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

Greetings from San Diego, where I had planned to keep things classy until Sunday afternoon unfolded in the most brutal and heartbreaking fashion imaginable. As Blair Walsh stepped up to kick that game winning field goal for my beloved Vikings, I experienced that moment of weakness and allowed myself one desperate moment of hope. Much like Charlie Brown sprinting toward that football, I thought for one brief second that this time, things would be different. As the kick duck hooked left like one of my errant tee shots, I leaped out of my chair at the bar and felt an imaginary groin kick nail me squarely. Staggering out to the sidewalk, you could see the steady stream of sad purple clad fans digesting their pain, some actually laying down on the sidewalk to collect themselves. I am 37 years old and though I swear to Jeff every year that I have broken the emotional connection to my favorite childhood team, they still crush me emotionally, like that favorite ex who we all both love and hate at the same time. They always know just how to push your buttons no matter how much time has passed.

It was really the perfect way to completely transition my focus back to golf as it coincides perfectly with the first full field event of the new year. It is exciting to be back to full events with a Friday afternoon cut. This is really what we have been waiting for as fantasy golf enthusiasts over the last couple of months. Although the fall season gave us a couple of events with large fields and a Friday afternoon cut, generally, the top players in the world skipped over these events and as a consequence, we needed to make some adjustments to bankroll exposure and the types of contests we targeted each week. After many months of waiting, I can finally give my blessing to playing a normal portion of your bankroll this week.

For me, I will put about 15% of my bankroll in play this week and in keeping to what we preach here at Fantasy Golf Insider, I will apportion 20% of my exposure to GPP events and 80% to cash games. I cannot emphasize enough just how wise of a strategy this is what it comes to DFS golf. The temptation to play beyond your means is always going to be there, but if you can stay patient and enjoy the grind of building your bankroll in a methodical manner, you will be able to enjoy lasting success at this tricky, but extremely enjoyable game.

Taking a quick look back at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, things went pretty well here for the picks from The Daily Spin. I personally cashed across the board with my cash game ticket of: Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed, Brandt Snedeker, Jimmy Walker, Smylie Kaufman and Graeme McDowell. Yes, even with as poorly as McDowell played, this ticket easily won my cash games and helped me to start the year on a winning note. GPPs were largely a break even endeavor for me as I chose to limit my exposure to the two most expensive players in the field in Jason Day and Jordan Spieth, who I only owned on about 10% of my tickets. I was able to mix in a lot of the other players that I wrote up to get into the money, but nothing approaching greatness. All in all, it was a very positive start to the year. A perfect appetizer to start our roughly 40 course meal this year.

A lot of you have been asking questions the last couple of weeks about our new model and we’ve had a lot of great feedback so far about it and the results that people have had using it. This pleases me and means that our new stat guy will not have to deal with ‘the wrath’ anytime soon. We had a lot of success using it to build optimal lineups for our cash games in the fall so hopefully it has been easy for you to pick up these first couple of weeks.

Now, the model is a great tool to use week in and week out with your research, but realize it is just one more tool in the tool box for you to look it when doing your research each week. If all you are looking for is a quick and easy read over how the field is ranked, there is no issue with that and perhaps during those busy summer months, that will be all the time you have for your research. However, there are some interesting ways that you can manipulate the model to help give you different information.

Early on in the season, no model is going to be perfectly accurate. Current form is difficult to interpret. Do you want to look at the fall events with weaker fields and easier courses? Do you use all of the European, Asian and Australian events? For those players that took the fall off, do you simply assume they will continue to play the same as when they left off at the end of the previous season? It is a really imprecise process when evaluating form. That is why you will see that number adjust on our end each time we put out a new model for each event. Right now, form is a little bit of a guess. Later on, as we get deeper into the season, current form will be weighted at a much higher level than it is today. Do not be surprised if as much as 60% of the weighting is in the current form category as it tends to be the best indicator for predicting success at a course, but for now, my recommendation to users is to keep it weighted fairly even with the other variables.

To compensate for the lack of current form data at the start of each season, I recommend using the Vegas odds as a heavier weighting than normal to begin the year. While Vegas is not always going to have perfect information, the odds will take into account all of the factors that we normally look at, rammed through the models of the big sports books. It is not a perfect replacement for looking at a player’s form and does tend to factor in course history as a much larger variable than most other models, but that is a part of why the odds are imperfect for us. Vegas is not setting these numbers hoping for precision in determining the outcome of the tournaments.

The sports books set these numbers to produce action, and even more so, action that the house can take advantage of with a betting public that is easily swayed for the most part. The difference between gambling in Vegas and playing DFS is that there truly is no house interest in DFS. The only thing that matters to contest sites like DraftKings is that they get as many people as possible to play whereas for Vegas, depending on how much money goes down on certain players, the house can face additional risks. Remember that fact when doing your research. The odds can be manipulated to suit the needs of the sports book. However, as we lack much needed information on form, it is a helpful substitute in filling in the blanks, particularly for the first month or two of events. As the season wears on, we will lower the percentage weighting for odds while increasing it for current form.

Player stats can also be a little bit deceptive when looking at a model. At this point, we are largely using a mixture of data from both fall events and those that took place last season. The tough part is in deciding what to trust. While there have been six events in the fall season and one now in 2016, most players have not played in enough events to fully trust the 2016 numbers. The statistics, much like current form is another tricky variable in the early part of the season. I tend to be conservative in looking at the first couple of events for the new season. If a player performed well, I do not want it to completely distort my view of that golfer. I would rather use the numbers from the most recent full season rather than a couple of events from the current year.

Course form is important to use when selecting players for your roster, but I try not to overdo it. The reason is that typically, most players have a pretty small sample size at a given course so that if they played well there in their first start, that will lead to them having a really high course history ranking. Once again, in the early part of the season, familiarity with a course can be helpful for a golfer looking to knock off some rust so that I start the season ranking course history a little bit higher than normal and making a small decrease later on in the year when form starts to override course history to some extent.

One thing that I like to do when I first take a look at the model each week is to weight each individual category at 0% and then one by one, weight the others at 100% to get a feel for how it looks. This will show us who has the best form coming in, who Vegas favors most, who statistically speaking should do the best and who has been the best in that event. What can happen in a model that is weighted in each category is that a lack of data for a player in any category can drop a potential stud into the middle of the model where he will be overlooked. A player may have great course history, stats that indicate he should perform well and Vegas odds supporting that conclusion, but if that player has been out a few months or played very little, he will receive a very low score for his current form, throwing him out of the top tier. We did our best to neutralize this tendency by using an overall average score when lacking data rather than just assuming they would be in the lowest of performance categories. However, I still like to go through each variable and isolate them one by one as it really does help me in finding players I might otherwise miss.

Any model is only as good as the inputs that go into it. In the case of golf, there are always going to be some holes in any model so take it with a grain of salt and use all of the tools at your disposal in making your decisions. Also, do not be afraid to adjust the weightings around. We do our best to research all the numbers each week, but there is no perfect way to weight the variables so do not look at our numbers as if they are set in stone and that little changes are going to wildly influence the outputs.

This week, the tour makes its second stop in Hawaii. The Waialae Country Club plays quite a bit differently than Kapalua last week where enormous fairways helped the big hitters almost regardless of how they hit off of the tee. The fairways are narrower and the greens not nearly so large as the prior week. Par here is 70 with only two par 5’s on the entire course so the heavy hitters won’t have quite the same advantage as last week. The key statistics to look at for the week and how I weighted them when I ran my own numbers are:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green – 25%
Strokes Gained Putting – 25%
Birdie or Better % – 20%
Par 3 Scoring – 9%
Par 4 Scoring – 8%
Scrambling – 7%
Par 5 Scoring – 6%

Course history is also a stronger indicator than normal of who will perform well here. As Jeff has discussed, players coming out of the Tournament of Champions last week should also fare a little better than the rest of the field after getting the opportunity to adjust a little longer than other and to get four rounds of golf in at Kapulua where there is not cut.

Good luck this week and keep those Wacky Wager ideas coming our direction. We have a couple of great ones to get our year started so I am looking forward to seeing some creative ideas from all of you as the year progresses. As always, I will be doing my periscope appearance on Wednesday evening. I will announce a time later on Twitter. Keep those e-mails and Tweets headed our way as the event approaches in the next couple of days. We are always happy to take lineup questions right up to lineup lock so get in touch and we will assist you as best we can.

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BLUE CHIPS

Matt Kuchar ($11,500) – 2015 was not an amazing season for Matt Kuchar and he did not produce as many top finishes as normal. He had seven Top 10 finishes and 14 Top 25 finishes, but no wins and was not in contention on many Sundays. At his usual price, he really needs to produce Top 10 finishes for owners in order to be a worthwhile investment. He did not do anything special in the fall making both cuts in regular events and placing 14th (of 18) at the Hero World Challenge. However, his course history here is very strong with four straight finishes inside the Top 10. He is a solid tee to green player, is one of the better putters on tour and also hits a lot of birdies making him a great player to anchor lineups around this week. He works well in all formats.

Justin Thomas ($10,800) – After getting his first win at the CIMB Classic this fall, Thomas has slowed up a bit over the last couple of months. Typically, after winning an event, a player can go one of two directions. I am hoping he makes a move back to the positive this week. In Thomas’s first start here a year ago, he finished in 6th place. As the year wore on, he proved to be a very strong young player with a lot of potential. Although his price is a little above where I would like to see it he does have the potential to be a big producer this week. Thomas has the tee to green game down and is always a scoring threat as he was one of the top players last season in birdie or better percentage. Thomas is usable in all formats this week.

Russell Henley ($10,300) – I liked him at his price last year and he put up a decent result in finishing in 17th place two years after winning the tournament outright. Henley enters the event coming in with two straight Top 10 finishes and missed just four cuts all season, but bigger things than just making the cut will be expected this season. Henley is a top ball striker and putter and if he can work on his tee to green game this season, he has a chance to become one of the game’s elite players. Henley is usable in all formats this week.

Harris English ($10,200) – An interesting statistic was thrown around on Twitter the other day asking about mystery Golfer A who had finished in the Top 45 in 14 of the last 16 events played on courses under 7100 yards with five Top 10 finishes. Of course, mystery Golfer A was our man, Harris English. Usually last year, English was simply used as a cut maker with a nice average in making 24 of 29 cuts. However, he struggled for much of the year to find top finishes. He turned that around with four Top 30 finishes in the FedEx Cup playoffs and then posted two more Top 25 finishes in the fall season. Waialae has been a great place for English to play as well, with three straight Top 10 finishes to his credit. English is usable in all formats this week.

Charles Howell III ($9,700) – Speaking of players that were typically used for purely cut making purposes, CHIII enters The Sony Open playing some of the best golf of his career after finishing up the fall season with three straight Top 20 finishes and four Top 20s for the fall season in five starts. This lines up perfectly for this week as Howell has been dominant at Waialae with six Top 10 finishes over the last nine years. CHIII has always been a solid tee to green player who struggles a bit with his putter so his success here is a little surprising except for the fact that he does tend to putt well on Bermuda grass. With CHIII, the stars seem to be aligned for another good finish this week. CHIII is usable in all formats this week.

Daniel Berger ($9,600) – Just as the fantasy golf universe was ready to give up on Daniel Berger, he went and posted five Top 20 finishes in his last six events coming into the Sony Open and returned to his status as a fantasy favorite and cult hero for the stories of how his play must have been effected by having his girlfriend around him on tour all summer. Berger is long off the tee, hits greens and his tee to green game was well above average last season. He lost strokes with his putter, but is off to a much better start this season. After finishing 13th at Waialae last year, Berger is going to be a popular pick this week. Given his ability to blow up at events, he is best in GPP events, but he seems to be playing consistently enough at this stage to be in cash games as well.

VALUE PLAYS

Ryan Palmer ($8,900) – I am going to bypass Will Wilcox here, although I do think he is reasonable play this week. However, that said, he is also usually one of the highest owned players in the field in events he plays in and that, combined with his propensity for blowing up before the cut, is going to lead me down one spot to Ryan Palmer. He has the same upside as Wilcox here and actually won this event in 2010. He can blow up as well, but I would rather have the same floor and ceiling on a player with about half the ownership percentage of Wilcox. Palmer did not have the big finishes that owners were looking for last year, but did manage to only miss four cuts in 22 starts and finished with 11 Top 25s on the year. Now that he is priced 20th in the field rather than the Top 10, he does not need to do as much to make value. I like Palmer for GPP events this week and he makes for an okay option in cash games.

Scott Piercy ($8,500) – Inconsistency tends to be a hallmark of Scott Piercy’s game, but he seems to have turned a bit of a corner since his win at the Barracuda last summer. He has finished in the Top 25 in five of his last six events including two Top 10 finishes. He is long off the tee, and has an above average tee to green game. His putting is not great, but his birdie or better average is, well, better than average. Waialae has been a good course for Piercy as well as he has finished in the Top 25 in four of his lat six starts, including a 2nd place finish last year. Piercy is my favorite value play this week for cash games and GPP events.

Francesco Molinari ($8,100) – Again, I am playing with fire here and deliberately skipping over the obvious choice of Tony Finau here, which could easily come back to bite me. I think that ownership levels of Finau will be high this week and considering his past struggles here, his recent equipment change (Nike) and his struggles on Bermuda grass, I am going to leave him alone and drop down to Molinari. He does not have the flash in his game like Finau, but what he does have is consistency. While few fantasy golf fans pay close attention to the PGA fall season, even fewer are watching what is going on in European events. Molinari shined this fall in making the cut in all four of his starts and posting three Top 20 finishes. In his lone start here last season, he finished in 37th. I like Molinari in all formats this week.

Webb Simpson ($7,700) – I really wanted to overlook Webb Simpson this week. He has been one of those players that has kicked me in the teeth with his inconsistent play and lousy putter. I keep hoping the PGA will approve a pool queue style putter for Simpson simply for the sake of giving the guy some kind of chance on the greens. However, while Simpson struggles overall with his putter, he was actually very good on Bermuda grass last season. Simpson’s tee to green game is tremendous and he is one of the best in Par 3 and 5 scoring due to being a very good proximity player. His tournament history here is a little above average with five cuts made in six starts and three Top 20 finishes. At his price, and given his talent Simpson is a nice value this week and is a solid play in all formats.

Peter Malnati ($7,500) – Friend and subscriber, Glen Chorny was talking about this guy all last summer while he lingered over on the Web.com tour, but when we looked at his numbers coming into the fall, we were not initially that impressed. After missing the cut at the Frys.com, Malnati has posted three Top 10 finishes and a win in his last five starts. Malnati has been sensational with his putter this season where he is currently ranked 5th in Strokes Gained Putting. Given that Wailae is a shorter course, it should work to Malnati’s advantage. He placed 38th here two years ago in his long start at The Sony Open. I like Malnati in all formats this week.

Jerry Kelly ($7,400) – In looking for value players this week, Jerry Kelly came across my radar. The veteran always tends to be a little overlooked, but his track record at Waialae is going to be tough for anyone to overlook this week. He has finished in the Top 30 here in right of his last nine starts with six Top 20 finishes and four Top 10 finishes. He made the cut in all three of his starts this fall so at $7,400, Kelly provides a lot of value in all formats this week.

SLEEPERS

Daniel Summerhays ($7,100) – Near the end of last season, it looked like Summerhays was going to finish up with a very disappointing year. However, once the FedEx Cup playoffs started, Summerhays elevated his game to another level and has gone on to make seven straight cuts including four Top 20 finishes and two Top 10s. Summerhays has made four of five cuts at Waialae and putts well on Bermuda grass. He makes for a nice low priced option in all formats this week.

David Hearn ($7,000) – I am really surprised to see that Hearn is listed down here at $7,000. Hearn has finished in the Top 30 in his last four starts and has made the cut in all five of his starts at Waialae. At this price, he does not need to do a lot to provide value this week so he makes for a nice play in all formats.

Rory Sabbatini ($6,500) – I said that I would not do this ever again and yet, here I am writing up the wrong Rory once again. Will I ever learn my lesson? Probably not. Sabbatini has just been too good at Waialae to pass up for his price this week. He has made the cut in nine of his last ten starts here with five Top 20 finishes and three Top 10 finishes. He also enters the event having made the cut in three straight starts and in six of his last seven overall. I like him mostly for GPP formats, but do not have a problem in using him for a more aggressive cash lineup.

Pat Perez ($6,500) – In my articles on GPP strategy, one of the things that I discussed was in finding players that have a great track record at certain events, but are struggling coming into that event. That is where Perez is right now with his game. The fall season was a bit of a mess for him as he missed the cut in three of four starts and took 63rd out of 70 in the other event. However, Perez tends to be a really good early season player when the tour is in Hawaii and on the west coast so I am looking for him to rebound this week. In his last nine starts here, he has only missed the cut one time and has four Top 10 finishes to his credit. Perez is a fantastic GPP play this week although I am shying away from using him in cash games due to his recent inconsistent play.

Spencer Levin ($6,300) – Levin has never been amazing at The Sony Open, but he has made the cut in all seven of his starts here. Now that I have brought it up, he will probably see that streak come to a stunning halt this week. Levin enters the event playing pretty well despite missing the cut in his last event at the RSM Classic. Prior to that, Levin has made seven straight cuts including five Top 25 finishes. The missed cut helped to drop his salary down quite a bit and now we will get a chance to use him in GPP and cash games this week.

DEEP SLEEPERS

Hideto Tanihara ($6,200) – I am not going to fool with too many of the Asian players that pop up at this event as they usually just do not have the experience on the PGA Tour to gauge how they will perform. With Tanihara, we get a guy that actually has played here before and with reasonable results. He has made the cut in his last three starts at Waialae and finished in 8th place two years ago. In his last seven events in Asia, Tanihara has been in the Top 20 in all of them, in the Top 10 in five of them and won the Heiwa PGM Championship (thank you, Jeffrey for the stats here). He makes for a nice GPP play this week as a guy who will have minimal ownership.

Michael Kim ($5,700) – After making the cut in all five of his starts in the fall, I figure Kim would get a little bit more respect in terms of his salary once he started up again this year. While only one of his finishes was all that noteworthy, 100% in making the cut at this price level is a nice accomplishment. His putting will need to carry him if he hopes to continue his run of success, but if you use Kim here, making the cut is enough to justify the price. He is a GPP play only for me this week.

Brian Gay ($5,700) – Welcome back to the tour, Brian. Are you ready for the fantasy buzz to start around you yet? No? Well, that’s good because I do not think any is coming your way outside of a mention here this week. After being out of commission last year due to a lingering thumb injury, Gay now makes his return to a place where he has been really successful over the years. He has made the cut here in his last eight starts with two Top 10 finishes. I am not sure how much rust to expect with Gay this week, but his past success and comfort level with this course make me want to at least get him onto a couple of GPP rosters this week.

That’s all for this week. The pricing is a little bit challenging at the top, but there is so much value in the middle and bottom levels that I think there is plenty to work with. Good luck and please be sure to get in touch with any and all roster and strategy related questions before lineup lock on Thursday afternoon.

-myzteriouzly

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