The Daily Spin – DraftKings Preview – WGC Mexico Championship

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Recap

We had a great week at Riviera as is usually the case when we get a strong field that is ‘chalk’ full of value. I love tough courses that really challenge the field as there are a lot less fluky types of finishes where you get a leaderboard full of names that you would never have expected at the start of the tournament. During the summer months, we will see plenty of tournaments where players shoot -20 or better, but that will never be the case with Riviera and it means that our careful evaluation of each player’s strengths and weaknesses tends to be rewarded with a winning week for our DFS endeavors.

At the top, I have to give myself a big pat on the back for my call on Adam Scott as an outright winner at 28-1 odds, marking my second win of the calendar year since we launched our new weekly betting column. I think he would have been a more popular play had he not been coming off of an eight week layoff. He won in Australia in his most recent start prior to Riviera, but whenever a player is off for more than about four weeks, enthusiasm dries up quickly and punters look for reasons to hesitate or stay away. One of the things that I noticed that I shared in my article last week was that Scott has been taking more time off between events over the last year. I have heard him talk in interviews about how this helped him to feel fresh and rejuvenated coming back for the next event and in 2019, it really paid dividends as he played some of the most consistent golf of his career throughout the year. He’s always mentioned how much he likes playing at Riviera and with his putting game seemingly intact and playing on Poa grass where he’s been at his best, it felt like we were getting good value at an event where we see the same elite names rising to the top of the board every year.

Cash games ended up being very successful for the week. I always love getting to the end of the second round on Friday afternoon and knowing that we have locked up a win for the week. Out of 24 names that I listed as cash game plays, only four missed the cut. JT played poorly both days which certainly was surprising as we never expect that sort of effort from him, but have seen it now in two of his last three starts. Bubba, Sungjae and Niemann all managed to bogey the final hole on Friday to miss the cut by one shot so if you failed to win in cash games last week, it was likely due to being gutted by one or two of those players in the worst way imaginable.

On the GPP side of things, I ended up heartbroken for the week. At the end of the second round on Friday, my single entry $200 team was at the top of the board going into the weekend. Of course, I did not have Hideki on my team and knew in the back of my head as soon as he recorded a miraculous birdie on 18 to slide into the weekend, that a big rally would be on the way on Saturday. What I did not account for was how poorly my entire team would respond over the last two rounds. JB Holmes  played 14 straight rounds of beautiful golf and is usually very good at Riviera. He shot a birdie free round of 76 on Saturday to lose points for my team. Justin Rose was the #1 golfer in the world not too long ago, but he looks nothing like that now and was actually worse than Holmes that last two rounds as he shot 74/75 to close out a brutal weekend after starting off so well.

The real kick in the groin for me was watching Collin Morikawa on shot tracker on the 11th hole on Sunday. He reached the Par 5 in three shots and had a 22 foot birdie putt which would have kept him in contention to win the tournament. Obviously, you know he did not make the putt. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Yes, the poa greens at Riviera are some of the toughest on tour every year, but to 5 putt?!?!?? I stopped checking my phone for updates after that. Paul Casey fell back. Kuchar coughed up the lead and DJ was not able to seize the opportunity in front of him to make a move in the final round. I still managed to more than slightly double my money for that contest for the week, but to see $25k drop to $500 left me feeling frustrated at the end of what was otherwise a very successful week, particularly since Scott was a core play for me, but I ended up leaning towards the very affordable DJ instead for my single bullet GPP team.

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