The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – Travelers Championship

Welcome to the other side of the major tournament portion of 2016. The PGA crowned its fourth first time major champion this year as Jimmy Walker held off Jason Day who put extra pressure on him by sinking an eagle putt on 18 to force Walker to at least par the final hole. It was a resounding statement for the much maligned Walker who is best know for playing really well early in the season before crumbling on courses that tend to demand that players be somewhat accurate to avoid trouble. The Big 4 disappointed us this week as only Jason Day made a strong showing by finishing in 2nd place while Jordan Spieth was in the Top-20 and DJ and Rory McIlroy each bizarrely missed the cut on Friday afternoon. Golf threw out a bit of a curve to us this year as most expected the major to be dominated by the top players in the game, but were instead upstaged by new champions. DJ was not exactly a surprise at the US Open, but considering his track record at major tournaments, it was still an enormous milestone and should take the pressure off of him in the years ahead.

Our tournament was really a tale of two halves. Thursday and Friday started in nightmarish fashion, particularly on the GPP side of things as one player after another got off to a rough start and many key players missed the cut badly for us, specifically Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Matt Kuchar and Sergio Garcia. Had someone told me at the start of the week that just one of those players would miss the cut, I would have been a little surprised. If someone had told me all four would miss the cut, I would have been in shock. This helped lead to a situation where I returned only a small amount of my initial investment on the GPP side. By late afternoon Friday, I was not so certain on whether or not our cash games would return any money to us either. Fortunately, after the cut on Friday, I could see a path by which at least one and maybe two optimal lineups would survive. By Sunday, even the third lineup moved just into the money and managed to hold onto its position giving us a miraculous clean sweep for the week. A week that looked like it would go down as one of our worst in the last couple of years ended up being profitable by the time the final putt fell.

These next couple of weeks, I am advising players to tighten their purse strings a bit and hold off on getting too carried away with their bankroll exposure until after the Olympics. The field this week for The Travelers Championship is not too deep and while there is a reasonable collection of bigger names at the top, the value tier has mostly been cleaned out for the week. When this happens, as I have written about before, players that are normally in the lower salary tier get bumped up to the middle and those in the middle get moved up closer to the top. Most of these players are just as likely to make the cut at $7,700 as they were at $6,500, but given the fact that there are not as many reliable names to choose from in the middle tier, they appear to be more attractive. In weeks like this, I tend to execute a stars and scrubs strategy for my cash games with two very reliable players at the top, two middle tier picks in the value range and then drop down to the scrubs range for my last two picks. Weeks like this remind me of the European Tour where 4/6 through the cut is usually enough to get us paid so the aim is 5/6, but if we end up only getting four through, we want it to be a very strong four players who have some upside beyond just making the cut.

The course for the week is TPC River Highlands in Connecticut. It is one of the shortest tracks on the tour measuring in at just over 6,800 yards and playing as a Par 70. What makes this event interesting is that there is no single style of play that leads to success here. Bubba Watson has the most dominant track record here over the years with two wins and multiple Top-10 finishes over the last eight years, but the course has also seen its share of shorter hitters who win the tournament on the performance of their putter: Ken Duke, Freddie Jacobson and Kevin Streelman to name a few. For the bombers, the big key to success is to be able to crush the two Par 5 holes and the shorter Par 4 holes as well. If they can shorten the course and put up a lot of birdies on those holes, it will put pressure on the shorter hitters to really be on their game with their putter if they wish to stay competitive. For the shorter hitters, their approach game needs to be on point and they simply cannot get away with missing shorter putts. last season, Bubba Watson won it with his long drives, but was also the best putter in the tournament so the narrative may not be quite so obvious to some while doing their research.

The key statistics this week were gained through our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics who run regression models of every course to parse out the data that we share with you each week:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better %: 20%
Par 4 Scoring: 15%
Prox 150-175: 10%
Driving Distance: 10%

Only a few players is the field check all of the boxes well which just goes to show you that there are many ways to find success this week. Be sure to get a good look at tournament history as well since many of the golfers here this week have been coming to the event for a number of years and it seems to be the sort of event where when a player finds success, he is usually able to do it here on multiple occasions over the years. We did not have much success with the GPPs last week so let’s aim to turn that around this week. Also, I am still in need of a Wacky Wager opponent this week. Who wants to step up to take me down and win some swag?

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What a wild week to complete the major tournament events for the season. When Friday afternoon rolled around, it appeared that I was in danger of not receiving an e-mail from DraftKings letting me know that I had won for the week…my winnings literally stood at $0 by late afternoon after making a significant buy-in for the week. I knew pretty early that GPPs were going to be a bust, which was fine since I went heavy in cash and some pretty unlikely suspects broke our backs, but we never lose in cash games at the majors so finishing out the major with a goose egg would have been unacceptable. The worst part of it was that in our optimal lineups, we had five roster spots with a missed cut: 2 from DJ, 2 from Kuchar and one from Sergio. Having done the research and going over the players and numbers for days on end, I was willing to see the ship go down based on the players we selected. Sometimes the perfect storm happens and you have to live with it.

However, by late Saturday, I could sense things were on the verge of turning around. Branden Grace started to turn his game around and for the most part, the rest of our rosters held steady and with the tremendous amount of carnage endured by the vast majority of fantasy owners, our three teams all vaulted into the money late in the final round on Sunday and when Henrik Stenson melted down late, it locked up a clean sweep. I have to say, few victories have felt so sweet this summer, particularly after hitting a slew of poorly timed withdrawals from key players over the last two months. It is never easy to win, but the WDs are absolute killers and in the short run, they can drive us all crazy. Fortunately, we are long term players and in being meticulous about managing our bankroll and carefully selecting the contests that we play, we can ride out the downturns until things get back on track again.

This week, it is important to lighten up your exposure to the event. It is fun to try to parlay the results from last weekend into another big week, but the field is light and that means that anything can and will happen and I anticipate players from all salary tiers being represented outside of the Top 70 come Friday afternoon. The philosophy this week is that there is little reason to pay up for a lot of the value players and even some of the top tier players. Stick to the elite names for the top spots on your rosters and take advantage of the value being offered in lower and middle $6,000 range. Some players received a pretty inflated bump based upon a strong tournament history while others went almost ignored or even dropped in price.

OPTIMAL LINEUPS

NOTE: PAUL CASEY WAS REMOVED FROM ONE OF THE THREE OPTIMAL LINEUPS DUE TO A TOE INJURY THAT HE POSTED ABOUT ON TWITTER. IT MAY OR MAY NOT AFFECT HIS PLAY, BUT GIVEN HIS HISTORY OF WITHDRAWALS, WE THOUGHT IT PRUDENT TO EXERCISE CAUTION.

Matt Kuchar – 10600
Webb Simpson – 10000
Tyrell Hatton – 7700
Chad Campbell – 6200
Marc Leishman – 8200
Hudson Swafford – 6900
 
Zach Johnson -10200
Marc Leishman – 8200
Webb Simpson – 10000
Keegan Bradley – 7600
Justin Thomas – 7800
Chez Reavie – 6200
 
Bubba Watson – 12300
Chad Campbell – 6200
Ryan Moore – 7800
Tyrell Hatton – 7700
Brian Harman – 7700
Tony Finau – 8300

Your GPP exposure each week should remain no higher than 20-25% of your bankroll exposure each week. If you want to chase a big score, play away, but for the most part, GPPs are very boom or bust and require a nearly perfect lineup in most of the larger events to make significant money. From what I can tell from folks who experience a lot of frustration with this game is that the ratio of play is typically getting flipped on its head so that the majority of exposure each week is with GPPs and maybe just a couple of cash games here and there. Trust me as a player who has taken several years of experience to learn, unless you hit a really big score early on, you will deplete your bankroll quickly using this method. Be patient with playing in smaller GPP events and keeping your focus on cash games and the results will follow, but it will take some time.

Our GPP player pool this week is focused on spreading out a little bit of our exposure once we get past our group of core players. I intentionally chose to fade certain players like Bubba Watson and Brooks Koepka at the top of the pricing structure this week as I think they are each going to be very highly owned and although I think the Bubba is capable of a Top-5 result, he just has looked so much less effective around the greens this season that I think the argument to fade is strong enough to keep me away this week. This is an event that I feel could be won by many different players in the field this week. There is not really one type of players that dominates which is a big reason why I have expanded our player pool by a few names this week. I wanted strong exposure to a couple of bigger names at the top and a couple of strong value players as well and then to try to gain exposure to as many other quality players in the middle and lower ranges as possible.

Unlike most weeks, I feel like there is a lot of value in the lower $6k and even $5k range this week so if you are really feeling a strong conviction towards rostering Bubba Watson, it is really easy to do so as the salary cap does not have to be a real issue this week. Being able to find players like Jamie Donaldson, Chad Campbell and Chez Reavie in the lower range makes it really easy to build a solid stars and scrubs lineup, although I do not necessarily think that is an approach you need to take this week. As this is a shorter course, where the studs that play have not been super dominant, outside of Bubba, I think a more balanced lineup could actually be a reasonable approach for GPPs this week.

PLAYER POOL

NOTE: PAUL CASEY WAS LOWERED FROM 60% TO 20% DUE TO A TOE INJURY THAT HE NOTED ON HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT THIS WEEK. GIVEN HIS HISTORY OF SUDDEN WDs, WE OPTED TO NOT BE OVERWEIGHT WITH HIM THIS WEEK.

CORE

Branden Grace – 70% ($11,600)
Tyrell Hatton – 70% ($7,700)
Chad Campbell – 60% ($6,200)
Jon Rahm – 40% ($9,800)
Brendan Steele – 30% ($8,500)
Ryan Moore – 30% ($7,800)

Our core group is a diverse mix this week with three players who have excellent track records and three who have limited experience at River Highlands. I really like Branden Grace this week as he has been excellent on similar course setups this season, finishing in the Top-10 at Baltusrol, Oakmont and of course winning The Heritage at Harbor Town earlier this season. He did miss the cut here in his first start at the event, but it came on the heels of a big emotional letdown in blowing a chance to win the US Open late in the final round and then turning around to travel across the country the next week. This week, there was minimal travel and Grace finished by moving up in the final round rather than falling back so he should be feeling good about his game. Grace is one of the best on tour in Par 4 scoring and with eleven Top-10 finishes and two wins this season in nineteen starts, I like his chances again this week.

Tyrell Hatton will probably end up being fairly popular this week and for good reason. The 24 year-old Brit has been really good this year and has six Top-10 finishes and only two missed cuts in sixteen starts split between the US and Europe. He hits it over 290 yards on average off the tee, finds the green 70% of the time and is an above average putter. He has posted back to back Top-10 finishes at The Open and The PGA Championship and I feel like we are getting a bargain for the price this week.

Chad Campbell took excellent care of us a couple of weeks ago at the Canadian Open when I was in on him at 100% and I see no reason not to stick with him this week after seeing his price drop down to $6,200 in a similar type of field and on a course that he should be able to handle well. He has made six straight cuts on tour this year and six of his last eight at River Highlands with a handful of Top-25 finishes. He is a key player for us this week as using him at such a high clip opens up a lot of other options for the rest of our rosters.

Jon Rahm made the cut here last year and finished 64th, which is not overly impressive, but his performances since then have been incredible at both the collegiate and professional level. He has three Top-10 finishes in five starts this year and also fared very well at The US Open where he finished 23rd. Rahm is a tremendous young talent who has massive tee to green skills and is also very talented on the greens. I am a little worried that he may DeChambeau a bit (my new term) at some point, but I have really liked what I have seen from him so far and think he will be an elite player on tour in the years ahead.

Brendan Steele has been his usual frustrating self for owners over the past couple of tournaments as his rock bottom price attracted hordes of owners over the last couple of events. Steele then promptly missed the cut at Royal Troon and Baltusrol in disappointing fashion. He should be able to rebound this week at River Highlands where he has made the cut in four of his five starts and has four Top-25 finishes. He will need his putter to hold up if he wants to earn his fifth Top-25 finish, but he has the tools to score on the Par 5 holes so he should have plenty of birdie opportunities.

Ryan Moore is the proverbial course horse this week. River Highlands has always been good to him and he has finished in the Top-7 in four of his last six starts. Moore is accurate off the tee, has a solid approach game is one of the better putters in the field this week. His season has not been all that impressive since April, but this is a great course for him to get back on track as he sets up for it really well and his recent lack of form offers us a nice discount on his price.

SECONDARY

Zach Johnson – 30% ($10,200)
Webb Simpson – 30% ($10,000)
Paul Casey- 20% ($9,900)
Marc Leishman – 20% ($8,200)
Brian Harman – 20% ($7,700)
Hudson Swafford – 20% ($6,900)
John Senden – 20% ($6,700)
Charley Hoffman – 15% ($8,100)
Justin Thomas – 15% ($7,800)
Soren Kjeldsen – 15% ($7,700)
Keegan Bradley – 15% ($7,600)
Chez Reavie – 15% ($6,200)
Jamie Donaldson – 15% ($5,900)

TERTIARY

Tony Finau – 10% ($8,300)
Martin Laird – 10% ($8,000)
Freddie Jacobson – 10% ($6,800)
Aaron Baddeley – 5% ($6,900)
Russell Henley – 5% ($6,400)
Chris Stroud – 5% ($6,300)
Tim Wilkinson – 5% ($5,300)

Good Luck!

-Myz

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