The Daily Spin – DraftKings Preview – Genesis Invitational

Recap

I am going to get organized this week and every week moving forward. Perhaps if I break things down into pieces, it will help me to tackle it a little quicker each week. I have also had requests for specific items to be covered and want to make sure that I am able to address them each week without skipping over them or forgetting certain pieces some weeks. I always have plenty to say, but this should help to keep the column on track and also make it much easier to search through when you want to come back to look for a specific point that I made along the way. As always, if there are ideas that you want to see included or if there is an area that you feel I have left out, drop me a note and I will see what I can do to improve your experience.

Last week was about what I have come to expect out of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The first couple of days there was not much in terms of weather to worry about, but by Saturday, the winds picked up in a big way and by Sunday, Pebble was playing about as tough as possible as evidenced by some of the ugly scores that were posted in the final round. Once again, the best opportunities of the week were found in the Showdown slates, especially the first two rounds. For those of you who dislike these tournaments that have multiple courses, perhaps fire your bullets at the Showdowns those weeks instead.

I have to admit, I probably do not go after Showdowns in these events as much as I probably should, but last week on Thursday night, I had an extra hour or so and decided that I would jump in on Friday before the weather turned against the players over the weekend. I ended up putting together 50 teams with our lineup generator and then decided to fire one bullet at the $100, $50 and $33 GPP for Friday’s slate. I followed the same approach that Aaron and I talked through during the weekend at The Farmers when he took second and then first in back to back days in the $100 GPP.

I started by narrowing my list to Monterrey Peninsula golfers. This seems obvious, but plenty of people do not take this simple step which is why we are always going to be in a good situation on these events. Just a few mistakes by our opponents is all we need to turn the tide in our favor. I do not even care if it works out for other owners. We are playing the numbers here and over time, using golfers on an easier course is going to pay off.

Next, I started at the bottom of the salary chart to see where I could target players to gain cap space at the top. I settled in on Chesson Hadley and Lanto Griffin. Hadley finished well last year at PB for the US Open and has the type of approach game to give us upside on these short courses and shot well in the first round at Spyglass. Lanto fit well after a strong start at Spyglass as well. With eight Top-25 finishes on the season, I was willing to roll the dice after seeing him handle the toughest course well. From there I worked my way up to Kevin Streelman, a course horse where you knew he was going to be really good or awful based on how he started out considering that he entered the week ice cold. After a great start, I was sold and that left me with enough funds at the top to grab some bigger names.

I wanted DJ at the top of my team. Again, you never know how a golfer will perform after playing the week prior overseas, but DJ opened with an encouraging first round so I figured there was a good chance for him to make a run. I used the same logic with Phil Mickelson. I knew he would either contend or be terrible so when he played well Thursday, like Streelman, I disregarded much of other poor recent form and focused more on what we’ve seen him do at this event over the years. I rounded out my team with Paul Casey whose game is a great fit for these short courses where precision iron play is in demand.

I ended up winning the $100 GPP, took second in the $50 and 4th in the $33. I obviously won my cash games with that team as well and made a nice profit with my 50 teams in the $10, though DJ and Casey blowing their bogey free rounds late kept me off of a potentially huge payday. We had a great time sweating it out together in the Slack chat room for the event. I was so excited to share my results, but then heartbroken for Brian Gallucci who just needed Streelman to not 3 putt on the last hole of the day to win $10,000 in the $10 and of course, he proceeded to do exactly that, which dropped him to 4th for $1k.

All in all, the showdowns saved me last week. On the GPP side, I was down just slightly for the week, but my cash team took it on the nose and I only had 3/6 play the final round. I still could have cashed had I made the right decision between Day and Casey at the top. I felt like it was a very close call and ended up with Casey which killed me as he fired an 81 in the final round to fall to near the bottom of the leaderboard. What would have been about a 60% loss for the week ended up being a sizable gain overall with the Showdown winnings.

I am not normally one that loves Showdown contests, but if I feel like I have a small edge that I can take advantage of, I will go after it. Remember that for these four events: RSM Classic, The American Express, Farmers Insurance Open and Pebble Beach. Throughout the rest of the year, I will likely only take my shots at these events when I see weather patterns that I can take advantage of, specifically the winds. I never like trying to play around a storm. What looks like a big advantage can quickly turn against you if there are prolonged delays so you have to be careful in attempts to outmaneuver the weather.