Yahoo Fantasy Golf Contest Tournament Preview- Tour Championship

This is it Yahoo contest players,  the Tour Championship. This week consists of the Top 30 players in FedEx Cup points and is held at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. East Lake has been the home of this event since 2004, so we can look closely at tournament history, which is unlike last week’s BMW, which alternated locations. East Lake was originally designed by Donald Ross, but in 1994, Rees Jones, son of famed golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, restored the original design. East Lake is a Par 70 and measures 7,307 yards long. Courses in which Donald Ross was at least partly responsible for the design number in the hundreds. You can easily search all of those online, but we will mention a couple of them since they were recently played and those include Sedgefield Country Club which hosted the Wyndham Championship and Plainfield Country Club, which hosted the Barclays. We can look at how the players in this field fared on those courses and see if there is a correlation. Generally this is a smaller weighting that we place on this variable, but still one that we consider.

Although it has been difficult to prognosticate what the scoring will look like for the first three legs of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, this week will most likely look more similar to the first two (The Barclays and Deutsche Bank) than to the score-fest that we witnessed at the BMW last week. The winner the past few years in the Tour championship has scored -11, -13, -10, and -8 respectively. Like last week there will not be a cut, so all players will play four full rounds (barring a WD or DQ).

The key statistics that we will be analyzing include strokes gained tee-to-green, greens in regulation, Par 4 scoring, total driving, birdie or better %, and strokes gained putting in that order.

In our opinion this is not a great week to be playing in DFS cash games because the amount of variability is great and there are not any deep value plays. We would recommend that you play a fraction of your normal weekly bankroll this week and only in GPPs. Do not blow the profits in which you have accumulated throughout the season in a week where we do not have as large of an edge. Play some, but get your normal weekly bankroll ready for the Frys.com in a couple of weeks.
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A-List:

The Favorites-

Rory McIlroy
Henrik Stenson
Bubba Watson
Jim Furyk

In the A-list this week an easy avoid for us is Jim Furyk. As of now he is set to play, but that could easily change and seeing the amount of pain that he was in last week makes it hard to believe he could be fully recovered enough to be a factor. Our top pick this week is Rory McIlroy The fact that he was able to finish T4 while losing -.39 putts to the field is a testament to just how dominant he can be. If he is able to start dropping even a few of those putts, he will give Day a run for his money this week. As with Day, Rory has played well at East Lake in his two appearances taking 2nd last year and 10th in 2012. Rory will probably be the most popular choice in this list, so if you are looking for an alternate option, we would go with Henrik Stenson. He actually won this event two years ago, which was his only appearance at East Lake. His current form has been great with a T10 last week and two runner up finishes before that. His tee-to-green game lines up perfect for East Lake and he is great at hitting greens in regulation. Although we like the top two more, we also like Bubba Watson. He also has a good history at Eat lake with a 14th last year, 5th in 2012, 23rd in 2011, and 17th in 2010. His play lately is also good with a T10 last week at BMW, T29 at Deutsche Bank and 3rd at Barclays. We think Bubba looks like a strong play, just below the other two. Our sleeper pick in the A-List is Harris English who actually made the Tour Championship this year after a couple close calls in years past. His current form is solid placing T19 last week at BMW, 12th at Deutsche Bank, 30th at Barclays, and 31st at Wyndham. Not too many people will be on English this week, so if you are looking for an off the beaten path play, he is your guy.

Our Picks: McIlroy, Stenson, Watson
Sleeper Pick: English

 

B-List:

The Favorites-

Jason Day
Jordan Spieth
Rickie Fowler
Justin Rose
Dustin Johnson

At this point we are assuming you are do not have any play left of Jordan Spieth or Jason Day. If for some reason you do, click their names rapidly and put them on your team. Our top selection without those guys available is Justin Rose. East Lake has been very kind to Mr. Rose in the past. Over the past three years Rose has finished 4th last year, 6th in 2013, and 2nd in 2012. He had a hiccup at the Deutsche Bank and missed the cut, but outside of that he has been nothing short of amazing over the last two months ( T16 @ Barclays, 4th @ PGA Championship, T3 @ WGC Bridgestone, T4 @ Quicken Loans, T6 @ The Open). Last week he played solid although not up to our expectations finishing T13. Other than Rose, you cannot go wrong with Rickie Fowler who has been playing lights out recently with a T4 last week at BMW and a win at Deutsche Bank. Rickie took 8th here last year, so he is comfortable on the course. Our third favorite option is going to be one that not many people will have, which is why we like it is Paul Casey. His current form is very good placing T3 at Wyndham, T39 at Barclays and T23 at BMW. He actually was playing well at the Deutsche Bank before he withdrew shooting even par in the first two rounds placing him well below the cut-line. As we mentioned he played well at the Wyndham which is also a Donald Ross original design and he took 4th in his only appearance at East Lake in 2010. He is among the leaders in the two statistical categories we have as our most important this week, strokes gained tee-to-green and greens in regulation. We will say that he does have a propensity to withdraw in the middle of events and Deutsche Bank marked the 8th time he has done so. Our sleeper pick is Daniel Berger. How you go from missing the cut in seven straight events to a T12 and runner-up finish in stacked fields is absolutely beyond us. Berger showed us the tremendous ability that he has, earlier this season with finishes of T10 at Byron Nelson, T6 at Zurich, T2 at Honda, T10 at Pebble Beach, and T10 at Phoenix Open. Then came the 2-month debacle, where he was he missed every single cut. Now he seems to have regained that same top level form and we need to acknowledge it. He does not have any tournament history at East Lake, but he didn’t have any at Conway Farms either.

Our Picks: Rose, Fowler, Casey
Sleeper Pick: Berger

 

C-List:

The Favorites-

Louis Oosthuizen
Patrick Reed
Charley Hoffman
Robert Streb

Normally such a deep list, the smaller field and top level talent took its toll on the list this week. Our top pick this week is Robert Streb. Yes we have recommended him a lot, but if you have ownership left, we recommend you go with him. He has nine Top 10 finishes this season including a T10 at the PGA Championship and 5th at WGC Bridgestone lately. He is great in strokes gained tee-to-green and greens in regulation, the two most important statistics that we are referencing this week. Second we like Patrick Reed. Last week at the BMW he finished T28 and followed up an outstanding performance at Deutsche Bank where he had a T4. Reed seems to be getting in a groove lately and we like him this week. Finally we like Kevin Na this week in the C-List. He showed some of the outstanding form he has had all season with a T10 at the BMW. He also had a T20 at the Barclays a few weeks ago. Na had a 19th at East Lake last year and a 17th in 2010. Our sleeper pick in the C-List this week is Steven Bowditch. This is strictly a homerun swing, because Bowditch is equally likely to finish Top 10 as he is to finish last. In the past month Bowditch finished T13 at Barclays and T12 at WGC Bridgestone so he is capable of high finishes. This is the type of boom or bust play that you might need at this point in the game.

Our picks: Streb, Reed, Na
Sleeper Pick: Bowditch

Best of luck to all of the FGI family this week, we will talk to you again in a couple of weeks! If you have any questions between now and then, do not hesitate to shoot an email or tweet. We will be working hard to roll out new stuff for you.

-Fantasy Golf Insider