The Daily Spin – WGC Match Play

RECAP

I still am having trouble believing that I was able to make a clean sweep of the Florida tournaments this season. My cash game team hit all four weeks and really did not have too much trouble getting there overall. Though I still cannot quite find the magic to put together a perfect single entry lineup, my goal each week is to try to chip away a small profit so that over time, as I keep taking shots at bigger contests, eventually I will have that week where everything comes together and I hit a much bigger payday. However, the small wins add up during a long season and with the way that we have been able to destroy cash games on a weekly basis in 2022, my demeanor on Thursdays and Fridays has greatly improved during what is usually a very dreary time of year during the last weeks of winter.

I thought about taking a more aggressive approach last week with my build. I initially posted a team that stacked Morikawa and Hovland together along with one mid tier player and a handful of cheap plays near the bottom portion of the board. I figured my opponents would be paying up and that hunch was proven correct as JT ended up being very heavily owned along with Hovland and many teams opted to stack them with their first two plays. In the end, I looked at that team versus the balanced lineup I had put together and decided that the balanced team just made more sense and had a little bit less risk.

Lineup for Valspar

Fitzpatrick	97.5
Noren	89.5
Bradley	29
Knox	61
Hadwin	91
Cbez	56
	424

 

I never feel like I need to go nuts in paying up at these second tier events. There is a fair amount of depth in the middle of the board to work with, but it also usually drops off quickly towards the bottom. I have also noticed that upside from the top players is far from a sure thing as Hovland and especially Morikawa demonstrated last week. I did have a negative sweat on JT going as a win out of him looked like it could hurt me, but he could not get himself anywhere close to making a birdie over the last few holes so I was able to breathe a sigh of relief when he finished up in 3rd place. As for my golfers, I had mostly solid performances overall at the top and only one real dud which I had been preparing for emotionally all week.

Keegan Bradley finally missed a cut for me on a cash game roster. I went to the well one too many times. I had the perfect excuse to move on and I probably should have listened to my gut on that one. He had played so well at TPC Sawgrass until the final two holes when everything fell apart on Monday afternoon. After a very long weekend and the emotional letdown of falling from 1st to 5th and losing out on a couple million dollars in pay, it would have made a lot of sense to just pass on Keegan last week, even if he is playing well right now. However, I did like the price, and given his recent form, I felt like he could get me a made cut and find a way to play the weekend. Weirdly enough, it was his iron play that betrayed him last week as he lost 2.3 strokes in the first round in SGAPP. He missed the cut by a single stroke so it was not a terrible effort, but I am not too surprised either as it is likely he was feeling fatigued coming into the tournament.

Everything else more or less worked out well. CBEZ and Russell Knox made the weekend, but did not do much in the final two rounds. Knox made a move on Saturday, but gave it all back on Sunday while CBEZ went back to playing CBEZ golf. He was at the tournament. He was playing golf. He just was not doing anything of consequence as he made a grand total of four birdies over the final two rounds. He was so good putting the ball last season, but it is all gone this year as he has become perfectly average on the greens, even losing ground at times. Though his ball striking has improved, he ranks 195th in Birdie or Better Percentage on tour this season. Yikes. That is not fantasy friendly in the least. In single entry GPP contests, you could make the argument to avoid him though he has had a handful of decent finishes. The problem is that he is never truly in contention. He might work his way up to a 20th place finish, but generally does so holding ground while others stumble rather than making a charge.

On a more positive note, Adam Hadwin outperformed his price. He faltered over the final two rounds, but it is tough to complain too much over a 7th place finish. He’s played well this season and is a former champion at Valspar so he’s set himself up nicely for a solid 2022 after a lackluster 2021 season that saw him slip back outside of the Top-100 in the FedEx Cup standings. His approach game is the best we’ve ever seen it and his short game is also looking really strong. Keep an eye on him this year as he may be building towards a run that ends in a win.

It was easy for me to go right back to Fitz last week. There were a lot of big names that stumbled at TPC Sawgrass so I wiped that one from my memory and instead focused in on the other recent Top-10 finishes for Fitz. He started off a little slowly, but made a nice charge on Sunday and worked his way up the board for a 5th place finish. One of these times he is going to get it done with a win, but a 5th place finish at his price was not bad. All phases of his game are strong this season and he is not being carried by his putter alone which makes him a more compelling play wherever he tees it up this season as opposed to just a handful of specific courses.

Finally, Alex Noren rounded out my team and finished in 12th place. A bogey on the last hole of the tournament cost me a Top-10 bet, but he did well to move up the leaderboard over the weekend after appearing to be in trouble on Friday where I thought he might end up missing the cut. He’s playing well right now having made six straight cuts with three finishes of 12th or better. He ranks 18th in SGTG and 9th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds among this field and he’s always been a strong putter so when his irons are on, he’s a threat to win. I will tail my FGI brothers this week on him with an outright bet.

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