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

It is finally time to get down to business. After going through paralysis by analysis for the last two days, I finally have the player pool ready to go. It was a strange week in choosing players in that I had an incredible feel for the middle range players between $7-9k this week, but really had to take my time with the players up top. It seemed like each player in the upper range had some very serious strengths and drawbacks coming into the week. Many of you are going to e-mail, tweet or hit me with questions on Periscope about why I went with one player over another, but I am going to do my best here to give you my thoughts and rationale which hopefully will at least satisfy you to some extent. Good arguments can be made for each player, but in the end, there is only so much salary to go around among the top names, so you really need to take a stand on three players in the $10k and above range. If you get too greedy and try to lock in a lot of extra shares in this range, then you are going to be taking a big leap of faith in having to drop down more often than I feel comfortable to the middle to upper $6k range for players who certainly have some appeal for a reason or two, but also a lot more risk of missing the cut.

My perception of how most lineups will be constructed this week is that owners are going to start at the top with a big name like DJ. They will then drop into the middle of the $8k range to pick up a player and then have at it with four players from the incredibly ripe $7-8k value range. Now, I have the player pool all set up and ready to go, but I really want to get the point across that you can be contrarian in selecting individual players and also in how you construct your lineups. If that was not a concept that you understood before, I hope that looking at the tournaments over the last two weeks gave you an idea of just how powerful of a move this can be when entering GPP events. I think this is an area that gets overlooked within the DFS golf community, but the more you examine it, the more you will see its importance.

In order to understand why I believe that lineups will be constructed a certain way, I need to spend some time each week with the prices and specifically the odds versus pricing page. For big events, and specifically the majors, the pricing is always going to be softer than in lean fields where the there might be some top level talent, but the normal middle tier is largely depleted. The Memorial provided a perfect example of how this works. DJ and Rahm were each priced at the top in the normal range for the first couple of players available which was no surprise. What was a surprised was in how many high quality players were down below $7,000 for the week. This made it so easy to fit DJ onto a lineup that you really did not feel like you had to sacrifice much in terms of the overall quality of your roster, especially if he finished near or at the top. In fact, you could actually stack DJ and Rahm that week and build a reasonably competitive team. The point here is that pricing pushes ownership. Certainly a player in great form attracts attention, but underpriced players with value attract ownership and so depending on the availability of many or few of these types of players, lineup construction among the ranks of your competitors becomes much more predictable.

Of course, I would not tell this story if I could not finish it up with a strong take home for you. The last two weeks have been perfectly set up for owners to go all out with a stars and scrubs approach to lineup construction. However, if you took my advice and carved out a few balanced rosters for these events, you likely were in excellent shape for the week as the middle of the salary tiers far and away outplayed the top. A roster last week of say: Daniel Berger ($9,300), Kevin Chappell ($8,800), Rafa Cabrera Bello ($8,600), Stewart Cink ($8,000), Charl Schwartzel ($7,900), Danny Lee ($7,200) would have steamrolled the field in almost every GPP across the board. Similarly, the week prior at the Memorial, had you kicked off a lineup with Jason Dufner ($8,700) and Rickie Fowler ($8,900) at the top, you almost certainly would have been in the driver’s seat. The theme here is in trying to do a little research at the beginning of the week to feel out how lineups are by and large going to be built for the week.

Getting back to this week, when I look at the way ownership will be spread out, I see some pretty big peaks near the top from $10-12k, a dip between $9-10k, higher numbers in the upper $8k range (Grace and Scott) followed by a drop in the lower $8k range and upper $7k range. From $7k-$7,700, we are going to see high ownership on around 8-9 key players: Martin Kaymer, Francesco Molinari, Steve Stricker, Shane Lowery, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen, Kevin Kisner, Matt Kuchar and Thomas Pieters. Below that, the only player that I see getting a lot of love in the upper $6k range is Byeong-Hun An at $6,800. This target rich $7k range is important to note as a lot of lineups are going to use four of these players to start and then finish with DJ and a one of the two players in the $8k range that I mentioned, or two players around the $10k range. That’s the plan for the week for the vast majority of the owners out there. If the value plays were concentrated just a little lower, you would see more clustering there with additional star power at the top.

This leads to a big question. How do you play DJ this week in a big GPP while making your lineup somewhat contrarian to the traditional play that we expect to see this week? There are two way to do it. The first option is to stack DJ with another $10k or higher priced player. This will force your average salary to be below $7k for your remaining players and so long as you skip over Benny An at $6,800, you should be able to find plenty of four player combinations of single digit ownership golfers to give your lineup some cover. The next option with DJ is to play him with three players in the upper $7k to middle $8k range and then drop down to the middle $6k range for the last two golfers on your roster. Obviously, the final option to get DJ onto a unique lineup is to leave so extra money on the table. For this, I would recommend leaving $800-1500 below the salary cap. If you start leaving $3k out there, your team is going to be a little weaker than I think it needs to be and you give up too much upside among the other available players.

Now that you are starting to think about the week a little more clearly, let’s talk about the course to get a lay of the land. One of the most interesting parts of the US Open in many years is the mystery around the course. Over the last few years, the golf community has spent months speculating as to how courses like Chambers Bay, Oakmont and now Erin Hills would challenge players that has scarcely played more than a couple of practice rounds ahead of time. The USGA, which can never seem to win among golf circles, is again hard at work this year at Erin Hills in trying to put together a creative and challenging puzzle for the field this week.

Erin Hills is a course that is not really all that comparable to many courses that we see from year to year on tour. At around 7,800 yards, it plays as a Par 72 which we have not seen at a US Open since 1992. It is a links style course which is reminiscent of the types of courses that you would see in England or Scotland. For those of you new to the golf world, here is a brief description of what is meant by a links style course. Typically, links style courses differ from the normal courses on tour  in that it is a much more open environment. which is true this week as there are few trees on the entire course at Erin Hills. The courses tend to be full of hills and the fairways are rolling and uneven. Typically, but not always, the fairways tend to be much wider than normal, but hitting it too far off the fairway can be disastrous as the fescue grass is long and thick and nearly impossible to hit out of. Strategically place bunkers riddle the fairways and protect the greens. These bunkers are often oddly shaped and can be very steep near the edges, sometimes forcing players to hit away from the hole in order to mitigate the damage.

At Erin Hills, many of the greens are elevated, which means that it will play a little differently than most links style courses. On most links courses, players are able to punch their approach shots and run them up to the green on the hard fairway surfaces. However, with the elevated greens this week, that is simply not going to be an option. The greens are very small and since many are elevated, players are going to need to be very precise on their approach or shots simply are not going to hold on these fast greens and will roll off in one direction or another. What makes the greens here interesting is that the sides are cut so closely that many times, players will be able to putt from off the green instead of having to chip to get into position. This could be helpful for those players who are particularly dreadful with a wedge in their hands.

One of the reasons that I always like to wait to write my column, particularly in weeks like this where we have a new course (and other than the fact that I am a terrible procrastinator) is that inevitably, we will be able to collect a little more intel on how the course is playing and anything notable that takes place in the days leading up to the tournament. Besides the usual amount of complaining about the course which we hear every year, there have been some changes to the course that I think are notable. With the rain that has hit the area in recent days, the fescue, particularly along the areas just off the fairway were longer due to overspraying and it was judged by the powers that be, that due to length and wetness it would be too penal for players to get out if should they miss off the tee. While players like Rory McIlroy scoffed at the notion that this fescue should be trimmed given the 60 yard wide fairways available, but the USGA responded that this was all a part of its plan for dealing with the additional precipitation. My thought is that this will swing the pendulum more towards the bombers this week, even though driving accuracy is noted as a key stat for the week. I may personally end up adjusting this weighting down a little bit to make up for the changes that took place to the course today.

Finally, before we take a look at the player pool for the week, we need to do our usual weather check. Thursday is looking like the best day of the week for the tournament as it expected to be clear all day with winds ranging from 7mph in the early morning and peaking at 13 mph by the middle of the afternoon. Once Friday rolls around, things are going to be a little more unpredictable. I am not sure exactly when, but it is going to rain on Friday. It is supposed to be cloudy for most of the day with around a 40% chance of rain and thunderstorms throughout the day. In looking at it hour by hour right now, I am unable to see a big advantage one way or another in terms of stacking tee times. The weather looks very similar on Saturday as well. Winds do not appear to be an issue based upon the forecast, but in talking to people who have been on the course, they cautioned that wind is always an issue and that we should expect gusts above 20 mph throughout the weekend while on the course itself in spite of anything we see online. I want each of you to take a close look at the weather on Wednesday night and again on Thursday morning before lineup lock. I am not sure if we will be able to find any advantage in the tee times, but should one appear, I do not want to miss it. In any event, build a few teams stacked for both AM and PM start times this week as a small hedge. If one time does emerge over the other, we want to make sure to have a few teams positioned to take full advantage.

The key stats this week as presented to us by our very good friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics are as follows:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 35%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Scrambling: 10%
Proximity to Hole: 10%
Driving Accuracy: 10% (could maybe adjust to 5% and bump driving distance to 5% to compensate for the trimmed fescue on parts of the course)
Birdie or Better Percentage: 10%

Before we jump in full throttle with the player recommendations, I want to say that our travel plans have in fact firmed up for the week and Jeff and I will be leaving on Thursday night to make the drive out to Milwaukee where we will be staying during the tournament. We plan to hit the event on Friday and Saturday and will drive home early Sunday morning as it is Father’s Day and we would like to get back to see our families (and also watch the final round from the comfort of home). We have heard from a few folks who will also be out there and want to make sure that we get a chance to meet as many of you as possible while we are out there. Please be sure to hit us up on Twitter or send us an e-mail (zach@fantasygolfinsider.com or jeff@fantasygolfinsider.com) if you would like to track us down to say hello while we are at the course as it is always a blast to meet folks and talk a little fantasy golf.

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