Yahoo Fantasy Golf Contest Tournament Preview- BMW Championship

Hey Yahoo contest players welcome to the third leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs as it lands in Lake Forest, Illinois and Conway Farms Golf Club for the BMW Championship. A few key items to note this week include:
• The Top 70 players in the FedEx Cup Standings will be competing.
• There is no cut this week, so all players will play four rounds (barring a wd)
• The Top 30 players after this event will advance to the Tour Championship next week.
• The only other time the BMW Championship has been played at this course was 2013.

Conway Farms Golf Club is a Par 71, measures 7,251 yards long, and was designed by Tom Fazio. It is very similar to last week’s course, TPC Boston in regards to its overall length and the length and layout of many of the individual holes. For that reason we will use last week’s results as a significant variable for our selections this week. Tournament history will also be used, but make sure to place more importance on 2013 since it was the only year that it was actually played at Conway Farms Golf Course.

The key statistics that need to be analyzed this week include Par 4 and 5 scoring, Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green, Strokes Gained Putting, Proximity to the hole, and birdie or better %. As we mentioned earlier, there is not a cut this week so everybody will be playing four rounds.
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A-List:

The Favorites-

Henrik Stenson
Rory McIlroy
Jim Furyk
Bubba Watson
Sergio Garcia

The guy we like most in the A-List is Rory McIlroy. As he plays more events, the rust will continue to come off after his ankle injury. We saw that at the PGA Championship as he put up opening two round 71s, but responded with a 68 and 69 over the weekend. This past week at Deutsche Bank Rory closed his tournament with a 66 on Monday. In a no-cut event, McIlroy will outscore most everybody in DFS points with his ability to accumulate birdies. The major problem with his game last week was putting, and improvement in that area will come the more he plays after an extended time off. He ended up 17th at The PGA Championship and T29 at Deutsche Bank. He did not play well in 2013 when The BMW was played here finishing 59th, but he normally does play well in this event as he took 8th last year and won it in 2012. Our next pick is Henrik Stenson and for good reason. Stenson has been more consistent and actually better than Rory lately, but we think Rory has more upside this week. Stenson has two straight runner-up finishes at Deutsche Bank and The Barclays. He took 23rd in this tournament last year and 33rd when it was held at Conway Farms in 2013. Taking both McIlroy and Stenson will do you well this week. If you want to go away from the chalk this week we like Brooks Koepka to respond after two straight missed cuts. Everybody and their brother will be off of him this week, which makes him an excellent contrarian play. The week off will prove to be valuable to him in order to get his game back into shape and we expect a Top 10 this week. For our sleeper pick we like Harris English. Typically English is not considered a sleeper, but being well entrenched in the bottom half of DFS pricing this week, earns him that honor. Trending in the right directions, English has gone from T48 at the PGA Championship to T31 at Wyndham to T30 at Barclays to T12 at Deutsche Bank last week. What was even more encouraging is that he did not completely melt down either of the final days of the Deutsche Bank, something he has struggled with most of the season. English took 31st in this tournament last year and 50th when it was held here in 2013. English will be under the radar this week and is capable of an unexpectedly high finish. A bonus sleeper is Matt Jones. Very solid play as of late for Jones starting at the PGA Championship, where he was in contention to win until his final round 75 on Sunday to drop him to T21. He also made the cut and finished T53 at The Barclays, and a T4 last week at The Deutsche Bank. Definite momentum for Jones coming into The BMW. That combined with an 8th place finish in this event at Conway Farms in 2013, make us like Jones this week.

Our Picks: McIlroy, Stenson, Koepka
Sleeper Picks: English, Jones

 

B-List:

The Favorites-

Jason Day
Jordan Spieth
Dustin Johnson
Justin Rose
Rickie Fowler

We cannot say how much we like Jason Day to finish top 3 in the BMW this week. Yes he only managed a T12 last week, but when you break down his tournament farther you will see that it was only the third round that was poor when he shot a 73. The other three rounds he shot a 68 (1st and 2nd rounds) and 69 (4th round). We all know he won three out of the past four events he has played. (The Barclays, PGA Championship, and RBC Canadian). He missed the cut last year in this event, but when it was played at Conway Farms in 2013, Day took 4th. He has a tremendous chance to win the FedEx Cup and the $10 million, so we know he is incredibly motivated. Although Justin Rose is clearly not an unknown, we think he will be largely passed over this week. Rose is rarely popular in the Yahoo contest because of the other names, but this week will be even lower with his missed cut last week. He actually missed a four foot putt to miss the cut at Deutsche Bank and as we saw at The Barclays, he can light it up after struggling for a round, which is huge in a no-cut event. Outside of last week’s missed cut, Rose had A T16 at The Barclays, and then four consecutive Top 6s. He took 35th last year in this event and 33rd at Conway Farms in 2013, and did win it in 2011. He is going to be overlooked this week and that is a bad mistake, because he is just as capable of a Top 5 as anybody. If you do not want to go with Day or Rose, we would go with Rickie Fowler. The only problem is he will be a popular selection this week. He obviously played outstanding last week and took 4th in this event last year and 39th in 2013. We do however like Day and Rose better. For sleeper options we like Kevin Kisner who ended up T12 at Deutsche Bank and continued his outstanding season, which includes ten Top 25s and six Top 10s. He has been rock solid outside of long links style courses and we do not have to worry about that this week. Our other pick we are going to go way out on a limb on, but we think the reward exceeds the risk. Coming off a wrist injury, this will be Chris Kirks third event back. In his first event he missed the cut and last week at Deutsche Bank he looked noticeably improved finishing T29. He is a Top 25 player in the world when he is healthy and he looks to be getting back there. Kirk took 36th in the BMW last year and 24th at Conway Farms in 2013. Next to nobody will be selecting him this week so if you want to really try and hit a homerun Kirk is a good option.

Our Picks: Day, Rose, Fowler
Sleeper Picks: Kisner, Kirk

 

C-List:

The Favorites-

Louis Oosthuizen
Patrick Reed
Robert Streb
Justin Thomas
Tony Finau
Keegan Bradley

Patrick Reed showed us some form that we had not seen from him in many months last week by taking a T4 at The Deutsche Bank. Reed tends to run hot so we feel good about his chances this week at the BMW. He has not had great success in this tournament or at Conway Farms as he took 59th in 2013. However, we followed him in person quite a bit last week and his ball striking looked good and his short game and scrambling returned to being some of the best in the game. In a wide open C-List this week, Reed looks to have a clear edge. Our second pick is Justin Thomas. A bit disappointing last week, we look for Thomas to bounce back with a strong performance. He played really good at The Barclays shooting five under par and solid last week with only his final round really playing poorly. I also followed Thomas for 12 holes on Monday, and he had several shots that should not have ended up how they did. A few bad bounces and poor lies resulted in a 74. I know, that happens to everybody, but he could have easily shot a 71 and finished Top 35 and it would have looked a lot better than a T56. Thomas has the ability to be explosive and deliver a big-time finish as he has many times this season (14 Top 25s and 7 Top 10s). Our third pick is Danny Lee. Last week at the Deutsche Bank Lee was tied for eight coming into the final round and melted down with a 77 to drop him to T33 for the tournament. Lee has a ton of upside if he can limit his mental mistakes, which is exactly what we are looking for in a player in the C-List. He does not have any experience inthis event, but he has not had a problem on unfamiliar courses this year. Our sleeper pick is Russell Knox. At the Deutsche Bank he recorded a T12 and finished T20 at The Barclays two weeks ago. He has the ability to be dynamic as he has 11 Top 25s this year in 27 events played. He is more than capable of missing a cut (8 misses this year), but we don’t have to worry about that. He did not play at Conway Farms in 2013, but took 23rd last year at The BMW. We all know his putting is atrocious and we actually took shots to it in our webcast if you caught that, but the greens are like last week at TPC Boston and not overly difficult.

Our Picks: Reed, Thomas, Lee
Sleeper Pick: Knox

Best of luck to all of you in the Yahoo Contest this week and please continue to let us know how you do.

-Fantasy Golf Insider
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