The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Open Championship
The Open Championship is finally here after a month of buildup since the US Open. We did not get a lot of big names playing on the PGA Tour over the last few weeks so I feel like my brain is on information overload in looking over the names and salaries this week and in trying to whittle down my player pool just enough so that I can grab onto a few additional European players, but not stretch myself too thin for when I do hit the winning golfer. Hopefully, you did your homework over the last three weeks and spent some time tuned in to the European Tour and the Rolex Series as it made stops in France, Ireland and Scotland. With each passing week, those fields grew stronger with the addition of some PGA regulars who made the trip across the pond to get their bodies and their game acclimated to a slightly different style of course and in a much different climate than what they would experience stateside.
While many of you out there have been on this journey with us here at FGI over the last four years, many of you are still a little green when it comes to how these events play out within the structure of DFS golf. It’s important to note the subtle differences as many folks just jump in for the majors each season and are not going to pick up on some of the key differences between the events.
The Masters is obviously a much smaller field than any of the other three majors with only around 80-100 players each year. The cut cut rule is that the Top-50 players plus ties get to the weekend or anyone within 10 shots of the leader. It’s a severely top heavy field, but also has a number of amateurs and former winners that are largely irrelevant in terms of contending for a title so the composition of most lineups becomes much chalkier than normal and we would expect a higher aggregate ownership across the board in GPP events among contending rosters.
The US Open has a full field, but is played on what is typically the most difficult layout each season as it rotates from one course to the next. Though there are around 150 golfers in the field, many of the players are qualifiers at the regional level as well as some amateur players which again, makes the bottom 60-70 players largely irrelevant outside of one or two exceptions. The Top-60 players and ties make it through the cut and while this would seem to make life harder for DFS owners, the course tends to play so tough that there is a little more reluctance to dive too deep into the scrub bin on total unknowns and middling PGA qualifiers.
The Open Championship is where things are a little different on the DFS side. There are still going to be some automatic qualifiers (the older guys) and some who qualify through the regional qualifiers, but of the 156 that are in the field, there are less that you can immediately eliminate from your potential player pool and may more from top to bottom that could legitimately contend. The cut rules are that the Top-70 players plus ties move on to the weekend which is what we are used to, but the biggest factor that usually comes into play with regards to The Open is that weather is almost always an issue at some point.
We talk about the weather almost every single week, but no other tournament tends to have as many weather related issues on a consistent basis as The Open does from year to year so that even if you choose to ignore it every other week of the year, you should make an exception for this event. As The Open is held all along the coast in the UK and Scotland, the winds usually pick a few opportune times in the opening couple of rounds to make life miserable for the players on the course. Throw in a little cold and a little rain to mix with the wind and you have a recipe for mayhem. While weather in and of itself is not always a problem to deal with when it is something that can be avoided, often times, with The Open, the conditions can shift with little or no warning. What looks like a clear edge for an AM/PM wave can rapidly switch with little notice and give the PM/AM wave a sudden boost.
If you are going to play a lot of lineups this week for GPP events, you will want to be ready on both waves. In the early proceedings this week, it appears that the AM/PM wave should have the advantage with regards to the winds, but as we always talk about, I want you stacking each wave. My initial thought is to stack around 15-20% of my teams on the AM/PM wave with 5% on the PM/AM side. I have mentioned this before, but anytime you have a chance to take advantage of a good wave of weather, you go for it. The closest any weather report is going to be in terms of accuracy is just before the players tee off. Do not be afraid to lock in a good weather round if you have the chance. What ends up happening is that when the weather does roll in later, it may be so severe that it creates delays along the way that completely change when golfers were originally projected to play during the early rounds. Jeff used this to his advantage back in 2015 to win a huge qualifier for a live final seat. Nearly every DFS owner who chose to attack a weather wave went with a PM/AM team that week. However, Jeff saw that the weather right out of the gates on that Thursday morning in the first round was going to be really good and so he locked in an AM/PM team. His golfers all started off strong on Thursday morning and by that afternoon, the delays kicked in and over the next few days players fought wind and storms to get through the first two rounds. The tournament ended up taking five full days and by the end of it, those players that had started the earliest had scored substantially better than the other group and Jeff ended up with a runaway win.
Fortunately, in looking at the weather so far, it does not appear that it will play a major role in the tournament for DFS purposes this year. Things could always change once the weekend arrives or if the winds shift, but the early outlook seems reasonable compared to what we have dealt with over the last few years. On Thursday, steady state winds look to be around 6-9 mph for much of the day with gusts up to around 12 mph until later in the afternoon when it reaches 15 mph. On Friday, light rains are expected for much of the morning and early afternoon with winds peaking out around noon at 9 mph with gusts to 15 mph before receding gradually the rest of the day. This should give the AM/PM wave a small advantage this week, although whether or not that ends up being substantial is difficult to project and may end up being marginal at best. Be sure to stack each wave with AM/PM getting a slightly larger share overall. I would say that if you build 100 teams, that 15-20 be AM/PM and 5-10 be PM/AM. Here is the link to the forecast for Carnoustie on Windfinder.
Now that we are thinking about our strategy for the week, we need to evaluate our roster composition if we are going to attack the Millionaire Maker this week. It’s an event where there is typically a fair amount of chalkier owned players in the mix up top, but also one or two players who are a mystery for the week that rise up out of nowhere in the later rounds to make a charge and find their way onto the winning team. Last year, it was Hao Tong Li, firing a -7 on Sunday to climb all the way up to 3rd place which pushed him onto the winning team. Two years ago, JB Holmes and Steve Stricker surprised the event with 3rd and 4th place finishes respectively. It is likely again this season that a couple of wild card type of players will make an unexpected charge, but the difficulty is in finding them and then getting them into position to take advantage of this. Last season, I made a list of dart throw plays to be sprinkled onto your rosters and Li was one of those key names that I wanted you to be aware of, but even with him mixed onto a few rosters, this is still a very tough event to take down.
As always, I am going to tell you that the Millionaire Maker GPP is not a very profitable tournament to play in during the season. It functions much like the weekly $5 GPP with the $100,000 top prize where almost all of the money is loaded up in the top few spots. Last week, I cashed 67/100 lineups in this contest and made…..about double my money. So even in a week of truly superior performance, my return was only that of a cash game win for the week. Knowing this information ahead of time, why then do we put ourselves through this pain four times each season? It’s the same reason we used to end up in an overpriced nightclub out in Vegas as younger men…hope. You know your odds of going home with whatever pseudo celebrity shows up are next to nothing and yet, somehow you find yourself getting dragged inside. The Millionaire Maker is not much different than this. The odds are wildly long against you, you’re more than likely going home with much less money than you arrived with and you’re typically coming away with only a story of how there was a moment where magic could have happened had only the perfect series of events taken place near the end of the night.
So you have the option here of making the smart play, putting your money into cash games, enjoying the tournament and living a relatively stress free life once the cut is established after the second round. By that point, you should have your profits locked in and can just sit back and enjoy the ride for the rest of the weekend while others on Twitter lose their minds as their 5th best golfer hits a triple bogey on Sunday to drop them from contention to a small profit. You can play it safe here and go home with a win this week, but let’s face it, if that were the case, you would not be reading this far. You would have your cash team ready to go and you would be resting soundly while the rest of us spent time trying to dig out those sleeper plays that we’ll need to make our million. Like John Peterson heading to the Barbasol this week, you have not given up all hope yet.
The course this week at Carnoustie is one of the tougher courses in the rotation for The Open Championship. It plays as a Par 71, but it is unconventional in its setup with only two Par 5 and three Par 3 holes. Carnoustie is a part of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship each fall so although the It is a links style course setup on the coast which means lots of rolling fairways, no trees leaving it open to the coastal winds and typically very penal rough for missing the narrow fairways. It has been dry so far this year in the area which has created some interesting conditions on the course as the fairways have been described as playing hard and fast. This should really help to even out the playing field this week as the bombers really should not have much of an edge over those that are normally struggling to close the distance. I see this as being a contest where avoiding trouble off of the tee and hitting good wedge shots will be the key to success this week. Although Strokes Gained Off the Tee is usually thought of as a bomber type of stat, this week, I am placing much more emphasis on the accuracy portion of the equation as I really think this will be a course where positioning is the key. In looking at the key stats, avoiding bogeys will be as important as making birdies this week so steady play should be rewarded. The bentgrass greens are playing on the slow side which will be a bit of an adjustment, but probably better than the speed of either Augusta or the US Open. For a more thorough look at the course this week, be sure to go check out Adam Daly’s course preview as he did an excellent job this week in getting the FGI team prepared.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 10%
Birdie or Worse Percentage: 10%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 10%
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