The Daily Spin – WGC Bridgestone
It has been a fun few weeks on tour as we head into the home stretch for the remainder of the season. I really feel good about the way I have approached these events over the last few weeks and despite the fact that I have not been able to fire that one magic bullet in GPP action to punch my way through for a really big payoff, my player pool and lineup builds have been strong and cash games have been nudging my bankroll ahead throughout the summer. It’s tough when you look at the winning rosters of some of the winners of the big GPP events and you can see the same patterns in place for the winning teams, but somehow, you did not quite manage to get those golfers all onto one team.
A quick peak at the winning roster for the $444 GPP last week reveals that a several cornerstones were locked into place for the winning team that I was also relying on for many of my lineups. I started a lot of my rosters with Chris Kirk and Joel Dahman at the bottom as they each represented strong value for their price. While Kirk did fade over the weekend, he did knock in a couple of eagles on Friday to give us an okay week in terms of DK points. Dahman was obviously outstanding once again and his iron play is just off the charts right now. I do not know if this is the type of play he can sustain going into next season, but we will continue to stick with him while he is in the zone. Obviously, the winning roster had DJ and I had a decent amount of shares for the week although his ownership numbers ended up way out of hand at the higher dollar levels. Keegan Bradley and Byeong Hun An were both cheap value plays that I especially liked in cash games and Keith Mitchell at 7400 rounded out the roster and was another player that I owned in the $5 at around a 20% clip. I feel like I have been very close for much of the season in being able to punch through for a substantial GPP play and many of you have done so already this season so I am excited to see how these final couple of months play out, especially with the PGA Championship next week.
Cash games were pretty straightforward again which was great. I ended up with a roster of Dahman, Kirk, An, Lovemark, Kuchar and Finau. Obviously, Kuchar was the one blemish for the week as he continues to become more of a borderline cash play as the year wears on. His finish was particularly shocking in that he somehow bogeyed the 16th hole on Friday to put himself two shots off the cut line, miraculously birdied 17 and needed only a birdie on the easy 18th hole to claw back to making the cut. It looked like another classic Kuchar push to make the cut and then push his way back towards the top over the weekend. However, in a very unKuchar-esque moment, he went into the water on his approach shot on 18 and blew the cut by a stroke. Fortunately, the others did enough to get me across the magical green line for the week which sealed up another profitable week of play. The only way you really could have missed out would have been if you had used both Bubba and Kuchar in your cash lineup. Bubba was not my preferred play there, but I did like him to make the cut and do a little scoring on a course that really favors his style of play which was why he made the list, but ultimately, I felt like Finau was the guy I could count on to make it through the cut.
The week for the WGC Bridgestone, we get another elite field at a fairly challenging course. As Jeff and I discussed on the podcast on Monday night, we both really enjoy Firestone Country Club and are each disappointed to see it replaced next season by TPC Southwind in Memphis which is not a course that I particularly enjoy each year. Firestone is a great course for these guys in preparing for a major each season. It’s set up a lot like a US Open style course in the more classic sense where it is a Par 70 with many long Par 4 holes over 450 yards, lengthy Par 3’s where three of four are over 200 yards and just two Par 5 holes, one of which is over 660 yards. The fairways are narrow and tree lined which given the length of many of these holes puts a real premium on ball striking and minimizing mistakes off the tee that can quickly get you into trouble. While Hideki put on a clinic here a year ago and did some real damage in terms of scoring, you won’t see too many guys getting into the minus double digits range of scoring overall. It’s not going to be nearly as punitive as a USGA style US Open in terms of the rough and the greens, it’s a nice warmup for the following week. We want to focus on ball strikers with some extra length off the tee and precision iron play from 175 yards and up. If you look at some of the winners like DJ, Hideki, Scott, Tiger and Rory, they are obviously all elite in terms of their approach play from distance. Putting can help players this week, but what we really want are guys who are hitting greens consistently so that even if they do not score, they are not walking away from many holes with squares on their cards.
Before you dig in too deep and empty your bankroll on this event, I want to urge you to be a little more cautious in your approach this week. With just over 70 players in the field, there is no cut for the tournament which does require some strategy adjustments. Cash games are much less lucrative for us than normal. Since there is much less of a penalty for missing on a player who misses the cut, rosters construction can be a little more wild. Last week, people legitimately played guys like Tom Lovelady in cash games…..I don’t know why that would ever happen given the inconsistent nature of his play, but there were folks that trotted him out and paid the price. We do not get the full benefit of these mistakes this week as it is not quite the deathblow that it usually would be in events with a cut. In weeks like this, your optimal cash strategy is much closer to what you would do in GPP events and with so many players in the lower salary tier that will go largely unowned, you are choosing from an even tighter playing pool than what it first appears.
On the GPP side, go ahead and test the waters this week, but be warned, this is trickier pricing than what we are used to, even if the field is really strong. It is not a Millionaire Maker week so we are not getting the steals below $7k that we get in major tournaments which means that if we elect to go heavy on players at the top, it is going to force our hand at the bottom as well so that while I expect a player like DJ to be popular, just based upon the tighter pricing and strength of field, I am not anticipating another week where he approaches 30-40%. If you end up with DJ, it also is going to limit your other options at the top. There is really no way that you can own everyone up top this week. I think the best way to play things in terms of strategy is to pick no more than 2-3 players in that upper echelon and then spread yourself out among the rest of the field. If you only focus on a couple of players like a DJ and Rickie, then you have sufficient funds in order to be generously overweight when compared to the rest of the field. I am expecting DJ, Rickie and Tiger to be the top owned names of the upper tier, with each coming in at around 20-25% so the goal should be to gain as much leverage as possible if you are using them and to have somewhere in the 40-50% range. Remember, you probably are going to have a tough time stacking two of these players together so if you do use a third star, you may end up having to be underweight and having a handful of true stars and scrubs rosters.
This is what makes this event so difficult. There are many talented players near the top that could pull off a win here this week, but without the deep value plays readily available, you just will not be able to own all of the top players which means that you are going to need to force yourself into making some bold decisions this week. As I was forced to learn the hard way last week, half measures usually just end up hurting you. 25% DJ was a reasonable share, but when the rest of the field is well over 30%, it puts you under the gun when he hits and all of those other Koepka shares just took out otherwise competitive rosters. These events without a cut should be viewed as boom or bust type of events as it is likely that the winning golfer is going to be reasonably highly owned as has been the case in most years outside of 2015 when Shane Lowry proved to be a somewhat improbable champion. You will need to have bigger stakes in fewer players in order to gain the sort of leverage on the field that you will need to have many shots at a big prize.
Key Stats:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
Proximity: 15%
Scrambling: 10%
Driving Distance: 7.5%
Driving Accuracy: 2.5%
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