The Daily Spin – Optimal Lineups for The Safeway Open

Welcome to the 2016-2017 PGA season. After literally days of waiting, the off season is finally over and we are ready to get back into the fall swing season for golf over the next six weeks. It is always really exciting each year when the new season starts as we get an influx of new players to check out from the Web.com Tour and many of these young golfers will go on to do big things in 2017 so the sooner we become more familiar with their games, the more of an edge we will have over other fantasy owners that take the fall season off from golf to focus on NFL.

While I do believe that many of the new faces will do well in the months ahead, I am cautious at this stage to take big risks in figuring that out with my cash game rosters. There are a handful of new players that have already achieved some success on the PGA Tour through limited appearances in recent years so those are the names that you could look at initially, but for me, I am going to be taking a safe approach in Week 1 with players that we know well and who have been consistent cut makers for us over the past year. For GPP rosters this week, we are definitely going to open it up a little bit and test out some of the young new players.

If you have not been following the work of FGI columnist, Keagan Scott, he is our Web.com specialist and wrote a great preview piece this week covering many of the new players of the PGA Tour that graduated recently from the Web.com Tour. If all of the new names are a little overwhelming when you are looking at salaries for the first time, go back and check out Keagan’s stuff as it will provide you with a great crash course on the key names to know as this six week stretch unfolds.

The event itself is a good mix of top players, mid level pros and newcomers. The pricing is really reasonable for the players in the 7k-9k range this week and offers us a solid pool of players to work from in terms of building a balanced lineup. As the fall season wears on, we will be able to stretch into the 6k range to find a little bit of deep value, but this week, the formula was to grab one elite player and then fill in the rest our our cash rosters with cut makers and proven talent from the middle ranges. The first event of the year will be a little unpredictable, but getting five of six through the cut (with a couple of high finishers) should be more than enough to cash and we have plenty of good options to help put us into position.

As always, I never go all-in on any single player for PGA DFS. With golf, there is so much volatility that almost anyone is capable of missing a cut on a given week so to limit those ups and downs, I never take a player on more than two of my three cash game teams. I want to be sure that if one player falls apart before the cut that it does not poison my entire week. It is different than other sports in that you can take a score of essentially 0 in a cash lineup for football or MMA for a rostered player and still come out okay. With golf, missed cuts put you behind the eight ball in a hurry and anything short of excellent performances from your other players will be costly. This is why with most of our PGA lineups, the rosters will generally be pretty balanced during normal pricing weeks. We simply do not get the ‘last second, off the bench skill player at min pricing’ that can contribute the way a running back or wide receiver can in NFL DFS.

Below are the three optimal cash game rosters for the week that I built today with the other contributors on our staff. The first lineup was created directly from our model and was generated using the solve function on Excel. The other two were created based upon other favored players this week by our writers as well as those who showed up well in the model. Feel free to use or modify these lineups for yourself. They are built as a baseline for what to work off of each week in terms of the types of players we are most interested in for cash game purposes.

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Kevin Na – $9,900
Jhonnatan Vegas – $9,100
Jason Kokrak – $8,100
Hudson Swafford – $7,800
Charles Howell III – $7,600
Lucas Glover – $7,400

Jon Rahm – $10,200
Brendan Steele – $8,700
Tony Finau – $8,700
Wesley Bryan – $7,900
Charles Howell III – $7,600
Adam Hadwin – $7,100

Jon Rahm – $10,200
Brendan Steele – $8,700
Tony Finau – $8,300
Hudson Swafford – $7,800
Keegan Bradley – $7,700
Harris English – $7,300

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