The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Open Championship

Nothing excites me more or fills me with a greater impending dread than when the major weeks roll around each season. It’s like a final exam that I have been studying for in spare moments here and there in the weeks leading up to it, but when it finally arrives, I never feel perfectly prepared. The Open Championship offers us one of the strongest and most interesting fields of the season. If you have been doing your homework all season long and following the European Tour, you are going to have a distinct advantage over your fellow competitors this week. While most of you are very familiar with the strong American players on the PGA Tour, there is a whole crew of young players overseas that may have less notoriety in the states, but who have been playing exceptional golf all over the world.

We will be looking to rally this week after some ups and downs last week. Danny Lee reared his ugly WD head again and destroyed several promising lineups as he has done on a couple of other occasions. Just when the trust level had begun to grow, he cut us down after one miserable round. Kevin Na was other chalk bomb implosion that rocked a few of my rosters early on. He seemed to be coming into form, was priced really well and then promptly laid an egg. I almost wish there was an injury to blame as I feel like that one was on me for not seeing just how dramatically high his ownership was for the week. Fortunately, there were successes to report as several players rallied nicely for us after Day 1. Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson, CHIII, Chad Campbell and of course, Bryson DeChambeau all played fantastic golf over the weekend to rally many of my wounded cash lineups back to just a taste of the green and getting me my money back for the week after it looked as if all was initially lost. We need to build on the positive momentum of the end of the week to hopefully get us off to a big start this week and all through the weekend.

Let’s get the Millionaire Maker talk out of the way up front. This is a remarkably tough tournament to be profitable in. Let me repeat that, but in big, bold letters this time for emphasis. THIS IS A REMARKABLY TOUGH TOURNAMENT TO BE PROFITABLE IN! Thinking you are going to win this thing is the equivalent of me wandering into Studio 54 in Las Vegas at age 21 (yeah, I am old now) and thinking that I had arrived and that the best looking girl in the club would immediately come sprinting over to be swept off her feet. I was was a torn lottery ticket missing a couple of numbers and while it was not pretty, it was incredibly entertaining to behold again and again as I took my lumps learning the rules of the game. If you are playing the Millionaire Maker this week, you are in the line at the club reserved for groups of guys who did not bring women along to help speed up the process. If you go busto this week in this tournament, know that your chances were never very good of scoring in the first place.

I have said all of this and yet, the desire to get into that club is still there, right? You can hear the music inside…is that Calvin Harris DJ’ing tonight? Did that girl’s dress have less material to it than one of my socks? Yes, although the odds of winning the the big prize this week are enormously long, that $1,000,000 sure does sound appealing right? I am imagining right now how much of nothing I could do from warmer, tropical places in the winter with that kind of money…while still providing some love each week from The Daily Spin. I am going to tell you right here to just play cash games this week. That is the smart play. That is the play that will almost always give you a positive ROI during the majors. But you did not show up looking to play it safe. You’re all dressed up and ready to party this week and as always, I cannot help myself and will certainly join in the festivities for at least a few well crafted rosters.

If this is your first shot at a Millionaire Maker, you should realize that it requires a close to perfect lineup in order to take it down. You will not win this GPP with a chalk squad. It is not impossible, but it just does not happen that often. If you are fortunate enough to have that team in contention, the biggest issue with it is usually that it is duplicated many times over. Last year, we actually put out an optimal lineup that was so good that about 50 people used it in the MM and it finished in the Top-100. Had it won, they would have needed to rename the event the Ten Thousandaire Maker.

The best example of what you are going to need to do to win this event comes from guy who stormed the last Millionaire Maker at the US Open. I can tell you his strategy and you will nod your head and agree that it sounds intelligent. However, this is not going to help many of you because most of us are just not wired to take risks that do not appear to have a lot of upside. The individual who crushed the US Open and had numerous other high finishes, started his 150 MM rosters at the bottom of the barrel. He loaded up Trey Mullinax and Xander Schauffele into 75% of his lineups and let it run. Now of course, we know how Xander played at the US Open (5th place) and his subsequent performances, rounded out by a win two weeks ago at the Greenbrier, but his form coming into the US Open? MC, 24th, MC, 48th, 52nd  And Mullinax? 70th, MC, MC, MC, 18th  This was certainly a very bold play. Of course, it worked out brilliantly as both of these guys had unlikely Top-10 finishes which, when combined with their bargain basement prices, helped to propel his core players at the top to victory. Do you have what it takes ti play this sort of strategy this week? If not, I am not sure that this contest is worth your time. Even if you cash in this event, you need to finish inside the Top 5% just to do anything more than double your money. That is how steep the payouts are for this tournament. DraftKings, in their infinite wisdom love the way the term Millionaire Maker sounds over Five Hundred Thousandaire Maker, so unless you have an elite finish, your odds are slim for profiting her with just a couple of entries.

Now that I have your attention, let’s get down to business on what you will need to do in order to win this incredible prize. Like everything else, having a process is really important. You have to know yourself as a player. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? If you play this game like Statboy and are a complete chalk magnet, that’s okay. You like things safe and predictable. You are a domesticated man content with the beauty of simplicity. It’s actually the best way to win in the long term in daily fantasy sports. Unfortunately, you are going to need to get a little dangerous this week to play in this contest. There is a way to shed that safe image and mindset and I am here to help you out. I am that dangerous friend this week with a game plan that you are not going to feel comfortable with, but is designed to either get you a big win or to at least go down fighting. I am not going to let you stand leaning up against the wall all night, hoping that the safe play gets you what you came here for. It won’t happen. I am going to give you the push that you need to help you to get over your fears.

If you are the type who naturally plays conservative, I want you to start with your normal process just the same way you do each and every week. Do your research, listen to your favorite touts, gather all the data you normally would and you will be about 85-90% of the way there. You are going to need the winner this week just to have a shot and more than likely, that player will not be a total scrub. Build your core groups of players out and put together 4 players for each of your MM lineups. After that, you are going to need to take a leap of faith with me…or I could just push you. I am going to put together a list of players that maybe have some buzz coming into the tournament, but not nearly that of the players that probably made it into your player pool for the week. We are going to take that list (feel free to add a name or two if you feel like I left some off) and select two players to put into the final two roster spots available. We need to find the two players who are very low owned that pop to differentiate our lineups from the other owners this week.

If you are building 10-20 Millionaire Maker teams, use a core group of about 8-10 golfers. You need to be committed with this group. If you brick, so be be it. You want to be heavily concentrated with your teams this week. With just a handful of entries, if you are correct in your core, you want to have a few shots at glory instead of just one lone wolf out hunting down the big prize. After you have established your core and built the better part of your rosters, that’s when you will go to my (our) list of guys who are a little off the board. Make this a mechanical process for yourself if you need to. Add it as a step to the Word document that you so closely follow to a ‘T’ each week. Find the handful of names that make sense, maybe 6-7 players, and use them to fill in the blanks. None of the players that I have listed are complete dart throws although I have titled them ‘Millionaire Maker Darts’, but they will not be obvious names either.

Some of you will point to other majors where the winning rosters have maybe been a little on the chalkier side. Fair point, but not quite right. The Masters has seen some rosters hit since the inception of the Millionaire Maker that have not exactly been contrarian. Remember though, The Masters in general is always a chalkier sort of event with a field that is only around 60-65% of The Open and also contains about 20-25 players that have absolutely no chance to contend. Add in the fact that it is played on the same course every year and you can start to build prototypical Augusta specialists. The winning lineup for The Masters will almost always have a higher level of aggregate ownership than other majors.

The Open Championship is special in that there are a lot more international players in this event than any other event where the majority of owners will be playing all season. Many of the players in the $6-7k range are much better than their price tag would indicate. Due to a lack of exposure, we get a break on these players and as attentive owners, we’ve followed them along from Morocco to Beijing to South Africa and finally through Europe. We know their stories, their strengths and their weaknesses and despite the European Tour’s efforts to completely destroy their website and mobile phone App, we’ve been able to take advantage of the superior coverage of this tour on the Golf Channel to glean enough information on them to know which ones have a good chance of showing up this week to compete. Fortunately for us, most of the novices out there who heard about another major this week, are not familiar with these players, thus, ownership on some of these international up and coming players or older, seemingly fading players will be just a percent or two. That is a unique aspect of this event and something you should definitely keep in mind when building your rosters.

Let’s talk briefly about Royal Birkdale. I can’t tell you anything that Adam Daly can’t tell you better himself. If you are not reading his weekly breakdown of each course, you are starting out behind everyone else. When we brought him in, I knew after reading his first sample submitted to us that he was adding a very key ingredient to our research process. No matter what the course is or how often it has appeared over the years, the detail his columns add is something that everyone should be reading to start the week. The course plays as a Par 70 and is just over 7,100 yards. The fairways are narrow, but unlike most links style course, very flat. It is definitely a second shot course although with the number of doglegs and blind tee shots, precise placement of tee shots is required in order to be set up for that all important second shot. The greens are bentgrass and about average in terms of the speed. The course has undergone renovations over the last decade with all of the trees being taken out, opening it up to gusty winds along the coast. Bunkers were strategically added to guard on the approach shots. If weather is a factor, this course will be an absolute bear for even the best players to handle. The winning score here back in 2008 was +3 for Paddy Harrington. If winds are not a factor or if only a factor for a limited period of time, expect scores to be below par in the mid single digits, somewhere in the -5 to -8 range.

We want players this week that are accurate off the tee who hit their irons and wedges well on approach. Given the scoring conditions, I am going to incorporate driving accuracy into the model for review even if the Fantasy Golf Metrics guys did not have it on their key stat list this week. I am also going to include bogey avoidance as a key stat (BoW%) as this tournament is usually a grind where avoiding mistakes is as good as a birdie most weeks. I definitely want players who can scramble and also a few golfers who are well know for handling windy conditions. Even if winds are not expected to be a major factor for the week, we have seen the weather shift for this event faster than you could anticipate and play much better or worse than forecasted. We do not need to focus on the young guns that blast the ball off the tee and then make enough birdies to cover up their mistakes. We need patient shot makers who understand and accept the importance of being in position for the next shot and who are willing to accept pars instead of taking big risks to score. It is no surprise that the average age of the winner of this event is about 10 years older than the other major tournaments.

A quick look at the weather for the weekend reveals that there is not a lot to worry about in the early going. Thursday should be a nice day for golf with the winds dropping throughout the day and the sun breaking through the clouds by late morning or early afternoon. Winds will start off at 18 mph gusting to 21 and then dropping off to 10 mph gusting to 16 by the end of the day.Friday will be the one day where we will probably need to do some maneuvering. The morning is looking a little messy right now. This has changed a few times already this week and I have already sent about 4 text messages to Jeff updating him on the ‘new optimal’ tee times. Rains are expected with winds gusting as high as 38 mph. This is going to affect quite a few big name players so e sure to choose carefully among those going out Friday in the morning. You can take a closer look at the weather through the link here. It’s about as reliable as I can find for international winds and weather forecasts.

I am currently planning to weight more of my lineups towards the Thursday AM/Friday PM wave, (my last check before publishing the column may change this yet again….sigh) We have discussed this at length in other articles, but for this event, it deserves a little more attention. If you are building 20 lineups this week, make six AM/PM teams, six PM/AM teams and seven mixed rosters. Once we determine the weather wave advantage tomorrow (assuming there is one), shift that from a 6:6 ratio to a 9:3 ratio. Why leave three for what appears to be less optimal conditions? As I discussed above, the weather here can shift in a hurry. When all of the herds have isolated one wave of tee times, catching this weather shift could leave a few of your teams in rare air stacked on the right side of things. This could happen naturally, or if there are delays, the players that go off in better conditions Thursday may not have much to deal with after the winds and rain subside. Remember, you do not need to reach to stack tee time waves. Use the players you are already targeting and maybe add one or two names. It is not a process oriented around just haphazardly grabbing players due to a particular tee time, but rather a process of organizing the players you already like for the week to fit the weather patterns of the tee times. It’s not meant for you to throw your research out the window so do not panic….adjust and adapt.

In looking over the key stats for the week, our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics did a great job of putting together the numbers. However, you should realize that this is the first time in nine years the event has been held at Royal Birkdale. Prior to that, major renovations took place that altered the course. This week, more than any other is a good week to play around with the stat weightings. I wanted driving accuracy and bogey avoidance incorporated so they are both a part of how I used and analyzed the model this week. This is the type of thing I want you to be thinking about as you evolve into a better DFS owner. You should sense that there are weeks where you should let your intuition start to guide you if you have been around the game long enough to understand everything that is in play from week to week.

KEY STATS:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Strokes Gained Putting: 15%
Scrambling: 15%
Proximity: 15%
Driving Distane: 5% (yeah, I scratched my head on this one too)

I added in Bogey or Worse Percentage (BoW%) and Driving Accuracy (DA) into my own key stats for the week. I did so by discarding Driving Distance and knocking down BoB% to make room for the other two categories. A lot of this is feel and the FGM guys are amazing, but knowing this event and knowing how conditions can drive up scores, I think these metrics fit well for the model I want to use this week.

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