The Daily Spin – DraftKings Preview – Tour Championship

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Recap

The US Open showed up a couple of weeks early and gave us another incredible finish that came down to my top two plays of the week in DJ and Jon Rahm. From my reading during the week and the quotes from the players, I knew the course was going to be a challenge, but I had no idea just how taxing it was going to be as players battled to get below par and many golfers went entire rounds without even anything close to a birdie opportunity. It was a battle of attrition from start to finish and I felt like for the most part, my read for the week was pretty good. If you are looking at US Open style of courses, particularly ones like this, I think you need to just suck it up and play DJ, especially if he is in any kind of form. His game is built for these tougher tracks and when his mind is locked in, he is tough to beat. Though he came up short on Sunday, it took a special performance from Jon Rahm, capped off by a miracle putt on the first playoff hole to take him out.

It is hard to put into words just how well Jon Rahm played over the weekend. After starting out by shooting a 75/71 the first two rounds, he shot -10 the final two rounds and even overcame a ridiculous penalty where he picked up his ball without marking it on Saturday. Where most players hit the wall with a bad round and did little to fight back, Rahm played with incredible heart, moved himself into position to make a move after Saturday and played nearly mistake free on Sunday with the round of the week, posting a 64. This will not be the last time we see DJ and Rahm duel for a title.

In terms of lineup builds, it was definitely a week to go with stars and scrubs, both for cash and GPP purposes. Position points were of massive importance this week so having players near the top of the board was one of the only ways to gain points on the field for DK points with birdies being at a premium. I was not surprised by the names that finished in the playoff this week, but what did surprise me was that there were 10 golfers from 7500 and down finished inside the Top-20 for DK points. If you played a balanced team for cash games, you really needed to have Tony Finau or Hideki Matsuyama (or both) leading the way. I had Tony who made a great run on Sunday to work his way up to 5th place, but missing out on a chalky Hideki hurt.

My cash team looked completely dead after Saturday afternoon. I texted Jeff with an image of where my cash roster stood going into the final round and was near last place in every double up that I had entered. I thought, well, at least it did not come down to one player that I had swapped at the last minute. However, late on Sunday as I checked my scores, I saw that my players had found a little life. Tony played really well. Berger and Scheffler made runs, but then fell back. Palmer shot -3 and Steele shot -1. Unfortunately, Harris English shot +3 to finish up which would hurt me. With not many holes remaining, my team was somehow still in position for a win. I just needed Hideki to fall back a little bit and have DJ beat out Rahm who was higher owned in cash games. Unfortunately, Hideki found a birdie on 15 and managed to get up and down on consecutive holes to end his round and Niemann made a long par save to end his round so I was not able to move up enough to be profitable for the week and only made back about half of my entry fees for the week as I won in some contests, but did not get there in my bigger buy-ins.

The big lesson heading into the US Open is that if the course is going to play that tough, paying up in cash games for the star you want might be a better way to go than normal. Of course, if you whiffed and did not go with Rahm or DJ as suggested, you likely struggled as JT and Bryson badly underperformed and Rory fell back on Sunday out of the Top-10. I played for the upside at the WGC FedEx St Jude in using JT and it worked well. I went balanced this past weekend and it came up a little short. While this applies more to the 70 player fields at WGC events, the BMW and the early season Asian events as opposed to the short field no-cut events like the TOC, Hero and Tour Championship, it is definitely something to keep in mind for your builds, though this course was so tough that I think outside of the handful of stars that did well, we would likely see a much different leaderboard if that event were played ten times at that course.

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