The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Wyndham Championship
By Zachary Turcotte
We have reached the final week of the regular season for the PGA Tour schedule and while it is not exactly like Week 17 of the NFL season, I am sure that after the four majors over the last few months it may certainly feel that way. However, unlike the NFL season where you are never certain of many or few meaningful games, with the event this week, there are probably 30-40 players who will be playing for their livelihood this week as everyone near the bubble will be fighting to make sure they get into the Top-125 for the FedEx Cup standings which provides them with an automatic berth to the playoffs which begin the following week and more importantly, it allows them to hold onto their tour card for another season.
It’s always interesting to watch players jockeying for position in this tournament. Much like with what we saw with John Peterson making his final start before his exemption ran out last month, point totals for the week are of extreme importance and you will be able to watch guys putting for their tour lives on Sunday afternoon down the stretch as just fractions of a point will end up separating the last few players left out of the playoffs from those that make it in. That is what, to me, makes the Wyndham Championship one of the most exciting tournaments of the season.
Before we get too deep into the Wyndham this week, we should take a quick look back at what proved to be another sensational major this season at the PGA Championship. Once again, Tiger started off slowly and was +3 after the first two holes and looked like he would end the summer on a disappointing note. However, like we have seen with Tiger so many times this season, after he was able to fight back to even by the end of the round. I had a chance to talk to Doug Kezirian over at ESPN last week, who interviewed me for a piece that he did about betting on Tiger Woods before the event, and I thought that my words to him ended up being rather prescient so I thought I would share them here. With sports gambling becoming legal in more and more states over the next few years, I want to try to take you inside my own mind for how I look at the landscape each week. Here is what I shared with him before the tournament last week in terms of my thoughts on betting on Tiger.
I think what is tricky for the casual sports fan to gauge when they decide to dip their toe into betting on golf around the majors is a basic misunderstanding of the prices that the books are offering on players. The key is to drive action, but at a suitable price so it’s never something that is close to a true percentage of a time that a player will win a golf tournament, particularly in the case of the most notable players in the game, especially Tiger Woods, or Phil Mickelson and to a lesser extent some of the other big names on the tour. In Tiger’s case, particularly now, you’re always paying a name value premium in order to be in on the action. The books understand how the public will bet ahead of time as seen from past events. With Tiger playing well, at this point, they don’t really even have to conceal what they are doing and the premium has shrunk based upon the improved play of Woods over the last year and being in contention in a few events, but what this means is that we’re done seeing any number that is really worth chasing for any sort of value for the foreseeable future. It’s fun for the casual fan to pile into the crowd as his price gets driven down throughout the summer, but it’s all the more important for the week to week players to steer clear if they are in it to be profitable.
What has happened with betting on golf over the last few years is really interesting and worth a little bit of discussion. Gone are the days when we would hit the book, pick up a handful of tickets and then sit back to watch and wait. The evolution of online betting and in particular, live round betting has completely revolutionized the way that we can bet on golf now. Rather than simply trying to isolate winners from the outset, what we’re really looking to do early on in the week is to cast a somewhat wide net around the deeper value plays for the week, those players in the 60-1 range and higher who look to be mispriced based upon our own models and observations. It’s pretty rare that I am casting a single ticket towards a DJ at 9-1 or something along those lines pre event as there is just zero value in the play unless my confidence is just sky high and I am making a many unit wager on him and maybe one or two players at the most. My typical ticket for the week will have 5-7 regular sized plays and 3-4 fractional unit plays, so hitting a 9-1 does next to nothing for me in terms of building my bankroll. If I am interested in DJ, I’ll often times wait for him to struggle a little bit in the opening round so that he drops back slightly and his price starts to move, kind of like with Rose at 200-1 after he just squeezed through the cut last week. This is where you might get a little value on a Tiger bet. He’s been a slow starter this season so if you can pick him up after the first or second round at 50-1, he’s made some nice charges and has held the lead in events which gives us some nice hedge equity later on in the tournament.
Back to building a ticket….my game plan going in is to look for deep value and to start to allocate 30-40% of my funds for the week around those early picks. As the event plays out, I want to give myself the flexibility to enter new positions or hedge on potential winners. Where we have our best weeks are when a handful of those top values make a charge and we are well positioned on Sunday for a nice payout. At that point, depending on the action and positioning, we can start to hedge against catastrophe either before or during the final round. Obviously, hitting a 100-1 winner without the hedge is nice, but my goal is to not take zeroes and trim volatility where I can.
I could ramble on and on, but you get the point. Tiger is a tough bet since we’re always going to be paying a higher premium than normal given his actual abilities and enormous popularity among casual bettors. The only way I really like to bet Tiger is after a slow start as we’ve seen him play a lot of his best golf after a mediocre opening round as he works his way back into form.
Obviously, that played last week much the way that it has this season for Tiger in that it took him a day to get comfortable on the course (many started slow on Thursday), but over the next couple of days, things began to click and he improved the rest of the way, nearly chasing down Brooks Koepka in the final round. As the week progressed, I tracked Tiger’s live betting odds in several places and saw it go to 67-1 early on Friday all the way to a low of around 100-1 in the afternoon before he teed off as many players did considerable damage on Friday morning where plenty of good scoring took place, pushing the leader (Gary Woodland) to a 10 shot advantage over Tiger. I was able to get a little action in on Tiger at 85-1, which I felt great about as I knew that one great round would put him right back in the mix and from there, if he got some momentum going, we’ve seen him come charging back on many Sundays this year.
It was nice to get this little hedge in on Tiger if he took off as I obviously did not play him in DFS due to pricing concerns last week. What was interesting with Tiger last week was that we saw near total, market capitulation on Tiger through a DFS lens as his ownership number plummeted to season lows across most major GPPs for the week. In the $4 GPP, he was owned by 8.6% of the field, 7% in the Millionaire Maker and a meager 2.75% in the $444, showing us that the biggest of the movers and shakers in the DFS world were also out on Tiger for the week. That was interesting to see for me and something to watch very closely going into next season. He had been a little off the prior week at Firestone, but not terrible so it was a surprise that after sticking with him for much of the season that so many jumped off at that point.
For me, the decision was not necessarily as a knock on Tiger as much as it was that I just felt more comfortable in that price range with all of my shares on Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka, which obviously did not end up working out terribly for the week. Jason Day falling back on Sunday and DJ failing to do much of anything the final three days was regrettable, but overall, I was not too disappointed with my decisions at the top in terms of who I rolled out. I had a lot of lineups that I started with JT, Brooks and Day last week that did very well for me and I saw several of you actually win big contests in starting with that stack or something very similar so things were strong at the top.
The only two real landmines that hurt us last week were Louis Oosthuizen and Paul Casey. Louis’s withdrawal was shocking to me as it came out of nowhere. I know that with Louis, the occasional WD is always a part of the joy of rostering him, but he is not the type that usually does that at major championships. Outside of an injury plagued, 2013 campaign where he withdrew from two majors, he had played in 19 straight majors without an issue. During that span, he made the cut 17 times, finished in the Top-25 twelve times and had three 2nd place finishes. That is a very remarkable run for any player, especially one that is always low owned and who was very fairly priced for the week. Literally, the last tweet he put out was of him swinging during a practice round on Tuesday saying ‘Loving St Louis’, which means that something happened between Tuesday afternoon and Thursday that kept him out of action. Just a really terrible break for a lot of my teams as I liked the way he had been playing and felt like it was another course where he would perform well.
The other big bust last week was Paul Casey. What hurts with Casey is that his price was just so silly low that it made it impossible not to use him for cash games and he’s been so reliable throughout the last couple of seasons, that it seemed like a great value for all formats at just $8k. He fell back early, like many players did on Thursday, but what was frustrating was that it seemed like he threw in the towel on Friday without putting up much of a fight. Finau, Henley and Olesen all started off slowly as well in the first round, but each found life on Friday, where as Casey seemed content to just limp away for the weekend. It was disappointing to say the least as he was a core player who hurt a lot of otherwise really stellar teams.
Overall, it was a mixed week for me. I fell short in cash as the Casey miss proved to be too much to overcome for one team and the Louis WD was a dagger for the other. I don’t feel all that bad about either roster. On Sunday, the team that I used where I paid up to get JT was actually in the money until late in the day when JT decided to start missing 3-4 foot putts and Jason Day faded away from any sort of TV time. I can live with losing with Paul Casey. He was the right play for cash and at a great price. I make that decision 10/10 times. With Louis, I know his history, but he generally just does not do this at majors unless he’s seriously injured and we know he was fine going into the week. Obviously, that will be the last time I use him in cash going forward as it does seem like his chronically injured body may be an issue again after a couple of relatively good, withdrawal free seasons.
In moving on to the Wyndham Championship this week, we get a much weaker field than any we have seen since before The Open Championship last month. It’s an interesting mix of players, many of whom have local ties to North Carolina. If you want to look for those players without having to dig through the PGA Tour website, we have compiled a quick reference here on the site under the PGA Tools section labeled ‘Player Database‘. Check that out and you will find many players that were either born in the area, played their college golf there or who live there now. It’s not totally foolproof to use players with local ties, but generally, guys who have extra familiarity with the course and other courses in the region do generally end up playing a little better than some of the golfers coming in from other regions around the country.
Sedgfield Country Club plays home to the Wyndham Championship each season and sets up as one of the easier courses that we see during the season which should provide for plenty of scoring this weekend. It is a 7,100 yard course that plays as a Par 70 with fairways that become more narrow which tends to take driver out of the hands of most players except for the two short Par 5 holes where even the shorter hitters will have a chance to get on the greens in two shots. There are only three Par 4 holes that are over 450 yards this week so we are going to be much more focused on players who excel in their short game this week. Accuracy is also a metric that tends to correlate much more strongly with results than normal and has its highest weighting of the season this week. The greens are Bermuda and on the small side. With the North Carolina heat, they will play on the fast side, especially in the afternoons, so do not discount putting this week as comfort with Bermuda greens as well as overall scoring ability will factor into success this week.
Bubble Watch:
| FedEx Rank | Player |
| 115 | Sam Ryder |
| 116 | Ryan Blaum |
| 117 | Brian Stuard |
| 118 | Scott Brown |
| 119 | Sean O’Hair |
| 120 | Sam Saunders |
| 121 | Bud Cauley |
| 122 | Jhonattan Vegas |
| 123 | Seamus Power |
| 124 | Martin Piller |
| 125 | Tyrone Van Aswegen |
| 126 | Chad Campbell |
| 127 | Robert Garrigus |
| 128 | Corey Conners |
| 129 | Nick Taylor |
| 130 | Tom Lovelady |
| 131 | Sergio Garcia |
| 132 | Harris English |
| 133 | Lucas Glover |
| 134 | Ben Silverman |
| 135 | Derek Fathauer |
| 136 | Johnson Wagner |
| 137 | Aaron Baddeley |
| 138 | Talor Gooch |
| 139 | Shane Lowry |
| 140 | David Lingmerth |
| 141 | Steve Stricker |
| 142 | Nicholas Lindheim |
| 143 | Graeme McDowell |
| 144 | Ben Crane |
| 145 | Ben Martin |
| 146 | Matt Jones |
| 147 | Retief Goosen |
| 148 | Thomas Pieters |
| 149 | Chris Stroud |
| 150 | Bill Haas |
Key Stats
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Driving Accuracy: 15%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
By Zachary Turcotte
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