The PGA DFS Caddie: Early FanDuel and DraftKings Course and Statistical Strategy for The Masters

Welcome to what is meant to be a quick glance at our weekly PGA DFS tour stop, The Masters.  As usual, this is where you can start your research each week with a quick look at the course layout, some history, and some statistical focus.  The goal is to point you towards a solid core of players for your week.  Once your core is targeted, you can start taking the necessary risks to win your big GPPs and pocket some nice cash on the bigger DFS sites.

To access deeper stats, might I recommend the tools provided by our host site, dfsarmy.com.  We have a spreadsheet to organize all your relevant stats, and even a tutorial showing you how to use the sheet.   Tools like these are available for nearly every sport we cover in the army.  To further illustrate our tools and results, at the bottom of the page, I have displayed one of our VIPs and his GPP win of $10,000 recently.

For ONE WEEK ONLY we are also offering you a special code.  Use code OPENINGDAY when you visit dfsarmy.com to receive an all-access 7 day pass.  Jump in, take a look around, you won’t regret the amazing info you see.  The real value is in our Slack Forums which give you real-time discussion will many of our gurus and coaches for all sports.  These guys are dedicated to help you get better no matter your level of experience.  We have guys playing MLB for the first time asking questions and guys earning a living from DFS helping out.  You might not ever leave.

Augusta National Course Setup

Fun, fun, fun! Our first major of the year always runs through Augusta, Georgia.  The strength of this course is it’s greens and their famous speed on the stimpmeter.  These greens are of average size, but don’t let that fool you.  They are heavy undulated and wicked fast.  They also roll differently than last week being bentgrass instead of bermuda.  When you get a downgrain bentgrass putt, you start shaking in your boots.  I’ve seen putts just barely set in motion run out 60 feet on this course.

The fairways are wider than usual, and until the early Tiger days, there was no rough whatsoever.  Now there is a feeble attempt at some rough, but the real problem is the pine straw.  Hit into that stuff and it’s trickier than hitting out of sand.  The course might be wet this spring, but if it starts to dry out it will change and get tougher and faster with each passing sunny day.  Add some wind, and it’s amazing how a soft course will turn firm in 36 hours.

 Augusta is about 7,400 yards long these days with a balance of four par 3s and four par 5s.  The 5s are where the scores happen since they are short by today’s standards.  They also play the easiest on the course when looking at “average to par.”  Some of the par 4s, however, run over 450 yards in length and will keep players somewhat honest.  But, truth be told, this course has lost a little of it’s strategic planning with advancing technology.  Longer hitters have a decided advantage here, especially if their natural ball flight is a high cut.  It used to be said you couldn’t win The Masters if you hit a draw.  And, for years they were right.  Not so anymore, but a high cut is still the best shot from which to attack these greens and their microscopic landing areas.  (In case you are wondering, a high draw from a lefty is NOT the same as a high cut from a righty.  High draws have a bit of topspin to them whereas cuts have more backspin.  Draws run out a bit.  Cuts hold greens.)

PGA DFS Player Identifiers

History at The Masters

History is important.  (And never more important than at Augusta. Just look at all the green in this graphic!)  Some players simply play better at a particular course.  Let’s see what we can pull from the last 3 years at this event.  Players in green have finished in the top 20 in at least 2 of the previous 3 years.

We see more players than usual that finish in the top 20 repeatedly.  Get as many of them on your rosters as possible.  However, only three players have finished top 20 in all three years:  Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Justin Rose.

PGA DFS Current Form

Current form shows us which players are playing well of late.  This table shows the top 30 performers in the last 5 PGA Tour stroke play events.  A player on both the historical and current form lists should hit your radar pretty hard.

Now, let me ask you a question.  Is Rickie Fowler on the current form sheet?  Is he also green on the course history sheet?  Um……duh.  Surely, you can see he’s in a good spot in a volatile sport, right?  Moving on…

Vegas Odds to Win

While reading around the web, I found numerous articles stating the Vegas odds and where the winners and cut-makers tend to come from.  Because of this influence (and the fact I’m a balanced/cash game type player), I like taking my core from golfers with better than 100/1 odds to win outright.  Honestly, I try and stay inside 50/1.

I love comparing these odds to the pricing on DraftKings to see where potential mismatches can be found.  For example, if I order the players by favorite, this week I see

When it comes to DraftKings pricing, here are my favorite discrepancies in favor of the DFS value hunter.

1- Sergio Garcia (10th in Vegas, 13th on DK)
2- Paul Casey (15th in Vegas, 19th on DK)
3- Matt Kuchar (18th in Vegas, 30th on DK)
4- Mark Leishman (22nd in Vegas, 48th on DK)

Some of these players may form my core.  And, if you do a little digging, you will find quite a few more down lower on the list.  From there, I will mix and match other players around them to take my chances.  Building a solid core of value is a tried and true way to win both cash and GPP contests.

PGA DFS Key Statistics for the Shell Houston Open

Experience/Course History – It’s so important this week, I’m putting it in here again at the top of the list.

Diving Distance – The ultimate in “tee it high and let it fly.”  I mean if they didn’t have rough until I could drive a car, that should tell you how little Augusta emphasizes accuracy off the tee.  Raw power plays here.  And, this course doesn’t have a lot of real estate left to get any longer.  It is what it is, and with no penalty for missing fairways to speak of, it’s just time to grip it and rip it.  The exact opposite of a US Open setup (remember that for later).

Par 5 Scoring Average (P5SA) – Another no-brainer stat here.  Those that crush par 5s tend to find themselves making moves quickly on this course.

Greens in Regulation (GIR) – I’m not using this number in a traditional way of finding players hitting greens.  That’s not good enough.  I would use it to find those that can’t hit a green because that will leave you some wicked recoveries.  I would also take this a step further and look at “proximity to pin” numbers.  These will actually tell you who the accurate among the accurate are.  Who is hitting their 10 foot circles on greens?  That is who you want to roster.  Not just some schlep like me that can hit a green but routinely leaves himself 40 footers.  40 footers at Augusta miss cuts.

Yes, Strokes Gained Tee to Green and Putting are the two stand-bys, and they are hella important this week, too.

PGA DFS Weather Report

Weather impacts golf.  Wind, rain, wet courses, dry courses all affect players.  So far, the weather in Augusta looks to have some shots at early rain on day one.  From there we dry out, but as that rain system passes, there is some wind in it’s wake.  That might dry the course out for the weekend.  Any wind makes a couple of the par 3s down in hollows really sketchy.  Make sure you check back later in the week, or follow dfsarmy.com for updates.

What Now?

Well, now that you have some marching orders for research, focus on building a core of golfers you love.  If you enjoy making multiple lineups, you might take a look at our state-of-the-art optimizer, The Domination Station.  We have a tutorial for the optimizer, too, that shows you how to best maximize it’s amazing potential.  We have NBA VIPs steamrolling competition with 68%+ win percentages in H2Hs over growing sample sizes proving our optimizer is no fluke.  See our tutorial here.

As always, you can find me inside our VIP slack forums or follow me on twitter @Choppodong.  I hope to see you out in DFS Land.  Now, as promised, here is the screenshot of Alvarez’ huge GPP win.  It’s real, folks.  The DFS Army will help get you there, too.  Mega congrats to a quality Army VIP!

 

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Other DFS Army PGA Golf Tools and Articles

Taco’s Two Putt – DFS PGA – The Masters 2017

The PGA DFS Caddie: Early FanDuel and DraftKings Course and Statistical Strategy for the Masters

Shark Autopsy – Dissecting the Mass Multi-Entry Strategies of Top DFS Pros – The Houston Open

A Little Excited for Augusta: What to Expect on the Back Nine

DFS Army VIP Members also have access to our PGA Cheatsheet!

DFS Army VIP Members also have access to our DFS Army Domination Station Lineup Optimizer!