The First Tee- RBC Heritage by Adam Daly

Last week’s column got off to a roaring start in some ways (Rose, Pieters) but the Rahm fade wasn’t a perfect play, and Jordan Spieth’s Sunday was horrific through 13 holes. Luckily Spieth bounced back to hit a 17’ birdie on 18, which helped land me a ticket to North Carolina in August for the FantasyDraft live final. Hopefully your Masters weekend was as fruitful as mine, Vamos Sergio, and back at it this week!

Pro Results – Takeaways

The best player this week was Scout326, who finished 11^th in the $5300 ThunderDome – FlavorFlav and jetblackx both finished top-25 in the $1500 Country Club, but that was about it. Only Scout326 had high enough exposure to both Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia to make much noise, and Garcia was only more than 20% exposed on two pros’ lineups (Scout326 and Saahil).

The best performance coming from the player with the second-lowest high ownership (Scout’s highest-owned golfer was only 48% exposure in his lineups) isn’t much of a surprise, as PGA is such a high-variance sport where minimizing risk will cap your upside but also is without a doubt the safest play for MME players.

A new addition to the First Tee this week is the minimum cash lines, by reader request; this should show that the minimum cash doesn’t vary that much from low-dollar to high-dollar, but that the profit increases exponentially. Putting up 414.5 in the $333 Club Pro profited $167, versus a profit of only $3 (with that score) in the $3 Birdie.

This Week

It’s always a letdown leaving Augusta, but the Tour stops for no man, and this week it travels to Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The RBC Heritage is a fun event for people that like ball-striking and not much scoring; last year the cut came at +3, and the eventual winner (Branden Grace) shot -9 over the four days.

The Course

Harbour Town Golf Links is a par-71 listed a little over 7,100 yards, with four par-3s and three par-5s. The Pete Dye-designed course is known for its tight fairways that will take driver out of play off the tee, and the smallest greens on Tour (3,700 sq. ft.). With driver not being a factor, these tight, tree-lined fairways typical to Pete Dye courses are actually hit fairly often (~65%), as a long iron or 3-wood off the tee will make it much easier for golfers to hit their targets.

After Hurricane Matthew hit South Carolina last year, the course (which was renovated in 2015 with new grass) has been touched up yet again – the course lost around 250 mature trees along the fairways, and a small portion of those have been re-planted. Although there won’t be a hurricane this year, the winds tend to pick up here, so golfers with a low ball flight are preferred.

With the size of the greens being so small, it’ll be important to put a premium on golfers that can get to the green in regulation, and have a short proximity to the hole (side note: Proximity is far from a perfect statistic, but with a lot of the field having played the same courses this year, their proximity stats will line up fairly well with their actual talent). Golfers will have to position themselves off the fairway to line up good approach shots, because the Dye design often gives tough sightlines to the pin even with the ball in the fairway. That has led to a very small percentage of greens hit in regulation, only about 57% of GIR on this course.

The Tifeagle Bermudagrass greens here were re-done in 2015 and will be a little less firm than last year as they have had that extra time to take proper root, which should make the greens more receptive and easier to score on. The greens have a stimp around 11’ which will be a stark contrast for the golfers that spent time at Augusta last week, and could cause some adjustment issues early.

Par-4 Scoring will be impactful this week, as the winner here tends to score about 0.7 strokes better than the field on the par-4s. With only three par-5s (two of which are reachable in two), that adds some weight to the -4s (and -3s), simply because there are more of them than on a par-72.

The Strokes Gained stats to focus on in order (not including Tee to Green):

• Approach
• Putting
• Off-The-Tee
• Around the Green

Counting stats to focus on in order:

• Greens in Regulation %
• Par-4 Scoring
• Bogey Avoidance
• Birdie or Better %

The Event

The RBC Heritage itself is a fairly typical stop on the PGA Tour, in that it’s a full-field event with a regular second round cut of Top-70 and ties. The Heritage is a bit of a second-tier event when it comes to the field, with most of the elites taking this week off to recover from Augusta – besides a few top-50 OWGR Europeans and Matt Kuchar, there’s not much to get excited about it here.

In the last decade, the winning score has come between -9 (Grace and Graeme McDowell), and -20 (Brian Gay in 2009). A lot of the lower-scoring years are due to wind, as South Carolina winds can pick up fairly strong gusts, making this one of the tougher courses to control the ball in. As mentioned above, that puts a premium on players with low ball flight – even with the current forecast being fairly mild.

The Golfers

The Core

Tyrrell Hatton ($9300): After ruining a lot of lineups last week, Tyrrell Hatton got an extra two days off to regroup, and to hopefully keep his ownership down at RBC Heritage this week. Hatton makes an interesting bounce-back option here, much in the same way Branden Grace missed the cut last year just to come back and win; Hatton’s one of the best players in the field on approach (7^th on Tour in SG:App), but has struggled putting the ball on the green in regulation which is a fairly big knock on him. Once on the green however, the Englishman has been lights out – 1^st in Strokes Gained: Putting, 37^th in One-Putt Percentage, and 55^th in 3-Putt Avoidance. If he can keep his approach game up and find the green, he’ll have the opportunity to take it down this week.

Kyle Stanley ($7200): For whatever reason, Kyle Stanley has been consistently under-priced on DraftKings event after event – all he’s done this season is average 68.25DK points, make 10 of 12 cuts, and finish in the top-25 six times (50%). He’s coming off a T8 at the Shell Houston Open where he hit 79.17% of his greens, which is an example of just one reason to use Stanley this week, his GIR%. Stanley is 5^th on Tour in that category which goes along with his 12^th ranking in SG: Approach, 6^th in SG: Tee to Green, and 7^th in Proximity to the Hole. He’s a stud in all facets of the game on his way to the green, which is the one spot where he falters – Stanley sits 175^th on Tour in SG: Putting, and concerning is that his worst putting has come on Bermuda this season. All he needs is to keep up with the field with the flat stick and he’ll be in contention.

Lucas Glover ($7200): Much like Kyle Stanley, Lucas Glover is a player that is a huge step ahead of the field in terms of play from tee-to-green, but who struggles on the greens. Glover has always lacked a bit of distance off the tee (296.4 average), but over the years he’s consistently made up for it with a stellar second shot game (14^th in SG: App) and with generally good accuracy off the tee (66.19%, 41^st). That second shot has helped him this year to get to 73.47% of greens in reg, and an average Proximity of only 33’9” (13^th). For a bad putter (138^th), he still averages a good amount of birdies per round (4.15), which is so important in terms of DraftKings. The 37-year old missed the cut in 2014 and 2013, but rebounded in 2015 and 2016 with 18^th and 33^rd place finishes.

 

The Fade

Just a small note here – I play one lineup, so every week I’m fading the full field minus six, just by virtue of only using one lineup. The Fade of the Week is thus chosen for expected value vs. expected ownership, NOT because they’re necessarily good or bad plays.

Kevin Na ($8400): Na has a pretty sparkling course history here, with a T4 last year, T8 in 2012, and T9 in 2011 being his most recent successes (he missed the cut in 2014). Unfortunately, Na is not the same player he’s been in the past, and it’s shown this season with three straight missed cuts and only two top-10s in cut events. Na is struggling in some stats that show their importance this week, ranking a dismal 144^th in GIR% and 65^th in Birdie or Better percentage, but those stats have been inflated from playing the fall swing season events in weak fields on weak courses. There are some reasons to consider him, which will hopefully boost his ownership to make the fade more impactful, because Na is 43^rd in SG: Approach and 35^th in Proximity to the Hole. If he’s as highly owned as I project (~16-19%), that leaves lower ownership on the golfers around him – some good plays in Keegan Bradley, Charles Howell III, and Jason Dufner.

 

You can follow me on Twitter @adalyfrey, and if there’s something you’d like to see change in this column my DMs are open! Good luck at Hilton Head