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

And with that, the majors came to a close for 2017. What a remarkable year it was with the crowning of four incredible, deserving champions in Sergio Garcia, Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth and now, Justin Thomas. I am not sure if golf could be in a much better position than it is today, particularly for fans of American golfers as the new young crop of players as a whole is better than at any other time that I can remember in all of the years that I have followed the game. The US should be in good hands moving ahead in both Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup play for the next decade.

The PGA Championship proved to be another surprise as far as course setup was concerned. We felt like going on that having seen Quail Hollow over the years that even with the changes that were implemented, it would largely still play out as a bomber’s paradise, but a little tougher with the length, thicker rough and faster greens. However, we ended up with a US Open style course that tested and pushed even the best players to their limits. It’s surprising that Justin Thomas thrived in these conditions as typically, the tough, grind it out courses wear him down and he hits his breaking point and cannot recover after a bad hole or two. This time, that blowup hole never came and after the heavens above gave his putt the last little push it needed to nestle itself into the bottom of the cup for a much needed birdie, there was no looking back and Thomas played with a lot of confidence and swagger over the last eight holes in cruising to an easier than expected win after the leaderboard had been cluttered by five names tied for first late into the afternoon.

We had our ups and downs with the picks last week. When it comes to picking players for Millionaire Maker events, you really have to make some choices at the top. If you try to own a share of everyone, you end up turning your entries into lottery tickets, hoping to hit something at random. You’ll usually hit the winner if you spread yourself thin enough, but you’ll also rarely hit the rest of that roster perfectly, thus negating much of your efforts. This is even more important with only 20 teams for most of the GPPs. When you have 150 teams to play with, I think you can be a little flatter overall with your ownership levels. If you have 50-60 teams with a given star, that’s plenty of opportunities, even if it’s only 30-40% of your player pool weighting. We don’t have that luxury with 20 teams where even at 60% ownership, that still only equates to 12 teams. Keep this in mind as you approach roster construction for GPPs each week. It might feel god to try to fit 35 golfers into your player pool with the hopes that those last couple of players can do something, but resist the temptation.

This leads back to the mindset that you need to have when going into GPP events each week. You’re not going to enter 40-60k entry GPP events with 20 teams and be dominant. Your goal is to minimize losses in the bad weeks, squeak out a small profit when things are good and once or twice a year, compete for a big prize. Unless your bankroll is large enough to play many entries in big prize pool, small field GPPs, you need to run perfect to hit a big score in the smaller buy-ins events. You need to know this going into the season. Most of you out there get more of a thrill in chasing big GPP prizes than trying to grind in cash, but you have to realize what you are up against most weeks as the larger the field, the closer to perfect you need to be to win the tournament. Make sure you are setting yourself up to succeed by not chasing big events that are beyond your means and murdering your bankroll with just a few down weeks. If you start to go through a bad stretch, be sure to also readjust how much you are putting in play this week. If you never risk more than 10-15% of your bankroll in a given week, it should be nearly impossible to go broke. Don’t continue to play $100 per week if your bankroll is down to $200. Be patient and work your way up. You’ll get lot more entertainment for your money and also a lot more chances to contend.

This week, the tour heads just down the road to Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, NC, not far from Charlotte where many in the field played a week ago. It’s an interesting event this week as there is more on the line than usual. I like this event a lot in that there are less players than normal who will take a knee over the weekend if they fall out of contention. From this point forward, every FedEx Cup point matters and players need them more than ever this week if they are hovering around 125th in the standings which is the cutoff for players to make the playoffs and to also keep their full tour status if they have not gained an exemption with a win this year or in recent years. You’ll get to see a lot of putts on the 18th hole on Sunday that could determine the direction of a particular player’s career. The difference in earning potential between the PGA Tour and the Web.com Tour is enormous so while there isn’t a major on the line this week, the action here at the Wydham Championship is often times much more meaningful which lends this event a lot more excitement than casual fans probably appreciate. Check out this page that the PGA Tour put together on its site of potential scenarios by which players just outside of the bubble would need to achieve this week in order to assure their qualification into the next round of the playoffs. For those like Seamus Power, a mere 65th place finish or better should do the trick, but if you’re further back like Rory Sabbatini, he’ll need to target a 6th place finish or better in order to continue moving forward this season.

The schedule is tough this time of year which leaves us with a softer field than what we would see most other weeks of the year. With the FedEx Cup Playoffs approaching and following a WGC event and the PGA Championship, the Wyndham is an easy event for most golfers to pass on as they rest up to prepare for bigger things in the weeks ahead. The course is also set up for a particular type of player with the more accurate hitters finding success more easily than the bombers. I also want to take a moment to highlight some local players who either live in North Carolina or played their college golf there. I think our player database is fairly comprehensive in terms of what we have collected. When the tour makes stops in parts of the country where a group of players have a local connection, it’s really important to know who they are. Many of the players this week with North Carolina connections have also performed really well at Sedgefield over the years so just a little extra research might be just what it takes to find the young rookie with a chance at having a big, breakout week. I may have missed a few, but here’s a nice list to start with for the week:

 

		College	Residence
Brendon	De Jonge	Virgina Tech	Charlotte	NC
Brad	Fritsch	Campbell University	Holly Springs	NC
Chesson	Hadley	Georgia Tech	Raleigh	NC
Jason	Kokrak	Xavier	Charlotte	NC
Grayson	Murray	Arizona State, UNC Greensboro, E Car, Wake Forest	Raleigh	NC
Carl	Pettersson	North Carolina State	Raleigh	NC
J.T.	Poston	Western Carolina University	Hickory	NC
Seamus	Power	East Tennessee State University	Charlotte	NC
Kyle	Reifers	Wake Forest	Charlotte	NC
Webb	Simpson	Wake Forest	Charlotte	NC
Johnson	Wagner	Virginia Tech	Charlotte	NC
Davis	Love III	University of North Carolina	St Simons Island	GA
Mark	Willson	University of North Carolina	Elmhurst	IL
Bill	Haas	Wake Forest	Greenville	SC
Kevin	Streelman	Duke	Scottsdale	AZ
Ryan	Blaum	Duke	Orlando	FL

 

With a quick look at this list, it’s hard to argue that local players haven’t outperformed others over the years. Bill Haas and Webb Simpson are the obvious two names with excellent course history that everyone talks about, but Davis Love III won here two years ago. Carl Petterson is a former winner with multiple other Top-10 finishes. Kevin Streelman, although he has not played here of late has also been strong here in limited starts. Obviously, that doesn’t mean you just grab on to Brendon De Jonge and Mark Wilson, but it does makes players like JT Poston, Seamus Power and Grayson Murray just a little more interesting than before as they’ve probably played on the course previously and are more than likely a little more comfortable than their fellow competitors with how it is going to be set up.

In taking a look at the key stats as shared with us by our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics, we noted some huge differences between Sedgefield and most of the other recent courses where the tour has stopped in recent months.

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Driving Accuracy: 15%
Par 4 Scoring: 10%
Prox 150-175 yards: 5%

If you are looking to help yourself out this week with your research, be sure to check out our newly added Rolling Stats (Beta) page that our developer, Aaron Johnson put together for us. It is the first of many updates that are coming over the next five months, but I wanted to share the progress he has made and to assure you that this is just the first of many improvements on the horizon for the website. Shoot us your feedback at – info@fantasygolfinsider.com Some of the fixes were obvious to us immediately, but others may not be so let us know what is missing. Our aim was to keep it simple and to keep it from being too cluttered. In talking to users, we got the feedback that more is not always better so hopefully we are on the right track with our development of the site in terms of meeting the demands of our audience.

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