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

Halfway through the Wyndham Championship and some players managed to thrive under the pressure in pushing through to make the cut to keep their tour cards alive while others inexplicably wilted and missed the cut in a blaze of glory and will now enjoy the thrill of getting to head over to the NIT of golf, the Web.com playoff series, except with much more at stake than anything that most teams are in contention for in March for basketball. A lot of random names are playing really well so far this week as well which always makes for some excitement going into the weekend. Steven Bowdtch, who has had a miserable year, but who has also been a great advocate for the DFS community played really well in the first two rounds and has himself in position for a nice payday after really battling with his game and dealing with some demons. Matt Every, another player who rarely shows up on a leaderboard outside of Bay Hill looked sharp in the first two rounds and has put himself in a nice spot going into the weekend. Most surprisingly, Ryan Armour is tied for the lead with Webb Simpson at the turn after playing really brilliant golf, particularly with his iron play and putter. With names like those popping up among the leaders, the tournament definitely has a different feel than normal with two rounds to play.

Hopefully, your full slate rosters are still in decent shape. The core marched through the cut unscathed, but the secondary players did take a few hits and obviously the fill in players at the bottom were good, but a few did miss the cut. When you are building your rosters over the next few hours, I want you to go onto the site and check out our new Rolling Stats Beta page. I want to talk about how to use this new tool in your research. In being able to isolate just the first two rounds of the tournament, we are going to have a nice advantage over most other folks in doing our research. However, before you dive in two deep, I want to make sure that you are using it to your full advantage.

Let’s look at a couple of quick case studies as a guide to get you started. One of the names that really pops for me in using the Rolling Stats tool this week is Ryan Moore. Obviously, he’s a solid player to begin with, so it’s not a big surprise that he might be an attractive play for the week, but in isolating just the first two rounds, I think there is something that I noticed that makes him an even better option. One thing that we know about Ryan Moore’s game is that historically, he’s a pretty good putter. Now, his numbers have been down a little bit this season, but overall he’s still above average. In looking at Moore’s strokes gained stats for the first two rounds, you can see that his putting really stands out so far, but for all the wrong reasons. Moore is leading the field from tee to green, 5th off the tee, 8th in approach and 43rd around the green. In putting, he’s currently 141st. Even if his putting has not been outstanding this season, he’s just not that bad. Given that Moore is absolutely striping the ball otherwise, it looks like he’s due for a little improvement on the greens over the weekend with his putter.

One step down in tee to green this week so far is the bizarrely priced, Vaughn Taylor. Now, Vaughn is actually a reasonable ball striker, but not that strong in any particular category. If we look at his tee to green numbers against the rest of the field over his last 36 rounds, he’s 50th. He’s also 71st in strokes gained approach over that same time frame. He’s definitely playing strong golf these first couple of days, but the historical trends would suggest a bit of regression over the last two rounds. That’s not to say that it will happen for sure, but this is how we really want to view these types of numbers over the first two rounds. We want to see which stats are way out of character or areas where we just would not expect a player to hold up based upon what we know of that player throughout their entire season and career. What we do not want to do is to look at the first two rounds, see someone who has performed like a star in key areas and roster them on that alone. That would be little more than chasing after a stock when it has run up when there is limited data to back it up. We want to use this tool as a value finder for us. Of course, some players will stumble for extended periods of time with their putter or put together multiple events in a row where they hit their irons unexpectedly well. If we play the percentages and know the games well of the respective players, we should be able to deduce where there are opportunities.

The weather looks good for the next two days with no rain in the forecast and winds staying low, so there are no real tee time advantages for the week. One major factor to consider is that there will be an MDF this weekend with more the 78 players making it through the cut. With 85 players left in the field, we will have another cut tomorrow back down to the Top-70 players to include ties. I always worry about playing much when this comes into play, but I think there are some nice opportunities around the Saturday cut line that we can take advantage of if you are willing to stomach a little extra risk. If you do cash games on weekend slates, give yourself a little cushion around and select guys who are a few strokes above the cut right now. That won’t make you totally immune to losing players, but it should lower your risk compared to your opponents.

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