The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – WGC Match Play
By now, most of you know that my game around the green is pretty good. Each week I am scrambling to get the site set up on Monday, research on Tuesday, get cranking late on Tuesday night and send it by Wednesday morning, hopefully by the time most of you are putting your coffee on and starting your morning. This week, everything is compressed. It feels like I hit my tee shot into the unknown, chipped back into the fairway and now need to find a way to make par. To top it off, we are headed into the match play event and by Wednesday afternoon, we are all going to be trying to piece together scenarios to hold our brackets together in one of the most fun events of the year.
Before getting into the WGC Match Play too deeply, we need to take a quick look back at how things went at the Valspar Championship. As expected, it was an up and down week. I advised to keep things light in cash games and it looked like the FGI folks took my advice to heart as I heard that many of you did cut back. It looked like many of you either won in cash games or just barely came up short. For me, I was one that came up short. The reason that I do not enjoy cash games in events like this is that we end up having to rely on players that we normally would only reserve for GPP play.
There have been weeks this season, where a player like Charles Howell III has been priced at $7,300. Last week, I was forced to decide among a $7800 JT Poston and an $8300 Adam Hadwin among others in the value range. Not surprisingly, those two players did not work out for me in cash games with Hadwin managing to miss the cut on the final hole on Friday. Even had I gone a slightly different direction with my lineup, there were still plenty of land mines along the way that could have wrecked me. Branden Grace, Tyrell Hatton, Patrick Reed and Ryan Moore were all players that should have been solid cash game plays and all of them whiffed as well. We got a great performance out of Jason Kokrak and Jim Furyk played strong before falling off late. ZJ and Sneds both did what I expected them to do, but it was not enough to get past two missed cuts and I finished just a few spots out of the money.
On the GPP side, going back to Paul Casey worked very well for us. The situation set up perfectly after he looked terrible at The Players Championship the prior week. The first rule to live by is to not judge a player’s form by their performance at TPC Sawgrass. That is a course that trips up players of all skill levels so a blowup round should not be taken as a sign of lost form. Casey is a great fit for Copperhead with his accuracy off the tee and strong approach play. Plus, even though he is not a gifted putter, Copperhead is a course where you do not have to make a lot of birdies to win. It is more important to consistently be in good position as opposed to cranking out a lot of birdies so it is not too surprising that Casey had another nice performance.
We went big with DJ at the top which worked out reasonably well. He played poorly on Sunday and could not manage even a single birdie, but even this mediocre round was still good enough for a 6th place finish. Jason Kokrak was another core play and continued to shine this year. A bogey on the 18th hole kept him out of a playoff with Casey, but he continues to pile up solid finishes. Sungjae Im also had another nice week and seems like the favorite for Rookie of the Year at this point now that Cameron Champ has fallen off the map. Russell Knox gave us a wild rollercoaster ride last week, but with the albatross he hit on Thursday, he was one of the higher DK points scorers of the week even as a 24th place finisher. Nick Taylor faded back on Sunday, but finished as the 13th highest scorer for the week which was great for his salary and a better than expected performance for one of our 20% owned secondary plays. Finally, Jim Furyk finished in 18th which was a good performance even at a higher price than what we’ve been used to paying for him. He had a real shot at a Top-5 finish on Sunday, but lost ground and fell back. Still, considering how many players in the upper range either missed the cut or underperformed, I’ll take an 18th place finish from the old man.
Quickly moving on to this week, we arrive in Austin, TX for the Dell WGC Match Play event, one of the more entertaining tournaments of the year as the one on one aspect is something that we just do not get to see often enough in golf and it really does show you who the best players are when the pressure is on. It is played at the Austin Country Club and this marks the 4th year that the event will be held there. It is a Pete Dye course so be sure to take that into consideration when selecting players this week as the fairways are on the narrower side and tree lined and with some strategically placed bunkers along the way.
As with most Dye courses, this is a second shot course that places emphasis on approach play, but with the match play format, I would say short game gets a big boost for emphasis this week as well. You have to think a little differently when approaching match play. Depending on how the match is going, players will either be looking to take bigger risks if behind or could get defensive if ahead. There are no big numbers to worry about in Match Play. You can make a snowman, but it still only counts as losing a single hole which is why a guy like Phil Mickelson is still a tough out as he does not get punished as much for being wild off the tee the way he would normally at a Pete Dye course. For some additional information on the course, check out Adam Daly’s column, The First Tee.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 35%
Strokes Gained Putting: 15%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
Proximity: 15%
Scrambling: 10%
Strokes Gained Approach: 10%
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