The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Wyndham Championship
It is hard to believe that the final tournament of the regular season is here for the PGA Tour. With the changes to the schedule, it felt like the season flew by, but when fall arrives, it will readjust and we will have a much longer swing season that kicks off right away in September so we will have about 10 events to keep us busy throughout the fall in addition to the kickoff of the NFL season the second weekend. I am pleased with the schedule changes so far. I think that the PGA was really smart to get its playoffs in place in August rather than trying to go head to head against the NFL during the first few weeks of the season. The NFL is, and always had been the king of Sunday afternoon ratings so I imagine for many years, the PGA Tour lost out during one of the most exciting parts of the year.
Last week was a tale of two approaches for me for the WGC St Jude. On the cash game side, things started out slowly, but then got into a groove and cruised to an easy victory by Sunday. I took a risk in going with a balanced approach, which is not always optimal for a no-cut event. The risk, of course, is that a big name wins the tournament who is heavily owned which makes it tough since without a cut, they will not need a lot of production from the cheaper players in order to cash. Fortunately, Brooks Koepka was not really owned at all in cash games for the week and Rory had less owners than I would have anticipated. This left my team in great shape as value bargain, Webb Simpson ended up finishing in 2nd place for the week, Billy Horschel notched a Top-10 finish, Justin Rose finished 11th, Paul Casey and Chez Reavie both finished 27th and Adam Scott brought up the rear in 40th. We were very fortunate for the week with our first four starting players and we avoided the deadly grenades who finished near the absolute bottom for the week, so it was a nice win which assured me of making a profit for the week. That makes six full wins in the last seven weeks and I was able to recover most of my money during The Open in cash so I am going to say that puts me at 6-0-1 for the last seven weeks as we head into the stretch run.
Unfortunately, the other side of the coin was not so nice for me last week with my GPP plays for the week. I had a lot of shares of Rory which worked out okay, but his forgettable round on Sunday hurt several lineups and my lack of ownership of the higher dollar players in favor of golfers who underperformed in the 9k range took my handful of teams down the toilet for the week and I was only able to salvage a little bit of my GPP entries back for the week. Brooks was able to calmly claim his third win of the season and proved the in addition to majors, he is also interested in winning WGC events. With the playoffs coming up and $10 million on the line, I think it is safe to say that Brooks should be able to stay motivated over the last three weeks of the season. Overall, I was able to make a nice profit from my cash game wins, but GPP added very little to the total so I have some work to do this week.
The Wyndham Championship is always one of my favorite tournaments of the year. The field is solid even if the biggest names are absent and there is so much on the line as golfers will be playing for their professional lives throughout the weekend. Throughout the summer we see the little cup logo next to players names on TV with their rank moving up or down, but for the most part, we are not that engaged with the FedEx Cup standings until exactly this week. The Top-125 ranked players will move on to the FedEx Cup playoffs next week and unless a player outside of 125 has an exemption for a previous win or injury, they will have to go back down to the Korn Ferry Tour to try to earn their way back during the playoffs, or even worse, drop down to that tour full-time for the next season and try again to work their way back up to the big tour. This leads to some pretty dramatic moments on Sunday.
Typically, you see some players start to tune out in the final round, but for players who are close to the Top-125, every shot and putt is a battle for their career. This should make for a great weekend slate of contests as we should start to see where certain players will need to finish during the week. With so much at stake for finishing positions, you will start to here that certain players need to finish at a specific spot or better in order to qualify for the playoffs. While I am not going to build around specific players that are in the hunt, it can be one last factor to look t when deciding between on player and another. The reason I do not get too tied to investing in players in that range is that these are still golfers that have not been great all season overall. These players are very conscious of where they are in the standings and know how far off they are from qualifying. They certainly do not want to be on the bubble, but at the same time, if they could not pull it together over the last year, I’m not sure that simply wanting it more now is enough to think that they will automatically just start to play that much better this week. Over the last five years, we have seen it go both ways. Sometimes, players rise to the occasion and lift their play while other wilt under the pressure and crumble. My final thought is that if one of those players lines up with your research for the week, go ahead and use them, but don’t build your whole strategy around bubble players this week.
Sedgefield Country Club is the host for the tournament this week and plays at a Par 70 which is around 7,100 yards in length. It is not a particularly difficult course, but there are some areas that players will need to focus on in order to have success. First, the fairways narrow down beyond 250 yards which means that it is a less than driver type of course so it will not be a club we see often this week. Second, accuracy is a big deal here. Players have been shown to be much more likely to hit the greens if they are hitting their approach shot from the fairway here so you do not see many bombers show up to play here most years. The Bermuda greens are smaller than normal this week. They are smaller than normal and have plenty of undulation. Also, when the temperature gets hot, the greens can get baked pretty easily and play very firm and fast. We are looking for all around ball strikers this week who have a good balance between accuracy and precision approach play. There are not a lot of truly difficult holes on this course, but with the winning score expected to come in at -20 or better, we want to find golfers that are excellent at converting birdie opportunities and focus a little less on those players that just grind it out by making pars.
KEY STATS
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Driving Accuracy: 15%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%
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