The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Weekend Edition – The Heritage

So far, so good. There have been a few players to disappoint this week over the first two rounds, but largely, our picks are in relatively good shape with our cash game teams looking strong going into the weekend. If you took my advice and started your cash teams with Luke Donald, Jason Dufner and Pat Perez, you should be feeling really good about your chances to make some money this week. However, if you went big on Bill Haas, Jim Furyk or Stewart Cink, you are probably here tonight looking for vengeance as those were the only three players out of 16 that I wrote up in my cash game recommendations that did not make it through the cut, with Furyk collapsing in spectacular fashion today in bogeying four of the final six holes to miss the cut by a single stroke. Fortunately, for all, the weekend is just getting started and we are getting into weekend golf largely before most of the rest of the competition which should give us a nice edge in these early weeks as everyone is still figuring out the right strategy.

If you did not read over my column last week, I outlined four different areas that we are going to evaluate in order to help us in making our selections for the weekend. The first area to look at are the weather conditions for Saturday and Sunday. As of now, both days are looking really good with winds at roughly 7-9 mph for all groups playing on Saturday and Sunday with no precipitation in the forecast. This makes it very easy to select our players based solely on statistical criteria and odds rather than having to worry about changes in the weather throughout the day that may have favored one time over another.

The next area to take a look at is the historical background that players have with the course. For those who have stopped looking at course history, allow me to present to you, Exhibit A: Luke Donald. Donald has not done much to impress this season and even with his outstanding putting numbers, there was not much of a reason to get excited about using him this week unless you glanced at his history here and noticed the four 2nd and two 3rd place finishes under his belt over the last eight years. Now, that is not to say that you should be going all in on Donald over the weekend, it is just to point out that experience here does count for something and I expect those who have spent some time here to continue to benefit from their time spent here over the years.

A new key stat in looking at weekend golfers is to scroll through the standings to see who has underperformed for the week through the first two rounds. What you will want to do is to take look at where everyone sits on the leaderboard and contrast that with the odds that the sportsbook odds to win the event. This shows in a way how Vegas expects players to rise or fall in the tournament by the time things wind up. As an example this week, Ian Poulter is currently sitting in 3rd place, but only has the 7th best odds to win this weekend. What Vegas is telling us is that they expect him to fall back in the standings, which makes a lot of sense for someone near the top who is not really known as being a closer in winning tournaments. If you look at last week in Augusta, this worked out really well as many of the highlighted players in positive territory moved up a lot over the last two rounds including: Rory, Hideki, Casey, Day, Thomas, and Grace.

Finally, stats are going to play a role in selecting players, but not quite the same way as it did at the beginning of the week when we needed to assess a player’s overall game to see if they could make the cut and also finish well. Now that we are to the weekend and positional points no longer count for anything, it does not matter if a golfer implodes and posts some terrible scores on a hole or two as the downside is limited. We now can really focus on players that can score a lot of birdies or notch an eagle or two. If they move up in the standings along the way, that is fine, but not consequential overall for scoring purposes. It is still important to emphasize the stats that make a player a good fit for the course, but now that everyone will be playing two rounds, give a little bump in weight to Birdie or Better Percentage.

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