The Daily Spin – RBC Heritage

RECAP

The Masters this season was about as much fun as I have had with that event over the last five years. The tournament itself was not that close for much of the weekend, but being the mercenary golf fan that I am, when my money is doing well, I am happy. I am really pleased with the way everything worked out. During the Match Play event, as I was hedging out of my Keven Kisner ticket to bet on Scottie Scheffler, I perused the odds for The Masters and noticed a number that looked a little off. Most of the odds leading up to the tournament were really tight so seeing 28-1 jumped off the page. I rarely bet on events ahead of time, but I knew that number would not last so I jumped on it along with a Corey Conners ticket at 80-1. Within a day after winning and moving up to being the #1 player in the world, the odds dropped to 14-1 for Scottie and eventually fell to 45/50-1 for Conners. I did my best to share the info and immediately posted in Slack that the number was still available for those that were interested. Typically, making these sorts of calls flames out spectacularly for me and nothing comes of my call, but this time around, everything worked to perfection and Scottie was in charge the last three days of the tournament.

I was once again very fortunate on how to play a hedging situation. Going into Sunday, it was basically a two man race, a rare opportunity to pull off a hedge without having to worry about anyone sneaking in to swipe away a win. Two holes into Sunday, I was regretting my decision not to hedge as Scottie was a mess and Cam Smith birdied his first two holes. When Scottie was unable to get onto the green with his approach shot on the third hole, I swiftly moved to my computer, considering an even money hedge as the wheels for Scottie seemed to be falling off. However, that was when I caught a massive break as Cam also came up short on his approach shot and then Scottie chipped in for an unlikely birdie while Cam could not get up and down, dropping a shot to fall back to the original margin of three strokes. I watched much of the rest of the tournament from my computer, preparing to hedge just in case, firing off a string of reverse jinx messages in slack to try to keep Scottie on track. He had plenty of chances to close it out between the 8th-10th hole, but let Cam hang around. When Cam birdied 11, I started to think we might be in for a tight finish. That was when the 12th hole again played a key role in deciding the tournament. Once Cam made a triple bogey, it helped Scottie to relax and he knocked in a couple of birdies to build a comfortable lead over Rory, who again made a meaningless Sunday charge when he was out of contention. In addition to the Scottie ticket, I also hit Top-10 wins on Corey Conners, Shane Lowry and Willy Z.

On the DFS side, I managed to put together a relatively sweat free roster that went 6/6 for the week and cashed with ease. Though the lineup did not have tremendous upside due to the utter and complete collapse on Sunday by a couple of golfers, the lineup served its purpose. The key to building a winning cash game lineup for The Masters remains the same. Keep it boring. Stop chasing players that struggle at the course and do not chase the rookies at the event. In the $250 double up, Gary Woodland was owned by 26% of the field. What is happening here? Cam Young had a bunch of ownership. Thomas Pieters was 15% owned. People owned Luke List. Weird.

Though Scottie Scheffler was my favorite play last week for GPP contests due to ownership and his amazing form, I knew that there would be high ownership of Jon Rahm and JT with many teams even making the silly decision to stack the two together. I did not want to be out on an island in cash games with Scottie at 3% and then be fearing a big finish from Rahm who I figured would be 30-40% owned so I opted to get defensive and used Rahm as up until this season, he had been a Top-10 machine at Augusta. I figured even if Scottie won, it would not hurt me and since I already held a nice ticket on him, I would be fine either way.

Most of my roster I put together from the value range first before building up. Corey Conners was shamefully priced at 7,600 and Matthew Fitzpatrick was at $7,700. Those were the first two names I chose to build around. The pricing last week was much tighter than normal so getting a couple of solid bargains with upside potential helped to open up a little salary cap space. Conners was great again, putting up another Top-10 finish and Fitz hung around and managed a 14th place finish to get my team off to a good start.

The other two golfers that I used in the $7-8k range were Russell Henley and Si Woo Kim. Russ has been great this season and has been solid at Augusta in a few appearances during his career. Si Woo actually has been very consistent this season and also at Augusta. I hate the idea of using him in cash games, but at $7,100 he was in the right price range. I also considered dropping down to Kevin Na below $7k as he’s plenty experienced at The Masters and looked good at the Match Play, but he’s been a little up and down this season so I ended up using Si Woo instead. Russ played fine. he made a nice charge on Sunday and it looked like he would finish in the Top-15, but then dropped three shots on the back nine to fall back to 30th. Si Woo took a rollercoaster ride. After Paul Casey WD early, I felt like it was only a matter of time before another player dropped out. When Si Woo started slowly in rough conditions, I feared for the worst. However, he roared back on Friday and I thought he might even finished the day inside the Top-10 before he gave back a couple strokes. By Sunday, he was well positioned for a potential Top-10 finish and then the collapse happened where he bogeyed six straight holes to fall back to 39th.

This left me with $9k and I debated between Daniel Berger and Shane Lowry. Of course, I made the wrong call and used Berger. He started off well enough and looked like a great play early on. However, a couple of bad holes on Friday and then a slow start on Saturday, he seemed to give up on his tournament firing a 77 in the 3rd round and a smooth 80 on Sunday to make himself irrelevant in the standings. It was a disappointing result for Berger and kept my team from any meaningful upside in GPP contests, but he got the job done by at least getting to the weekend so it was not a huge loss.

 

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