The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Memorial
Kevin Kisner held on for the win last Sunday which helped to salvage a chunk of my GPP and cash games last week after the winds knocked out a couple of my high owned core players in Jason Dufner and Pat Perez. I was fortunate in that all of my high dollar GPP entries were AM/PM driven which helped me to get into the money in a few places, but I thought players like Dufner and Perez would be able to fight through the winds to put us in a better position. Hopefully, you our advice in aligning 30% of your regular GPP rosters towards the AM/PM wave and had some nice things in the mix over the weekend. It’s a little edge that is granted to us by Mother Nature a couple of times each season so incorporate it into your process each week. There is no need to overreact to it, but when you start to see large difference in winds between waves, particularly when it looks like one wave has better conditions on both days, give yourself that extra boost over the rest of the field who will usually be complacent about it.
Of the 20 or so players that I listed in the weather portion of my column, only four missed the cut and it included the winner in Kisner. I think some touts get wrapped up in ‘game theory’ in certain areas of DFS golf where it is unnecessary. I think that those of us who play NFL DFS voraciously each fall can get sucked into this vortex as information on NFL is so widely known and available each week, that there really are not any secrets left to uncover by Sunday. In golf, what I have found is that the novice players out there are not going to pay attention to weather or injuries or travel time or any of the sort of factors that regular players look at each week. If someone builds their lineups on Monday or Tuesday, as is often the case, most of the time, they are not looking back again until after lineup lock. That’s not to say that there are not a lot of people doing their homework, but enough are in the dark to overlook certain things in golf.
Remember, with the NFL, everyone wakes up on Sunday morning to listen to Matthew Berry and watch Sara Walsh on ESPN (sadly Sara was a casualty of the recent ESPN layoffs). Every piece of information is evaluated with a fine toothed comb which means that people are not missing out on things the way they always will with the Thursday, 7am lineup lock. Plus, with the new crop of players that discover DFS golf each year, the first time something this severe happens, it will always catch those new players by surprise. Most of you veterans will recall the 2015 Valero where the morning winds wiped that wave out before the PM group had teed off….that was my first insane wind experience with DFS golf and it taught me everything that I still practice and preach today. My point is that a lot of factors that are rarely overlooked in NFL by the masses are often times glossed over for PGA events.
To wrap up and put a bow on our discussion about winds and weather is to consider building a few lines in the complete opposite direction of popular opinion in certain circumstances. Now why do we do this and when does it make sense? I mentioned on the webcast this week that Jeff was able to take down a massive score at The Open in 2015 by employing this exact strategy. The weather report looked lousy on both Thursday and Friday. During the earliest part of Thursday morning, the winds looked to be minimal and the weather in the afternoon looked marginal. Friday morning, the forecast was okay for the morning, but with severe weather moving in during the afternoon. Naturally, everyone built PM/AM teams hoping to avoid the worst of the weather. Well, Thursday afternoon ended up being a mess and play was on and off over the first few days. That initial wave on Thursday morning ended up having the best conditions all tournament and Jeff knew that with how quickly weather can change at The Open, sometimes it is best to simply take advantage of good weather when it is there for the taking. He ran away with a couple of GPP events and won a live final qualifier ticket with that move. The key here is when weather looks especially severe, you need to realize that play could end up being suspended for portions of the tournament. Winds are usually not enough on their own to cause play to be suspended (but it can happen), but when you see storms in the forecast, be sure to build a handful of teams in a contrarian wave fashion. Very few people are going to be thinking enough to make this sort of play and when it hits, it is usually huge. If you can make weather a weapon for yourself rather than fearing it, you can really up your ROI on those weeks where it factors into your decision matrix.
Moving on to this week, we head to Dublin, Ohio and Muirfield Village for The Memorial Invitational. Conceived and designed by Jack Nicklaus, this used to be one of the more difficult courses on tour as Jack had originally intended for it to host a major at some point. It is a traditional Par 72 course that is just under 7,400 yards in length. For years, it played over par and as one of the toughest courses on tour, but over the last few years, things have changed and the course has been much easier to score on. The rainy weather seems to help as the small greens hold better when there is a little extra moisture in play. The fairways are not difficult to hit as they are a little wider than normal, but the approach shot is of added importance with the smaller greens so ball strikers are again in play with the emphasis being on the GIR portion for the week. The small greens means that players have two paths to success this week. They must either be a pin seeker with precision iron play, or excel with their wedge play and ability to scramble around the greens. Finally, the greens here are bentgrass with a lot of undulation and play fast, as in close to Augusta fast. To me, this tends to neutralize the need to be an elite putter. Guys are not going to be dropping a lot of bombs from long range this week as the worry will be in getting too aggressive and blowing it by the hole by 10 feet. I am not saying that putting is not important, just saying that like Augusta, there are plenty of golfers with less than amazing putters who can step up to take this tournament down.
The weather for this week is looking pretty mild so far on Thursday with light winds in the morning, peaking out at around 9 mph by mid afternoon. Friday the winds start light again, however, there is a chance of rain and storms by around 9am with rain and storms likely by 3 or 4pm in the afternoon. Given that outlook, the PM/AM wave looks to be a little better to tee off for the tournament. Considering the forecast, I would stack around 15% of your teams with PM/AM golfers and 5% AM/PM. You do not need to overdo it this week, but again, you’re just picking guys that you already liked and organizing some by tee time. There is no need to make a big reach just for weather. You have plenty of players to pick from based on the player pool that I have built for us this week. I am not as worried about the weather this week as storms on Friday would suspend play and push the finish of the round to Saturday morning when storms are not projected until later in the morning. This is all based on the current forecast so be sure to give this another look prior to lineup lock to be more comfortable with how things are going to play out.
In terms of looking at some narratives this week, there are not too many out there for us. Our connections with Ohio are pretty light for the most part. Kyle Reifers grew up in the area and played in Ohio through high school before going on to play his college golf at Wake Forest in North Carolina where he now resides. He’s had a couple of solid finishes at this event mixed in with a couple of missed cuts. Jason Day actually lives in Muirfield Village. Of course, this has yet to translate to any notable success at this event with his highest finish being 27th last season. Jeff believes the stress of being around his in-laws is to blame for the lack of quality finishes here, but there is nothing glaring that stands out as to why he would struggle here. Jim Herman grew up in Cincinnati and played his college golf at the University of Cincinnati before turning pro. He’s finished 40th and missed the cut in two starts here. Jason Kokrak played his college golf at Xavier an is a member at Trumbull CC in Warren, OH (175 miles away). Unfortunately, that has translated into nothing more than three missed cuts for his career. There are a couple of other notable players who were born here in Jason Dufner and Harold Varner III, however, both escaped at a young age and never played seriously in Ohio in their early years.
One other narrative to be looking for this week is that there are still players trying to qualify for the US Open at Erin Hills in two weeks. Most who have not made it in yet will play 36 holes in a qualifier next week, but there are some who are still close enough to reach the Top-60 in the OWGR by June 12th that these last two events will give them added incentive to play well. Here are a few names that I picked out, along with their current ranking who still have a shot to qualify by playing their way in either here or at St Jude next week (and are in this field as there are a couple players on the Euro Tour in the mix that I have not included):
Tony Finau (66th)
Soren Kjeldsen (70th)
James Hahn (73rd)
Luke Donald (78th)
Hudson Swafford (80th)
Jim Herman (82nd)
Sung Kang (84th)
Steve Stricker (85th)
Danny Lee (93rd)
I would not get too crazy with this bunch of players as many are a long shot at this stage and would more than likely need to win or put up at least a couple of Top-5 finishes to crack the Top-60 of the OWGR. However, this will be something that is of their minds, in particular for Steve Stricker who desperately wants the opportunity to play in front of a hometown crowd in Wisconsin where he grew up and now makes his residence in nearby Madison, WI.
The key stats for the week as shared with us by our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Prox 150-175: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Strokes Gained Off The Tee: 10%
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