The Daily Spin – Hero World Challenge

The Daily Spin – Hero World Challenge

Welcome to the final event of the year for The Daily Spin for PGA. I have had so much fun covering golf during 2023, but I am also happy to have a nice break for a couple of weeks. Do not fret. We have plenty of coverage coming up in the weeks ahead. In fact, if you leave now, you are going to miss out on some of the best offerings that we have all year in terms of the GPP summary that I put together each year and even more importantly, Jeff’s Crystal Ball for 2024 which has made those folks that bet on golf a lot of money over the last few years so be sure to stick with us as there great things ahead and the 2024 winter season is just around the corner so it will not be long before we are ramping up our coverage again. I can already picture myself walking along the fairways at Torrey Pines at the end of January, catching a well earned break from the brutal winter that is about to blow into Minnesota over the next few weeks where it will remain for the next 3-4 months.

The Hero World Challenge is a Tiger Woods hosted event that is played each year down at the Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas and Tiger is in the field this week and seemingly healthy for the first time in the last couple of years after his accident nearly two years ago. The tournament has been played here since 2015 and has provided a fun respite from some of the weaker field events we have been forced to endure over the last three months. This event starts on Thursday this week so you should have plenty of time to get your lineups ready to go.

Tiger put this event together to feature some of the top players in the world in a beautiful place to play a few rounds golf around the holidays and close out the year in a relaxed manner. It has a very LIV feel to it. Sorry, had to go there 🙂 The course is the easiest layout we are going to see all year. It’s unconventional with five Par 5 holes and five Par 3 holes. It’s wide open and the only defense is the wind so scoring tends to come easy and we’ll almost assuredly see something around -20 to -25 for the winning score once again this weekend. It’s a Par 72 course that plays at around 7300 yards. We are looking for the bombers this week. As long as the winds do not look too awful, this is a driver course which is why we have seen big hitters win here each year. Par 5 scoring will be key and the greens are Bermuda so look for those players that tend to putt well during the southeast stretch of events each year where Bermuda is predominant.

A couple of quick words on strategy this week. This event is a very tough one for both GPP and cash games. The 20 man field makes it very challenging to build unique teams. There are a few obvious squads that really stand out this week depending on who you start with at the top. The trick is to make sure that if you are going to multi enter the bigger contests, that you do your best to make some unique teams. This is the sort of event where owners will use every dollar more often than not. The only way to be unique this week is to hold back a few dollars of salary. There are a lot of weeks where I do this myself as I find that it does not tend to hurt my results by sparing a few dollars, but this week, the field is so strong that I really do not think you give up anything by opening it up. You do not need to build all of your rosters under the total cap, give yourself a wide range on the cap on the lineup builder and it will kick out plenty of teams well under the limit.

This is not an event to get too overextended. Like the Tour Championship, have some fun and build a few teams.  If you are a cash game player, feel free to throw in a team in the smaller contests. There is not any need to get crazy. If you do not hit the winner on your cash team, you are going to be in a tough spot if it is someone that is even remotely highly owned, which almost every player outside of the bottom few will be for the week. There is not a tremendous edge in cash games with this small of a field. There is no cut which means that it is very tough to make any mistakes at all when building your team. The whole week revolves around being overloaded on the winning player, uncovering the one or two deep value plays in the $6k range that hit and avoiding the golfers that finish at the bottom of the leaderboard.

My preference is to also focus in on golfers that have stayed active throughout the fall, though this fall has truly been an abyss when it comes to having events that bring out the best players in the world. There are some noteworthy players that played through the DP World Tour Championship and stayed sharp the last few months while many of the bigger names decided to relax and played very little outside of the Ryder Cup. Those golfers that played somewhat consistently are going to have the advantage this week in my eyes. My hope is that the appearance of Tiger in the field helps to elevate the competitive spirits of the golfers in the field who want to make a strong impression on their host.

 

Course

• Albany Golf Course
• Par 72
• 7,302 yards
• Bermuda Grass

Albany is definitely a birdie maker course with five Par 5 and five Par 3 holes. The fairways are generous and easy to hit and the only real defense of the course is if the winds are heavy as it is a coastal course and we have had a few years where the winning score was ‘only’ in the high teens as opposed to the mid twenties.

Length is the key this week off the tee. The par-5s play between 548 and 603 yards so getting to the green in two will be much easier for the big hitters who should have plenty of eagle and birdie looks. Unlike some of the other courses that we see on tour with tighter setups, players will be driver heavy at Albany with the wide fairways, and in years without heavy winds, we’ve seen a player like Bubba Watson storm the field. With only 20 golfers in the field, placement points are not as crucial for DK scoring purposes so you’ll primarily want to target those players that can rack up birdies or eagles for point accumulation.

Approach shots here will usually be close enough to hit a wedge in outside of the longer Par 3 holes. The greens are Bermuda grass and on the smaller side this week and they slope away from the pin on all sides, so accuracy with the irons is important as greens are tough to hold with all the sloping. If the winds are gusting, it will be tougher to hold the greens so solid short game play around the greens is also an important factor.

 

Course Comps

• Kapalua
• Sea Island
• Corales Golf Club
• Grand Reserve Golf Club
• Port Royal
• Concession
• TPC Louisians
• TPC Twin Cities

 

Field

The field is always strong, though very small at just 20 golfers and without a cut. Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele opted not to play after a bruising fall schedule where Xander played in one tournament and Cantlay did not play at all beyond the Ryder Cup. The rest of the field is very respectable and certainly an upgrade in talent over anything we have been forced to endure over the last three months of the fall schedule. Tiger Woods is back this week and is healthy enough to the point that he says his aim is to play about once a month in 2024 which would be a huge boon to the flailing PGA Tour that could face more departures in the wake of ending litigation with the LIV Tour, paving the way for elite players like Jon Rahm to get a massive payday while avoiding the sort of negative press that others endured two years ago. What is noteworthy this week is how little activity some of these players have had the last few months. With the shift to a calendar schedule and the way that invites were doled out to elevated events in 2024 (Top-50 finishers in the FedEx Cup playoffs for 2023), there has not been much motivation to jump back into the fall events like previous years. This means that a large portion of the field have not played much competitive golf since the Tour Championship. Those golfers that have remained active should be prioritized this week along with those who have a lot of experience at this course and event over the last decade.

 

Weather

• Bahamas Forecast – Wind, waves & weather forecast New Providence / Coral Harbor – Windfinder

I do not see anything too noteworthy for the weather this week. With only 20 golfers in the field, there are obviously no AM or PM waves to consider this week as the window for all players to tee off will be relatively tight. I see nothing significant to report for winds at this time. Thursday and Friday the winds look to be around 15 mph and the final two rounds it dips to 12 mph. Weather should not have a big impact on the outcome this week.

 

Key Stats

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

 

Player Pool

Core

Viktor Hovland	10800
Scottie Scheffler	10700
Collin Morikawa	10000
Justin Thomas	8400
Rickie Fowler	8000
Wyndham Clark	7300
Sam Burns	7100
Sepp Straka	6700
Brian Harman	6400

 

Viktor Hovland – Viktor is the two time, defending champion at this event and has done little to diminish himself in recent months. He won the Memorial, the BMW and the Tour Championship, helped the Europeans to a dominant win at the Ryder Cup, added a 5th place finish at the BMW PGA Championship and then finished 2nd at the DP World Tour Championship. He’s in amazing form, he’s been active and he’s crushed this course in both career starts. I am not sure how much more of a buy a player could be coming into a tournament than Viktor this week, especially in a small field and one where his salary is not even that high relative to others.

Scottie Scheffler – Scottie completed another strong season, though I was a little disappointed over the summer after a really amazing start that included a win at the WMPO and The Players Championship. There were plenty of Top-10 finishes the rest of the way, but he could not close anything out again and although he finishes 6th at the Tour Championship, he really did not play that well. The Ryder Cup was a disappointment for Scottie and he took the fall off after that until now. His tee to green game is still amazing, but his short game fell apart in 2023 and his putting is worse than anyone in the field by a long shot. However, he’s finished 2nd here the last two years and this is the type of course he can carve up from tee to green. These greens are a bit of a joke so he should not be challenged in making plenty of birdies.

Collin Morikawa – 2023 was a weird year for Morikawa. It was expected that he would continue his ascent towards being one of the best players in the world, but after gagging away the Tournament of Champions, he had a lot of ups and downs during the year. He seemed to rally towards the end of the year, but it did not really come together until he won in Japan a month ago at the ZOZO Championship. He’s finished 6th and 5th here the last two years and he is far and away the best player in my comp course model, gaining over 2.3 strokes per round in eleven starts. His tee to green game is sharp, it is just a matter of keeping the putts rolling in this week as that is a spot where he still struggles.

Justin Thomas – JT struggled through most of 2023 and missed out on making the FedEx Cup playoffs by one stroke after coming up just short at the Wyndham Championship. He seems to have turned a corner since then with a couple of Top-5 finishes this fall, one on the PGA Tour and one on the DP World Tour. He will look to build on that this week playing with his good friend, Tiger Woods who he is paired with to start the week. He’s played here the last five years and finished in 5th place three straight times. His price being well below the elites in the field make him a compelling play as his salary drives the play and makes him easy to stack with another player above $10k.

Rickie Fowler – Rickie put his career back on track in 2023, finally getting back into the winner’s circle at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. My one concern is that he did slow down after getting that win. We have seen this happen to players over the years. They break a long winless drought and then have some trouble maintaining that high level of play. Rickie has not fallen off in the same way as many others, but there has certainly been a dropoff that feels like a long sigh of relief. Again, he has not been bad the last few months, just not quite as strong as during the spring and summer where it felt like he was in the Top-10 almost every week. In five career starts here, he’s never finished worse than ninth, four times in the Top-5 and won back in 2018.

Wyndham Clark -Wydham enjoyed a life changing year in 2023 with wins at the Wells Fargo and then the US Open. Now he gets to play with the big boys as a reward for his strong play. He did slow down a bit after winning the US Open, but finished up very strong with a 15th place finish at the BMW and a 3rd place finish at the Tour Championship. Though he has not played here, he’s been strong on comp courses gaining nearly a stroke per round in 16 career starts. He did not play any PGA events this fall, but did make a start on the DP World Tour and one in Japan, though neither finish was terribly impressive.

Sam Burns – Sam Burns is a master on Bermuda greens where he has enjoyed the most success in his career, gaining .3 more strokes per round on Bermuda than other surfaces. He can be maddeningly inconsistent at times, but has shown himself to be a brilliant ball striker when he’s at his best. He had six Top-10 finishes and a win this past season and though he was not great after winning the match play event, he finished up strong at the BMW and Tour Championship. He’s another player that we have not seen since the Ryder Cup, but his salary and very low salary drive this play. He finished 3rd here two years ago and is one of the few players that is considered mispriced based on our Odds vs Pricing chart this week.

Sepp Straka – As we scrape the bottom of the barrel, we need to find a couple of golfers to zero in on to fill out our rosters for cap relief. The hope here is that we can simply find a couple of players to finish around the Top-10 and I think Straka can be one of those names. His career numbers are a little deceptive. He was a new man this season with a win and two 2nd place finishes and played more consistently than at any other point in his career. Yes, he won the previous season as well, but he was still erratic in terms of making the cut. He finished 10th here last year and he played well this fall with a pair of Top-25 finishes on the DP World Tour.

Brian Harman – Harman had the best moment of his career this summer with an unlikely win at The Open Championship in July. He built much of that off of his short game which has been a strength for him his entire career. He’s been solid at comp courses throughout his career, though by no means is he bomber so gaining ground off the tee this week will likely be an issue. However, he’s great on Bermuda greens and scoring conditions should be ripe for low scores. He’s the most mispriced golfer in the Odds vs Pricing model so there is little downside in taking a shot with him this week.

 

Secondary

Max Homa	10100
Matthew Fitzpatrick	9200
Tony Finau	7600
Justin Rose	6900
Keegan Bradley	6800
Jason Day	6500