The Daily Spin – DraftKings Preview – Arnold Palmer Invitational

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RECAP

New courses are always a challenge for us each year. We get so used to how certain courses play and the types of golfers that excel that we can know going into the week exactly who we want to target based on their style of play and the types of players that have success from year to year. Each year, we get a few new courses that enter the schedule. Some courses we see just once or maybe once a decade if it makes it onto a rotation for a major tournament. Other courses become a regular part of the rotation so we get used to them fairly quickly. The Concession looks like it will be a one and done with the tour set to return to Mexico again next season. It’s too bad, since I think Concession is a far superior course to Chapultepec. I like courses where trouble is always lurking, but there are also plenty of scoring opportunities. While I am not such a fan of the grinding, US Open style courses where avoiding bogeys is the only goal, courses like Concession will give you birdie and eagle opportunities to help claw back an errant water ball or two during the week.

What made last week interesting was in trying to figure out how the course would play and which golfers it would favor. In my head, it felt like a Bay Hill/Muirfield/Augusta type of course, but that was a misread. I thought it would set up better for the bombers, but the reality was the the ball strikers were the ones that rose to the top. Good iron play is always paramount on Florida courses where hazards are everywhere, but that was really the case last week. While most of the bombers floundered and struggled to keep pace (DJ, Rahm, JT, Xander), the ball strikers took advantage of being in good position off the tee and avoiding the water, ‘tree outlines’ and ‘unknown’ areas where many of my players ventured throughout the weekend. The course comp tool again steered me well as it did highlight the players who are strong during the Florida swing which saved me in cash games.

A couple of the top names that kept popping for me near the top were Rory McIlroy and Bryson BeChambeau. It is pretty rare to be able to fit both of those guys onto your cash lineup, but since each was arriving fresh off of a missed cut, we got just enough of a discount to make it work. Rory has won just about everywhere in Florida and Bryson has been good on a number of the comp courses along the way. It did not look good for me with Bryson early on as he began the tournament sinking like a stone towards the bottom of the leaderboard which can kill you in a WGC event. After shooting +5 in the first round, the only consolation that I felt was that Bryson is not the type of player to pack it in and I even wrote as much in the Slack chat when talking about Showdown options for Friday. There was just no way he was going to lose three strokes on approach two days in a row and sure enough, he bounced back in a big way on Friday and then Sunday had a huge number of DK points with two eagles and a birdie streak. For the week, he finished in 22nd place, but was 7th overall in DK points, just behind Rory, who I thought would make a push on Sunday, but could not get it going and settled for a 6th place finish.

Matthew Fitzpatrick worked out well as a mid range value play. He’s been good on tough courses over the years and is really good on Bermuda grass. He’s been in great form and after a solid 5th place finish at Riviera, he was a lock for me coming back into the Florida swing. I thought we would get more out of him after a really strong start the first couple of rounds, but he could not get anything going on Sunday and finished 11th.

I actually started my builds last week from the bottom which is a little unusual. I wanted to start with my cheapest players, knowing I would get four full rounds and then work with the cap space that afforded me for the other golfers. Lanto Griffin was an automatic play at $6700. He’s been a Top-25 machine the last two years and has done a lot of damage on tough courses. Though he missed a few short putts that could have moved him up the board, a 22nd place finish was more than acceptable for his price. Whenever Lanto drops down into this price range, he should be overweight in your core for the week.

I really wanted to play Marc Leishman last week at his price. It ended up being a little disappointing. He putted well which helped, but he just did not strike the ball well at all and kept getting himself into trouble off the tee. He finished 39th so it was not a total disaster by any stretch, but it felt a little like the things that were a problem last year were an issue last week.

Finally, I made a really weird play for my style in these events. I tend to avoid the European Tour golfers like the plague at events like this. Go and pull up the leaderboard and scroll to the bottom 25-30 players last week and you will see why I avoid them. I texted a friend who is new to PGA DFS who took a shot on McIntyre last week – ‘You got Euroed’ was all I needed to say. And yet, I got away with playing Christian Bezuidenhout last week. I had seen him play well the previous season at the WGC event in Mexico, the API, Muirfield and several other Bermuda grass courses. At $7100, getting four rounds, that was good enough for me. In hindsight, I wish I had just played Billy Horschel with his Florida roots and strong play throughout his career down in that part of the country. His iron play worried me enough to move away from him as I thought the length might be a problem. Wrong. Oh well, my team ended up cashing across the board as Rory and Fitzy did just enough to get me comfortably into the green for the third week in a row. Whew. Now back to a few courses where we know our way around a bit better on our road to Augusta.

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