Every week of the year the PGA Tour plays on a new course. There are some examples in other DFS Sports of environments impacting performance, such as Coors Field in Baseball; Golf, however, offers an entirely unique environment each and every week. This article will break down the week’s PGA course and attempt to find what skill sets are needed for success. This article will then combine the course breakdown with the DFS Army Domination Station & VIP Research Station and give a few players to target in both Cash Game and GPP formats. For more updates throughout the week follow me on twitter @_bschnarr
Before we begin we had a lot of winners in golf this past weekend. Although these wins are not nearly as big as the ten $50,000 winners we have had since the start of the football season we will have that breakthrough win soon enough for PGA DFS.
Farmers Insurance Open Recap
Rickie Fowler – GPP – Missed Cut
Well, I sure got this one wrong. I liked Fowler because I felt it was a chance to get an elite level player at a suppressed ownership despite great recent form. I thought more of the ownership would fall on Jon Rahm leaving Rickie under-owned. What ended up happening was Fowler and Rahm saw similar ownership in GPP’s of right around 20%. Although this play was looking great after nine holes Fowler started to implode and ultimately missed the cut. This week gave a little lesson to me in the form of name value and how it translates to ownership. The two most popular golfers in the field were Rickie Fowler and Tiger. Rickie was around 20% owned and Tiger around 14% of GPP’s despite much safer options at the same price points.
Charles Howell – Cash – T6
Howell had another great performance after a great round Sunday vaulted him up the leaderboard. Howell during the west coast swing has continued to be money and deliver exactly what is needed in all forms of cash game contests.
Charley Hoffman – DraftKings Value – T35
Hoffman’s price really did not make sense and as a result, he was my DraftKings value of the week. Because of the value his salary presented Hoffman became a cash game lock for me. Although there were some concerns around the industry about Hoffman having to play his first two rounds with Tiger and the impact of the added pressure it did not bother Hoffman as he finished at a respectable T35.
Jhonnathan Vegas – FanDuel Value – MC
Just like Hoffman, Vegas was drastically underpriced on FanDuel. This price discrepancy resulted in high ownership for Vegas on both sites. If the ownership got you off of Vegas then you were likely a winner this week as Vegas’s bogey on 18 resulted in a missed cut.
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Phoenix Open
The PGA Tour will briefly leave California and head to TPC Scottsdale in Arizona for one of the most entertaining events of the year. With right around 600,000 total attendees across four days, the event is home to the largest crowds we see all year on the tour. Specifically, the par 3, 16th hole has grandstands filled and players doing their best to hit the green in order to avoid getting booed by the fans.
The course itself ranks in the middle of the pack for difficulty compared to other courses played on the PGA Tour. The course is a 7,266-yard par 71 with three par fives that are all reachable as well as par 4 that is reachable off-of-the tee. As far as key stats go a few measures have shown up continually over the past seasons to indicate success. As always, Shots Gained: Approach is the most important stat week in and week out. The Bermuda greens have somewhat neutralized putting and allowed those on tour who generally are not that great in the stat to succeed at this course. As a result, I will be targeting players who can hit greens in regulation.
Off of the tee, all of the players benefit from the slightly higher altitude and dry fairways, which makes driving distance a little less important to me. I will also be looking at Par 4’s 450-500 yards this week. With five of them total and four of them playing over par if players can play these holes without giving up strokes you will be set up to succeed.
Finally, in the last few years, players with good course history have often continued to play well over and over again here at TPC Scottsdale. I prefer to focus on recent form usually but this week with the trends that have developed I will likely be relying on course history as an important indicator on who to play/fade.
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Picks
Jordan Spieth – GPP – DK: $11400 FD: $12500
I will definitely be using Hideki Matsuyama a lot in GPP’s given his course history, recent form and how he sets up for the course BUT I also think Spieth sets up extremely well and will be much less owned. For GPP’s you can expect Jordan Spieth to be much lower owned than Matsuyama, which can give you a leg up if Spieth outperforms Hidkei. The entire top five players create an interesting dynamic for GPP’s and I will break down how I expect ownership to fall and what I will be doing with Spieth, Hideki, Rahm, JT and Rickie in GPP’s in our Slack Chat.
Webb Simpson – GPP – DK: $8900 FD: $11000
As far as course history goes, outside of Hideki Matsuyama, no one looks better than Webb Simpson. With no finish outside of the top 15 in his last four appearances, Webb always shows up at this event. It is early and we are still trying to figure out ownership but I do think Webb may be a little lower owned than people expect from being priced right next to Tony Finau on both DraftKings and FanDuel. Check back in with our Slack Chat and our ownership percentages as the week progresses.
Matt Kuchar – Cash – DK: $8400 FD: $11200
The prototypical cash game player Matt Kuchar is making his PGA debut for the season and looks to be in a good spot. Following a T32 on the European Tour in Abu Dhabi, Kuchar is on a streak of 22 made cuts. At this event, Kuchar has had some success including three straight made cuts in recent years and a T9 finish last season. Kuchar is a player you can almost always roll out in cash games and feels confident and this week is no different.
Brendan Steele – Cash – DK: $7800 FD: $9600
Steele is coming into the event with solid recent form as well as tremendous course history at TPC Scottsdale. Steele has played the last two events and finished T28 and T20. Since his debut at this event in 2011 Steele had made all seven cuts and has finished inside of the top 20 five of his seven appearances. Because of this Steele should be chalk which makes deciding to play him in large GPP’s an interesting decision. Check back later in the week with our ownership projections found in our Research Station as well as checking our Slack Chat.
As always, this article is published as a first look, things change leading up to lock and SlackChat should be checked as thoughts are changed when new information arises.
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