The Daily Spin – Hero World Challenge

The final event of the 2016 calendar year takes us to the Bahamas for the Hero World Challenge, an event that typically does not draw too much attention. However, this year things are a little bit different with the re-emergence of one, Tiger Woods who returns to the PGA Tour after spending the last 16 months on the sidelines hobbled by injuries that finally forced him to take an extended amount of time off to get taken care of after years of punishing his body on and off the golf course.

The timing of Tiger’s return is interesting in that he will be joining a small field of just 18 golfers at Albany in the Bahamas where he is a member. While the pressure of making the cut is off in a cut free event, the field of players is elite and Tiger will face the distinct possibility of embarrassing himself over 4 days as the rest of the field laps him. Although the event was played at a different course in 2014, Tiger did finish tied for last place the last time he played in this event. However, for Tiger, this is ‘his tournament’ as the tournament serves as a benefit for the Tiger Woods Foundation, putting a little extra pressure on Tiger to show up and do his best to get through the weekend.

The last time Tiger was set to return was at the Safeway Open just a couple of months ago. He pulled out the week of the event, largely due to health concerns as his body was simply not ready to make a return to competitive golf. My best guess for Tiger this week is that he is still probably not totally ready to play at a high level currently, but that he feels that making an appearance here is important for the event and for his foundation to make additional money. My thought is that he will be able to get through the weekend, but will probably be playing cautiously so as to not do any further damage before next year when he makes a real push to be competitive on the PGA Tour again. Tiger will be out there for the crowds and for the sponsors, but he is no threat to win the tournament this week and I would be shocked if he showed up anywhere in near the top half of the leaderboard. If you are considering playing him this week, just stay away from him. Despite the fact that it is a no cut event, with only 18 golfers to choose from, Tiger will actually have some owners this week, probably in the 15% range. This means that even if you make a hero call and Tiger somehow comes out of nowhere to make a little noise, you will not even get the full benefit that usually comes from rostering a low owned player in full events. Just say NO to Tiger this week.

In terms of strategy, I will be participating in very few cash games or GPPs this week. If you miss out on owning the winner, you are probably not going to win your cash games and your entire fortune is going to be based on not having your worst player finish at or near the bottom of the standings. In GPPs, the events are of a decent size, but there is going to be tremendous overlap among the rosters submitted so even if you do happen to hit the nuts, more than likely, you are going to be splitting your profits with 47 other winners. Definitely get into a few games this week as the tournament is going to be a lot of fun to watch with all of the stars that showed up, but the edge here is really small so be cautious. For GPPs, the one tactic that you can use to differentiate your rosters is to use less than the entire $50,000 of salary available. With the high caliber of players in the field, there are not any players that I would completely rule out (other than Tiger) so using every dollar should not be a big constraint. However, even this approach will not necessarily cause you to create unique lineups as the field is so small that plenty of people will come up with similar combinations.

The course itself should provide for what will either be a very entertaining viewing experience or one where purists will roll their eyes at how little the field is challenged. The length comes in right around 7,400 yards and it is a Par 72 course. What makes this course different is that there are five Par 3 holes and five Par 5 holes. Many of the Par 5 holes are reachable in two shots so there should be a ton of scoring for the bigger hitters in the field. Water will play a factor this week as well as brush and sand as the setup is a links style course meaning that getting off of the fairway or missing greens could hurt players, but with the winning score reaching -25 a year ago when Bubba Watson cruised to a win, I am not anticipating too many players getting far off track. The greens at Albany are Bermuda so be aware of that when looking at putting statistics for each player.

Key Stats from our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better %: 20%
Par 5 Scoring: 10%
Proximity: 10%
Scrambling: 10%

If you did not notice yet, we debuted our lineup generator this week for both the US and Euro Tour. We spent a lot of time working on it and getting the bugs out, so hopefully you will like it. We wanted to create something that was simple, easy to use and could export everything to DK through the use of a CSV file. We have not produced a tutorial yet, but it will be coming in the weeks ahead before the first event of 2017. The key to using it if it is your first experience with a lineup generator is to be sure to use every roster spot (6 x whatever number of lineups you choose to build) and to then make sure you stay under the total salary cap (for 100 lineups, 100 X $50,000 = $5,000,000). As long as you do those two things, you should not run into any issues with it. Play around with it and let us know if you’re seeing issues that we missed. We are really excited to have a new designer that we are working with and he is really capable in terms of delivering on the vision that we have for the site. You are going to see some great new developments and tools added to the site in 2017. With the new tools and a new partnership in the works, Fantasy Golf Insider is primed for a big year ahead.

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The recommendations for today are not going to be tremendously extensive. Since there are only 18 players in the field this week, it would be silly to write up more than a handful of players for you to build around. What I looked for this week were guys that have kept up their game throughout the fall. Some players have kept on top of things since the end of the Tour Championship. Others players have enjoyed the time off and played very little competitive golf coming into the week. With finishing position being a little less relevant this week (all 18 players will receive position points) we can focus on players who can score and score often. With just a single year of tournament history to go off of, I am not going to put too much weighting into what we saw last year. I will take form over history at this stage and there are several players that are coming in with great form.

Hideki Matsuyama – $9,900 – Midway through last season, Hideki started to struggle a little bit and after being one of the highest owned players week in and week out, owners started to drift away from him when he missed three cuts in four starts. Fortunately, by the end of the FedEx Cup, he had largely regained his footing. He has remained busy throughout the fall with a 2nd place finish and three wins in his last four starts. Hideki is a superb ball striker with excellent irons. As with all events, it will be Hideki’s putter that wins or loses the event for him. He seemed to improve down the stretch last year so if he can just be average on the greens this week, he should be in contention.

Henrik Stenson – $9,400 – Stenson skipped much of the end of the FedEx Cup, choosing to rest up an injured knee for The Ryder Cup and then to finish the Race to Dubai where he claimed the overall title for the European Tour for the season. Stenson finished in the Top-10 in each of his last three starts on the Euro Tour. Like Matsuyama, Stenson is great off the tee and in hitting a lot of greens. Also like Hideki, he is wildly inconsistent with his putter. Stenson should be a strong play this week as he can score on the Par 5 holes, but not get tripped up by the additional Par 3 holes. Stenson might not normally be a closer, but after winning the season long title in Europe, he comes into the event with a lot of momentum.

Brooks Koepka – $8,900 – One of our favorite players, particularly in a no cut event, Koepka enters the week on the heels of a win and a 2nd place finish in his last two starts. Brooks did reasonably well last year here finishing in 7th place. Brooks can be a little wild off the tee, but his tee to green game is excellent and unlike Stenson and Hideki, Brooks has a tremendous putter. For Brooks, the key to success will be in avoiding blowup holes as he tends to come unhinged for multiple holes at a time when things are not going his way.

Russell Knox – $7,400 – Knox just finished up a breakout season this fall and kicked off this season with three straight Top-10 finishes. Knox is not a huge hitter off the tee, but he is accurate, hits a ton of greens and is precise with his iron play. He is not much of a putter, but did improve last season to be just below average rather than the way he was in 2015 when he hemorrhaged strokes every week on the greens. He has made enough improvements in his game over the last year that he seems like a bargain for the price this week.

Emiliano Grillo – $6,900 – Grillo was solid all year in his first season on the PGA Tour and managed to record a win to go along with ten Top-25 finishes last season. In his first year on tour, Grillo proved to be a solid ball striker that kept the ball in the fairway, even if his putter did betray him at times on the greens. Grillo did manage to rate well in making birdies and was above average in Par 5 Scoring. In terms of consistency, he looks to be the best available player below $7k this week.

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