Boston
3) Hideki Matsuyama ($8,800) 20/22 Cuts made this season and 1/1 at TPC Boston
4) Brooks Koepka ($8,700) 16/19 Cuts made this season
5) Matt Kuchar ($8,500) 21/22 Cuts made this season and 8/9 at TPC Boston
6) Paul Casey ($8,300) 16/20 Cuts made this season and 1/2 at TPC Boston
7) Robert Streb ($8,000) 22/27 Cuts made this season and 1/1 at TPC Boston
8) Luke Donald ($7,800) 14/19 Cuts made this season and 7/7 at TPC Boston
9) Tony Finau ($7,700) 21/29 Cuts made this season, made 11 cuts out of last 12 starts with 10 Top 25s
10) Danny Lee ($7,600) 21/33 Cuts made this season, take away the links style courses and he has played as well as almost anyone on tour and he is 1/1 at TPC Boston
11) Jason Dufner ($7,600) 15/19 Cuts made this season and 5/5 at TPC Boston
12) Jason Bohn ($7,300) 20/25 Cuts made this season, 5/5 at TPC Boston

Use these plays as your building blocks for the week for cash games by either playing six from the group or pairing one of our Blue Chip plays with five of these core players. I think avoiding the sleepers in cash games is wise this week as I just do not think the extra risk is worth taking, although there are a handful of sleeper picks that you could make a reasonable argument for selecting to beef up your roster at the top.

BLUE CHIPS

Jason Day ($11,800) – Just when it looked like Jordan Spieth would run away with Player of the Year honors, Jason Day roared to life in winning three of his last four events, including his first major at the PGA Championship. There are not really any weaknesses in Day’s game right now and he looks like he is ready to go on a Tiger Woods like run here to end the season. He is long off the tee, a great tee to green play and knocks in clutch putts as well as anyone in the game. He has not missed a cut in seven starts at TPC Boston and has three Top 10 finishes. He will be highly owned, but he is playing well enough so that you might just have to bite the bullet and get him onto a lot of your rosters this week.

SGTG – 8th
Par 5 Scoring – 10th
Par 4 Scoring – 2nd
Birdie or Better Percentage – 1st
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 32nd
Par 3 Scoring – 1st
SGP – 2nd
GIR – 9th

Jordan Spieth ($11,300) – I always love to grab a strong player that has just missed the cut. In the case of Jordan Spieth, we have a great opportunity to pick up one of the best players in the game at one of the biggest tournaments of the year at a discount price. Others will stay away, but you should be sure to have Spieth on a few of your teams this week. He has made the cut here in both starts and will be looking to rebound to keep himself at the top of the pack for the FedEx Cup playoffs. With all the buzz around Jason Day at the top and several others who performed well last week, Spieth’s ownership will be as low as we have seen it all year. Do not be in the crowd that is scared off by one by tournament.

SGTG – 3rd
Par 5 Scoring – 27th
Par 4 Scoring – 1st
Birdie or Better Percentage – 2nd
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 26th
Par 3 Scoring – 14th
SGP – 6th
GIR – 55th

Rory McIlroy ($11,200) – The wildcard of the week, McIlroy makes his second appearance back on tour since injuring his ankle this summer. He played well in his return at The PGA Championship, securing a 17th place finish before taking a couple of additional weeks off. Rory has not missed a cut in four starts in Boston and won this event in 2012. With the additional rest over the past couple of weeks, McIlroy should be ready to contend again this week. He will have a little ground to make up in the standings, but is plenty capable. With his lack of play this summer, he will still be under the radar this week. Use that to your advantage and find a few roster spots for him.

-Has not played enough to register on PGA stat rankings

Henrik Stenson ($10,500) – It took awhile, but Henrik Stenson finally seems to have returned to form late in the season. After being affected by a nasty virus early in the year, Stenson struggled to get back to the top of the leaderboard until a 6th place finish at the WGC Bridgestone. He flashed his brilliance at the PGA Championship, but could not hold the momentum and finished 25th. It came together last week for Stenson with a 2nd place finish at The Barclays where only the brilliance of Jason day could deny him of a win. Stenson won in Boston in 2013 and has not missed a cut here. His price is reasonable enough to use him in a stack with another star and still have salary cap room on your roster to build a roster that makes sense.

SGTG – 2nd
Par 5 Scoring – 43rd
Par 4 Scoring – 13th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 27th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 19th
Par 3 Scoring – 41st
SGP – 22nd
GIR – 1st

Bubba Watson ($9,800) – When I looked at my phone last Sunday afternoon while looking over Shot Tracker, I shook my head in disbelief as I saw that Bubba Watson had managed to 3 putt from…3 feet. In classic Bubba Watson style, Bubba stumbled a bit in the last round, but did rally to take 3rd place. Although Bubba has his faults, he is also massively talented and has taken his game up a level this year. He will be highly owned this week, but for good reason. With two 3rd place finishes, thee 2nd place finishes and a win on tour this year, Bubba has been competitive in nearly every tournament this season except for the links style courses where three of the majors took place this summer. His price makes him very affordable and his upside is tremendous for a course that offers a lot of scoring opportunities.

SGTG – 1st
Par 5 Scoring – 1st
Par 4 Scoring – 15th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 3rd
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 6th
Par 3 Scoring – 9th
SGP – 50th
GIR – 23rd

HIGH VALUE PICKS

Zach Johnson ($9,300) – Going into Sunday, it looked like Johnson would be right in the mix to win The Barclays. Unfortunately, for Johnson, he could not get things going on Sunday and fizzled out, landing in 4th place for the weekend giving him another great finish this year. Since The Masters, Johnson has been in great form and will look to continue his run this weekend. He is not the longest hitter off the tee and his putting can be spotty, but for the most part, his game has been dialed in over the last five months. He had made seven cuts in eight starts at TPC Boston and given his current form he should have a chance to finish well this weekend.

SGTG – 13th
Par 5 Scoring – 34th
Par 4 Scoring – 15th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 25th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 147th
Par 3 Scoring – 14th
SGP – 123rd
GIR – 32nd

Jim Furyk ($9,000) – It is never exciting to recommend Furyk, but as long as he is not contending on Sunday, I am almost always happy to have Furyk on my team. He rarely has that big letdown where he misses the cut so his floor is quite high and the potential is always there to score a Top 10 finish. He enters this event having finished in the Top 11 in three of his last four events and has made the cut at TPC Boston in all eight starts with three Top 10 finishes. His range of finishes is probably between 10th and 30th, but sometimes being predictable and reliable is as much as you can ask for in a player some weeks.

SGTG – 4th
Par 5 Scoring – 141st
Par 4 Scoring – 17th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 81st
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 13th
Par 3 Scoring – 28th
SGP – 101st
GIR – 13th

Brooks Koepka ($8,700) – Let’s dispel the myth right here that owners will dive off the Koepka bandwagon. With the drop in salary of $1,000, you can bet that Koepka will still be one of the highest owned players of the week. His stats hold up well for this course and although he has no tournament history here, that has not slowed up from achieving high results in other events. With his propensity to hit a lot of eagles and birdies, you should consider using Koepka as a core player this week.

SGTG – 22nd
Par 5 Scoring – 4th
Par 4 Scoring – 6th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 8th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 28th
Par 3 Scoring – 167th
SGP – 11th
GIR – 11th

Paul Casey ($8,300) – After a nice start last week, Casey faltered in the second round and spent the rest of the weekend trying to make up ground. He has not played at The Deutsche Bank often, finishing 25th once and missing the cut once many years back. He is right around the average salary price this week and should be attractive to owners, but with limited tournament history and an average finish last week, his ownership should not be too high for comfort. If Casey gets his putter rolling, he is very capable of high finish this weekend.

SGTG – 10th
Par 5 Scoring – 16th
Par 4 Scoring – 17th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 49th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 11th
Par 3 Scoring – 86th
SGP – 118th
GIR – 5th

Robert Streb ($8,000) – Outside of a mediocre round on Sunday, Streb played well over the weekend at The Barclays in posting a 39th place finish, coming on the heels of back to back Top 10 finishes at The PGA Championship and WGC Bridgestone. Streb has a balanced game that allows him to finish in the upper half of the field with consistency. In his lone appearance in Boston last year he finished in 9th. He ranks as a core play at his salary this week and will be highly owned. This should not deter you from rostering him and picking up a top player at a below average price.

SGTG – 26th
Par 5 Scoring – 57th
Par 4 Scoring – 7th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 22nd
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 101st
Par 3 Scoring – 6th
SGP – 21st
GIR – 16th

VALUE PICKS

Justin Thomas ($7,900) – He still cannot be trusted to close events when he is in position to win, but he is another scoring machine that can dominate the Par 5 holes and put up points in bunches. He may finish in 30th place at the tournament, but 10th in points with his aggressive play. Two months ago, the last thing I would have said about Thomas was that he could be trusted to make cuts, but he has steadily improved throughout the latter part of the year and is now posting high finishes with regularity. He could still implode at a moment’s notice, but with his upside potential, he is worth the risk.

SGTG – 18th
Par 5 Scoring – 2nd
Par 4 Scoring – 66th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 7th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 77th
Par 3 Scoring – 28th
SGP – 109th
GIR – 31st

Luke Donald ($7,800) – Donald looked like he was ready to wind down the rest of his career quietly at the start of the season as he was not particularly competitive until the middle of the year. While he is not posting a lot of high finishes, he is making the cut every week again and so long as the course is not too long, he has Top 25 potential. He will need to play well this week to continue his season as a 12th place finish will give him a 50% chance and an 8th place finish would virtually assure him of moving on. He has risen to the challenge over the last couple of weeks when faced with elimination and will need to play more aggressively than normal to put himself into the best possible position for that high finish. He has made the cut in all seven starts at TPC Boston and is certainly worth a look this week.

SGTG – 88th
Par 5 Scoring – 124th
Par 4 Scoring – 121st
Birdie or Better Percentage – 174th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 126th
Par 3 Scoring – 61st
SGP – 38th
GIR – 126th

Tony Finau ($7,700) – Like the other young players, Finau hit a rough patch early in the season, but has since turned things around. While Top 10 finishes have been a bit elusive, he has made a steady trickle of Top 25’s over the last few months. He hits the ball long off the tee and his putting game has improved throughout the season. He will have the usual ups and downs of most young, aggressive players, but he continues to be one of the best values on the board this week and has become consistent enough to make rosters in any format.

SGTG – 29th
Par 5 Scoring – 34th
Par 4 Scoring – 20th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 9th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 81st
Par 3 Scoring – 41st
SGP – 114th
GIR – 47th

Jason Dufner ($7,600) – If you groaned or sighed when you read this name, I totally understand. He has no flash, no flare, and not much of a putter. He has shown signs of turning the corner over the last couple of months, but he has not been able to put together four solid rounds at an event yet. He was right in the mix going into the weekend at The Barclays but could not finish strong. However, if you look back at the courses he has played this season, there really have not been any easy courses on his schedule. At TPC Boston, we have a course he is very familiar with and made the cut in all five of his starts here with two Top 10’s and four Top 20’s overall. If you want to roster those expensive golfers at the top, you are going to need to use a few guys like Dufner with high floors and moderately high ceilings that do not break your bank,

SGTG – 19th
Par 5 Scoring – 70th
Par 4 Scoring – 81st
Birdie or Better Percentage – 79th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 133rd
Par 3 Scoring – 177th
SGP – 183rd
GIR – 5th

Danny Lee ($7,600) – If you take out the links style courses where Lee struggled, he has some of the best form on tour right now. His stats are strong for the entire season, but would look even better if isolated over the last three months as his tee to green game has improved dramatically. This course sets up well for him as he does not have the great length to dominate at the longer courses, but at TPC Boston, his strong iron play should help to position him for plenty of scoring opportunities. He does have experience here as he took 35th place in his lone start last year. Lee is an up and coming star whose price has not caught up with his performance.

SGTG – 57th
Par 5 Scoring – 70th
Par 4 Scoring – 86th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 24th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 10th
Par 3 Scoring – 4th
SGP – 26th
GIR – 107th

Kevin Kisner ($7,300) – A month ago, Kisner was one of the hottest players on tour. However, a mediocre finish at the WGC Bridgestone followed by a missed cut at The PGA Championship left owners confused about his form. I am not worried about Kisner. He rebounded for a 20th place finish at The Barclays and the courses he had difficulty with were longer than normal and Kisner is certainly not long off the tee. TPC Boston is the type of course he has played well at this year and even though he missed the cut in his first appearance here last year, I am confident that he will outperform expectations.

SGTG – 43rd
Par 5 Scoring – 20th
Par 4 Scoring – 53rd
Birdie or Better Percentage – 112th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 48th
Par 3 Scoring – 41st
SGP – 41st
GIR – 82nd

Jason Bohn ($7,300) – If you were not a believer before, hopefully, last week’s 9th place finish at The Barclays was enough to change your mind. While he will struggle to keep pace at longer courses, a course like TPC Boston is very manageable for him and he has had good success here in making the cut in all five starts. For his price, he is one of the biggest bargains of the week as he ranks near the top of the board statistically. With six Top 10’s and eleven Top 25 finishes, he has been very consistent and should be a strong value play yet again this week.

SGTG – 34th
Par 5 Scoring – 57th
Par 4 Scoring – 3rd
Birdie or Better Percentage – 15th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 5th
Par 3 Scoring – 14th
SGP – 27th
GIR – 5th

SLEEPERS

Brendan Steele ($7,100) – He started the season by making twelve straight cuts before hitting a few bumps in the last couple of months and missing four cuts out of his last ten events. However, for the season, he does have ten Top 25 finishes and four Top 10’s including a recent 12th place finish at the PGA Championship. He did miss the cut last weekend, but as I discussed previously, there were plenty of strong players that missed as well. I anticipate that he will largely be overlooked this week by players given his recent choppy play, but he has made the cut at TPC Boston in all three starts and has two Top 20 finishes to his credit. If he can bring his putting game up to just an average level, his tee to green game is good enough to be very competitive.

SGTG – 15th
Par 5 Scoring – 34th
Par 4 Scoring – 9th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 16th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 50th
Par 3 Scoring -129th
SGP – 137th
GIR – 26th

John Senden ($7,000) – I never would have thought that Sended would be an interesting play this week, but his record at TPC Boston is so good that he is worth finding a place for on a few GPP lineups. He has made the cut in all nine starts here including four finishes in the Top 12 in recent years. While his play this season has not been very impressive, with the cut not being as much of an issue this week and his experience at the course, I will put him into a few lineups.

SGTG – 119th
Par 5 Scoring – 57th
Par 4 Scoring – 141st
Birdie or Better Percentage – 89th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 180th
Par 3 Scoring – 129th
SGP – 118th
GIR – 70th

NOTE: WILL WILCOX HAS WD FROM THE EVENT AS OF 9/2
Will Wilcox ($6,800) – If it is Friday afternoon, you can bet that Will Wilcox is dancing right around the cut line. Last week, making the cut seemed to be a near certainty with six holes left to play and then Wilcox did the unthinkable and lost six strokes down the stretch to miss the cut. People will remain fearful this week, but I think Wilcox rallies in Boston and performs well. He has been priced a little too highly over the last couple of months, but he is back in cut maker territory again and worth taking a chance on, particularly at a course that should play to his strengths. Now that others have exited the bandwagon, it is a good time to pick up Wilcox, particularly at an event where so few will miss the cut.

SGTG – 21st
Par 5 Scoring – 90th
Par 4 Scoring – 5th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 20th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 54th
Par 3 Scoring – 6th
SGP – 39th
GIR – 4th

Charles Howell III ($6,500) – One of our favorite early season cut makers is back this week. In a field where $6,000 is the lowest salary of the week, CHIII is good value for his price. His putter and iron play are a bit of a concern, but he is familiar with TPC Boston and made the cut in nine of ten starts. Although most of his finishes here have been pretty average, he does not need to do much to earn his salary this week.

SGTG – 37th
Par 5 Scoring – 27th
Par 4 Scoring – 131st
Birdie or Better Percentage – 158th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 133rd
Par 3 Scoring – 114th
SGP – 153rd
GIR – 37th

Bryce Molder ($6,400) – Lately, Molder has been one of the better cut makers on tour have made twelve cuts in his last thirteen starts. His numbers are not flashy, but he is playing steady and comes in after a strong finish of 11th at The Barclays. Molder makes for an interesting play this week as his season is on the line, but it will not require a phenomenal finish in order to move on. Rather, Molder merely needs to take 57th to have a 50% chance to move on, or 41st to give himself a 99% chance of moving on to next week. With the guys near the bottom who need to take 6th or 8th, it is really beyond their range for the most part so the extra motivation does not realistically kick in. However, for Molder, a 41st place finish is very attainable so it should give him just enough to push for down the stretch.

SGTG – 133rd
Par 5 Scoring – 141st
Par 4 Scoring – 11th
Birdie or Better Percentage – 89th
Approaches greater than 200 yards – 71st
Par 3 Scoring – 41st
SGP – 8th
GIR – 100th

Good luck this week and we will give you a shout from Boston!

-myzteriouzly

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