The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – RBC Canadian Open (Updated)

Now that you have all had a chance to digest the picks a little bit earlier today, I wanted to share some thoughts for the week on the results from last week and to go over some points on strategy for this week. The Open came and went and although it looked like it was going to be a huge winning week at the outset for me, some players broke down over the weekend knocking down some rosters that looked excellent following the opening round.

On the positive side, all five core players made it through the cut with a couple of Top-10 finishers in Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia. Lee Westwood looked unimpressive early, but held ground and then fought back on Sunday to finish 22nd. Martine Kaymer looked like he would contend and was tied for 2nd place midway through action on Friday before an awful triple bogey at the start of the back nine ruined any chance he had of contending and dropped him to 37th. Adam Scott was the ultimate disappointment for us though as after a decent opening round, he fell back the rest of the tournament and finished outside of the Top-50. The progress that he showed early in the year with his putter seems to be over now as he could not drop a putt to get any momentum going in the early rounds and then struggled mightily on Saturday in falling back from the pack.

On a positive note, we had nice share counts of both Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson. Phil played about as well as he possibly could at a major tournament, finishing eleven strokes in front of 3rd place finisher, JB Holmes, but it was not nearly enough as he still lost to Henrik Stenson by three strokes. Believe it or not, Stenson was the last cut I made for my GPP picks last week. In re-listening to our show last week, I actually took time to bring him up and noted his solid play, particularly overseas….and then I cut him late. Fortunately, he showed up in our top optimal lineup for the week which netted a 57th place finish in the Millionaire Maker which was good for a payday of $1166. I know that helped to give a lot of you a bump last week so congrats on the nice result.

We were not really penalized for fading some of the higher owned players in Jason Day (22nd), Dustin Johnson (9th) and Matt Kuchar (46th). Unfortunately, some unlikely names played really well that the industry overlooked including, JB Holmes, Tony Finau and Bill Haas. We did have one of our favorite European plays, Tyrell Hatton jump up to grad 10th place for the week, but many others that we have tracked this summer on the European Tour really faltered: Joost Luiten, Bernd Wiesberer and Ross Fisher. Fortunately, having gone through the pain of loading up on a few too many Euro players last year, I limited the damage by only having 5% holdings on each of those players.

What really hurt us in GPP action was that the cut line moved all the way down to +4 on Friday when the winds picked up and nailed the second wave of players really hard. Guys like Brandt Snedeker, Jordan Spieth and Bubba Watson all benefited from the move, which was painful for us since most of our guys either missed badly or were a couple of shots above the cut line. Bubba, for his troubles managed to score a lot of points for the week despite finishing outside of the Top-30.

If you asked me to rate whether or not last week was a success, I would say that it was and here is what I would say supports that from a bankroll management perspective. If you are following our guidelines of 80% cash games and 20% GPPs, and you played our three optimal lineups for your cash games, your results should have looked something like this:

Cash Results: 2 wins, 1 loss – Gain of 33% – 80*1.33 = 106.66
GPP Results: I had $309 of entry fees in the $3 GPP and it paid me back $219.76 – 20*.712 = 14.22
Full Results – 106.66+14.22 = 120.88

This means that on a $100 investment, your return for the week if you played the recommendations exactly made you a little over 20% for the week. Now, if you threw the optimal lineups into the Millionaire Maker, you likely had a huge week, but I will not assume that was the case. That lineup was heavily directed towards being a successful cash team, but it is always worth using your cash teams in the GPPs you enter if it fits into your bankroll and particularly so if it is something like the $1 or Quarter Arcade.
This week, the tour moves on to Ontario for the RBC Canadian Open, a Pat Mayo favorite even if he refuses to acknowledge it. The field is a little on the light side this week, but do not despair as we have had some really nice weeks at events that did not look terribly appealing at the outset. My best week of the season so far came back at the Puerto Rico Open so make sure you take advantage of all the research you have done all season as these are the weeks where it can really pay off.

Glen Abbey Golf Club is a Par 72 course that plays at a little over 7,200 yards. The four Par 5 holes provide a lot of scoring opportunities and I expect the winning score to come in somewhere close to the -15 to -20 range. It should be noted that the Canadian Open rotates from year to year so when looking over tournament history, be sure to only focus on the years of: 2015, 2013, 2009, 2008 and 2004. I have blacked out the other years on our new and much improved course history and current form spreadsheet. If you have not check it out yet, do it right now! I worked hard at adding some features to it to make it more useful so I am hoping that you love it! Players this week are going to need to play aggressively and to take advantage of any scoring opportunities that come their way. Although it is a scorers course, players must also be sure to avoid water hazards which are scattered throughout the course. The greens are bentgrass which is a huge consideration when selecting players. Although golfers like Tony Finau and Emiliano Grillo do not have great putting numbers overall, they are actually quite exceptional on bentgrass so be sure to do your research when it comes to looking at each player.

Once again, our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics have provided us with the key stats for the week:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Par 5 Scoring: 15%
Strokes Gained Approach: 10%
Proximity 100-125 Yards: 5%

For strategy this week, it would not be unreasonable to pull back a bit on your bankroll exposure. With the field this weak, there will be a lot of less than obvious names hanging around the top of the leaderboard. Most of the middle and upper tier players elected to take the week off to prepare for the PGA Championship this week so there is a lot of price inflation on DraftKings this week. However, there are also some really wild discrepancies with how certain players were priced for the week. I will have more detail on that in my player pool and optimal lineup section, but some are just glaring. There are a handful of players that are making their debut on the PGA Tour for the season who are priced higher than some savvy veterans. Most of this seems to be due in part to the success that some of these players have had on the MacKenzie Tour (Canadian Tour), which is fine, but they are still unproven in a true PGA event. I did take a look at a few of these players and bought shares of a couple in very small amount as a hedge against a lot of the chalk that I intend to own at the top of most of my lineups. Do not discount these players, but much like the European Tour players of a week ago, do not go crazy with your investment on them either as most are going to disappoint.

Be sure to give the Canadian born players a look this week. Graham DeLaet, David Hearn, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin will all be crowd favorites trying to become the first Canadian born player to win the event in over 60 years. There are a couple of these players that I like and a couple that I am not so interested in, but at least a few Canadians will make a move this week.
My strategy for the week is going to be to go big with the players at the top. DJ and Day are having sensational years and each has had success at Glen Abbey with Day winning a year ago and DK finishing in 2nd back in 2013. Load them up as much as you can handle and then make concessions by finding players in the low 7k and upper 6k range to work with for the rest of your team or teams. With a course that is really tailor made for their game, it should give them both the chance they need to do well again. Some weeks, I fade these highly owned players completely, but with how much better each of them are than the field and the fact that it sets up for them perfectly.

Before getting too far along in building your rosters, be sure to consider ownership trends this week. There is obviously a lot of buzz around DJ, Day and Kuchar this week, but there are a few others that we also think will be highly owned based upon the podcasts and Twitter buzz we have followed this week. David Hearn, Emiliano Grillo, Jim Furyk, Harold Varner III and Tony Finau are all players that we would expect to be heavily owned. There are several other players that should have higher ownership numbers, but much of this is due to some bizarre pricing this week. Typically, I would fade some of these players, but the value on a few really stood out too much for me to pass up given my preference for some of the higher priced players this week.
The weather for the week appears to be pretty reasonable. The winds will be minimal Thursday morning before picking up in the afternoon and they should be fairly steady all day on Friday. The Thursday AM/Friday PM tee times should have an advantage this week. If you take the time to build based upon tee times, do about 30% of your rosters this way.

Finally, one other aspect to consider this week is the FedEx Cup point standings. Though there are still a couple of other regular events to be played, those golfers that are currently outside of the Top-125 are going to need to make a move very soon in order to hold onto their tour cards next year. This week, Camilo Villegas actually pulled out of the Olympics and cited the reason of wanting to focus on making it into the Top-125 before the end of the season. Typically, this tends to be a big issue for players when the Wyndham Championship rolls around net month, but it is worth paying attention to now.

Here are a few to keep an eye on: Luke List (115), Bronson Burgoon (118), Chad Collins (119), Will Wilcox (120), Matt Jones (121), Scott Stallings (124), Tim Wilkinson (127), Johnson Wagner (128), Robert Garrigus (129), Jim Furyk (130), Tom Hoge (135), Sam Saunders (138), Jason Gore (141) and Camilo Villegas (146) are all players that are floating around the FedEx Cup bubble this season who should be looking to elevate their play in order to sustain their livelihood going into next season.

That wraps up the preview for the week. Be sure to check me out on Periscope at 9pm each Wednesday night and also be sure to check out our two newest editions to our staff, Jason Rouslin who focuses in on ownership trends each week and Keagan Scott who just started this past week and is covering the Web.com Tour for us as we try to gain an edge over folks when the fall season arrives and a lot of new faces start to make their mark on the PGA Tour. We want to be ahead of the industry on these types of areas and I believe we have added a lot of value to our site with the addition of these two contributors.

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With the weaker field in place for the RBC Canadian Open, it is imperative to get aggressive with our strategy this week. The elite players in the field will contend this week, particularly Dustin Johnson and Jason Day, both of whom are having outstanding seasons. Each has won multiple events this season and both are in the Top-10 nearly every week. Although each will be highly owned, in an event where their respective skill sets shine far above most of their competitors, it is essential to weight them both heavily in your lineups this week. I would be extremely surprised if both Day and Johnson were were not in contention by Sunday. The biggest threat for us is if DJ gets off to a slow start. With the PGA Championship only a week away, it is not hard to envision him shutting it down early if his shots are not falling in the first round. He may not withdraw as he has already withdrawn from this event back in 2008, but I could definitely see him going into cruise control if he does not light it up before the cut.

I decided to get highly aggressive this week in my GPP player pool selections. There are some outrageous pricing discrepancies this week and in order to load up on both DJ and Day, I had to leverage those discrepancies into opportunities so you will see me wading into deep waters this week with my picks and going in 100% on two cheaper options this week. I do that with the fact in mind that I will be playing lighter this week so I am not risking an enormous portion of my bankroll on this move. If you consult the Vegas Odds versus Pricing tool, you will see these names jump out at you and probably had already noted them even before checking out the page. There are literally players this week making their PGA debut that are priced higher than certain veterans that have had incredible success throughout this season and who have course history in their favor this week. If going in 100% makes you feel a little queasy, make adjustments and take these players down to 60%. It will cost you a few shares of DJ and Day, but it will serve as a nice hedge against the potential for one these players to miss the cut.

The optimal lineups had another great week and for the third major in a row this year, produced a winning week for cash games with two of three cashing easily. We also had a great bonus with the top optimal lineup finishing in 57th place in the Millionaire Maker and winning $1166 for 25 people, mostly folks who are a part of Team FGI. I am really excited to see the model this week as we continue to update it and work with it each week. Erik Dantoft, our stat guy has put in a lot of hours making small changes and updates to the model and we have seen good results, especially for some of the bigger events this year. As always, I recommend using at least three lineups for cash games each week to spread your risk and also not to use 100% of any player across the board. This is a good week to pay up a little bit to grab one of the top end players. There is enough value in the lower 7k and upper 6k range so that is very easy to do and if they play well, as we would expect, it can often offset a missed cut.
 
Matt Kuchar – $10,600
Charley Hoffman – $8,900
Ryan Palmer – $8,000
David Hearn – $7,900
William McGirt – $7,700
Chad Campbell – $6,800
 
Jason Day – $12,300
Emiliano Grillo – $8,500
Ryan Palmer – $8,000
Colt Knost – $7,100
Daniel Summerhays – $7,000
Chad Campbell – $6,800
 
Dustin Johnson – $12,500
David Hearn – $7,900
Harold Varner III – $7,800
William McGirt – $7,700
Colt Knost – $7,100
Daniel Summerhays – $7,000

For the player pool the breakdown is as follows:

CORE

Dustin Johnson – 50% ($12,500)
Jason Day – 50% ($12,300)
Emiliano Grillo – 50% ($8,500)
Daniel Summerhays – 100% ($7,000)
Chad Campbell – 100% ($6,800)

SECONDARY

Matt Kuchar – 25% ($10,600)
Ryan Palmer – 25% ($8,000)
David Hearn – 30% ($7,900)
William McGirt – 25% ($7,700)
Jimmy walker – 20% ($7,700)
Colt Knost – 15% ($7,100)
Matthew Fitzpatrick – 25% ($6,800)
Brian Harman – 15% ($6,800)

TERTIARY

Chris Kirk – 15% ($8,200)
Harold Varner III – 15% ($7,800)
Tom Hoge – 10% ($7,500)
KT Kim – 10% ($7,400)
Mark Wilson – 5% ($7,300)
Dan McCarthy – 5% ($7,200)
Alex Cejka – 5% ($6,300)
Camilo Villegas – 5% ($5,800)

The AC is out at my place today and it is the hottest week of the year. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with a strategy piece and analysis of who some of the higher owned players should be based on what I hear from around the industry. I will also be on Periscope at 9pm CST so be sure to come check me out and hit me up with all of your questions.

-myz

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