Welcome to this weeks Chalk Donkey article for DFS PGA Golf. This week the PGA tour heads to the Traveler’s Championship at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farms.
My name is Josh Thomas, and I’ll be writing the Chalk Donkey article for VIP’s every week here at DFS Army looking at who the chalk plays are in DFS Golf and who you can pivot to. We’ll look at if you nee
d to eat the chalk especially in cash games, and take a deep dive into some pivots using our Research Station and the Domination Station.
OOFTA. Last week was rough. The game theory fade of Paul Casey did not work out as he finished 2nd, which wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but almost the entirety of this range ended where I moved my Casey shares, missed the cut. Ryan Moore, Webb Simpson, and Marc Leishman all failed to play the weekend, and my lineups were pretty much drawing dead by Friday night. Brian Harman was a great call and Zach Johnson looked to be after shooting a scorching hot 8 under in round one, but followed that up with a whole lot of nothing.
One of the keys to DFS Golf is to stay the course and if your strategy is sound, you’ll win over time. With the variance in golf though, you might go through a few weeks where you get beat up, but trust the process and you’ll find yourself in the green more often than not. So that’s what were going to do this week, keep trying to identify the right plays and avoiding the bad chalk! Now, to the Quicken Loans National.
TPC Potomac at Avenel Frams is a 7107 yard par 70 in Maryland, just outside of Washington DC. This is only the second year they have hosted this tournament, but the course is no stranger to PGA Tour Events as it hosted the old Kemper Open from 1987-2006. After undergoing a almost complete redesign, including the par 3 9th, which Greg Norman affectionately hoped they would “Blow up with dynamite”, the course held the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship in 2010 to positive reviews. Two Web.Com events were held here in 2012 and 2013, after which another renovation was done of a few greens and some fairways were widened.
Last year, the course played very difficult, with scores averaging almost a stroke and a half over par. The front played almost a half a stroke harder than the back. While there is only 2 par 5’s, the course still only yielded 26 eagles over the course of the tournament. There are six par 4’s over 450 yards, but also three under 400 yards. Hitting fairways is the key to success here, along with long iron play as players will be faced with some longer approach shots. Last year’s winner, Kyle Stanley, was T3 in Fairways Hit and 1st in Greens in Regulation. The cumulative approach shot distance was 174 yards for the tournament, showing that we need to focus on players who are good from 170-200 yards.
DK/FD Scoring wise there are very few opportunities to get birdie streaks, and under 70 rounds are few and far between. Focusing on guys with good bogey/double bogey avoidance will be essential this week as the winning score won’t be in the 600’s like a normal week.
As always ownership will be important and finding the chalk donkeys will be huge. I don’t believe you need to avoid chalk just for the sake of fading the chalk, but some of the chalk is a bad play, and thats what we call a ‘chalk donkey’, so let’s find out who that will be this week!
What is a Chalk Donkey?
First let’s breakdown what I consider to be ‘chalk’. Let’s look at each each price range and what is considered chalk there. (DK pricing is used for a guide)
Over 10K: >25% Anything over 25% in this range is considered chalk, and could even go down to 20%. Some weeks ownership is pretty evenly spread in this range, and some weeks one player gathers all the ownership and becomes a Chalk Donkey.
9K: >20% Again, any time over 20% of the field is on a player in this price range we would consider them a chalk donkey.
8K to 7.5K: 15%-20% This is a little trickier in this range, but I consider anyone over 15% chalk. DK has been jamming a bunch of guys in around 7.5k lately and we’ve seen guys get up there in ownership.
Below 7.5K: >10% Players are priced here for a reason, and oftentimes one or two become what I call DFS Darlings and garner a ton of ownership While you usually have to eat this chalk in cash, you want to swerve it any chance you can in GPP’s.
One thing to remember as you construct lineups, players are ‘Chalk Donkeys’ for a reason, they are perceived to be good plays. Don’t fade the ‘Chalk Donkeys’ just because they are going to be highly owned. Very rarely does no chalk hit, and often times you find some of these ‘Chalk Donkeys’ in GPP winning lineups. Fading the chalk is strictly a leverage play, in that if that player plays poorly you are in much better shape not playing them.
Key Stats this Week:
In this section, I’ll cover what I feel are some of the key stats this week. We get lots of questions in slack about what to look for in the RS and here are some of the things that I’ll be focusing on this week for the Quicken Loans National.
Value Tab:
The first thing I look at every week when I open up the RS is the Value tab. Who is popping as a value this week. This is pretty easy to find as the better the value, the darker the green box. The value tab looks at Vegas odds and our projections, versus the salary FanDuel or DraftKings have assigned to that player.
The first thing I notice when looking at this is the ridiculous price DK has for Charles Howell III this week. 28-1 to win which is better than the five guys priced above him. Not only that but he was second here last year. Lock and load me some CH3 this week at that price.
Andrew Putnam is coming off a 2nd place finish at the Fed Ex St. Jude losing to DJ but had a great performance. He took two weeks off but returns to a course he should be pretty comfortable at having played here on the Web.com tour and will get the inside scoop from his brother who won that event.
All five of these guys will find their way into my player pool this week though. In a tournament with a not so great field, I’ll jump on any value I can find.
Projected Course Score:
Projected Course Score is a stat that is unique to us here at DFS Army. It takes the average fantasy points scored on each type of hole on the course, and then adds them up to give you the best “course fit” players. We’ve had some real good success the last few weeks with this stat. Dustin Johnson topped the list and won at FedEx St. Jude, while Bryson Dechambeau was 3rd the previous week and won. Last week 4 of the top 5 in our projected course score stats made the cut and 3 finished in the top 20. This is another great place to look in our RS when building your player pool.
DFS darling Joaquin Niemann tops the list for us this week, though we need to take that with a grain of salt as he doesn’t have a huge sample size to draw from. I’ll be playing a bit of Jocko this week (apparently he likes to be called that) but I think we should temper our expectations based on this.
Fabian Gomez looks to be a good fit here and thats encouraging as he is coming off a good week last week. At his price he looks to be a good value. Chesson Hadley and Marc Leishman both look to be good fits, but their putting was absolutely atrocious last week and neither are very accurate off the tee which is concerning at a course that puts a premium on driving accuracy.
Rickie Fowler is one of my favorite plays this week and I love him seeing him up here as even though he is priced at the top of the salary list, I’ll be overweight.
Fantasy Points/Long Par 4
With six par 4’s classified as “long” in our research station, this is a key area to look at. I’m including Short and Medium par 4’s as well since there are 3 of each of those as well. It’s a good comparison to see if they are just good in one area or all three.
There’s Chesson Hadley again. I was coming into this week completely prepared to not play him this week, but if he keeps showing up I just might have to play him.
Kevin Streelman finished top twenty last year here, but has the lowest FP/Short par 4. Adam Hadwin finally had a good week last week but is still losing strokes off the tee.
Kyle Stanley is my second favorite play up a the top of the salary scale behind Rickie. And remember a few weeks ago when I was on the fade Ben Crane train? Not this week. At that price we should be smashing him. This is a great course fit for him.
Average Greens in Regulation Gained/Round:
This is a brand new stat that Taco threw into the RS last week and the timing couldn’t be better as Greens in Regulation play a huge role in success at this tournament.
Niemann pops here again, but small sample size should temper your expectations. That being said, he’s the type of guy we want to target in GPP as if his putter gets hot, he will top twenty no problem, thats the type of talent he is.
Gary Woodland is another of my favorite plays this week as he has seemed to get his game back the last few weeks, and at that price on DK, I’ll be all over him.
Stewart Cink’s driving accuracy is a bit concerning to me, but the bigger issue I have is the price, which clearly jumped because of his round on Sunday. He’d be 7300 in this field if he didn’t shoot 62 on Sunday. Don’t fall for that trick, he doesn’t present a ton of value.
Other key stats to consider this week, that I’ll get into in my breakdown of the chalk donkeys:
Driving Accuracy, SG: OTT, Adjusted Field Rank, and as always SG: Approach. I’ll specifically look at any changes in the Strokes gained categories in the last 5 as oppposed to the season for players.
Who are this week’s Chalk Donkeys?
In this section, each price range’s Chalk Donkey will be identified, and a few pivots will be offered. I use DraftKings pricing since that is where I usually play, but their pricing is usually similar to FanDuel and when a player pops as a value on one site but not another I’ll make sure to mention it.
Above 10K:
Tiger Woods: DK $11,000/FD $12,300
While I think Rickie Fowler will garner some ownership, it looks like Tiger will be the highest owned player up above 10K. Currently I’m projecting him around 18-22% owned. With the tight pricing, its going to be VERY difficult to make a roster with two guys above 10K, even one 10K and a 9K player is going to be tough to swallow.
While I like Tiger this week and think this might be a great spot for him to breakthrough for his comeback win, there’s an argument that can be made to not play him.
Tiger’s driving accuracy has never been great and as always I’m a bit concerned. He showed that he’s willing to club down but under pressure (the US Open) he starts to unravel a bit with the driver.
His Double Bogey or worse percentage is also pretty poor. He likes to make some big numbers and those are in play here with 184 made in last years tournament.
Tiger’s approach game has been unbelievable the last few weeks, gaining 2.79 strokes approach at the US Open. Thats a ridiculous number. Unfortunately he missed the cut there because he putted like a donkey. Tiger’s SG: Around the Green has been excellent here as well but that doesn’t appear to make a big difference in how golfers finish here.
Here’s how the winners have fared here over the last few years. Driving Accuracy and Greens in Regulation % are HUGE, same as SG: OTT. Putting and Around the green as usual, don’t seem to make a big difference.
Speaking of putting, Tiger has switched to a new putter this week, a Mallet style that looks similar to the one Henrik Stenson uses. While thats exciting to me as a fan, as a DFS player that’s a sign to stay away.
I’ll have some shares of Tiger this week but I would much rather play Rickie Fowler and Francesco Molinari in this price range.
Check out all that green in Fowler’s fantasy scoring stats. He just crushes every thing. He also finished 3rd here last year. I love him this week and will be starting the majority of my builds with him, even if it handcuffs me by having to pick mostly from the 7K Range.
Francesco Molinari is an interesting play this week for a variety of reasons. I was surprised to see his name on the list because of the HNA Open de France. That event offers 1.5x Ryder Cup points, while this offers none. While he is fairly safe within the standings at this point, I would think he would want to get more and further solidify his position on the team.
This must be a course that suits him and an event he is looking at as one he can win.
Moli is a plodder. He hits it pretty straight off the tee (and fairly long), hits a lot of greens, and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. He’s going to be fairly popular as the fourth highest priced option up here, but I’ll be in on him as he’s got a ton of win equity here.
Coming off a top 30 a the US Open and a win at the BMW there’s not too many guys playing better than him right now.
I have very little interest in JB Holmes and Marc Leishman, but will have my fair share of Kyle Stanley as the defending champion has been playing lights out the last few weeks and is returning to a course he’s obviously very comfortable at.
9K:
Jimmy Walker: DK $9600/FD $11800
Jimmy will be fairly popular this week as DFS players will look to run a balanced lineup due to lack of value in the low 7k Range. While Jimmy is a great player in his own right, and he’s been crushing with his irons lately, this course doesn’t appear to be a good statistical fit for him.
What does TPC Potomac require? Accurate Driving, hitting greens, and avoiding big numbers. Jimmy doesn’t do any of those particularly well.
As we saw in the graphic from earlier, strokes gained off the tee is huge, and Walker’s season long rank would put him just barely making the cut, not something you necessarily want from someone priced here. He also missed the cut and finished 83rd last year, though that was when he was really battling lyme’s disease. There’s better play’s here and I’ll be avoiding Walker.
Other plays in the 9K range that I like are, Beau Hossler, Joaquin Niemann, and Kiradech Aphibarnrat (in that order)
8K:
We have a nice mix of good and bad chalk in this salary range so lets get to it.
Charles Howell III: DK $8900/FD $11400
Whoa price differential! In my opinion DK flubbed this one. CH3 has better odds to win the next five guys priced above him. FD has it figured it out and he’s priced up over there, but at this price he becomes almost a must play value play on DK. Obviously we’re not the only ones who picked up on this and he’s going to garner a ton of ownership this week.
Howell finished 2nd here to Kyle Stanley in a playoff (and cost me a ton of money) because his short game around the green is atrocious. Fortunately that is not something that really comes into play here often. He’s one of the ‘safest’ plays in the field with a 88% made cut percentage and has been putting the lights out. Fire him up in all formats, regardless of ownership.
If I told you the player with this stat line was going to be chalky would you play him?
Well, this is David Lingmerth’s and its looking like he will push 15-20% ownership and he will be our next Chalk Donkey
David Lingmerth: DK $8200/FD $7900
Again, FanDuel seems to get it right with the pricing. I don’t get why DK’s pricing algo has him up here but its an easy fade for me. Yes he’s been playing better the last few weeks, and has good course history, but that’s it.
Last year, Lingmerth finished fifth, but was playing MUCH better than he is this year. He was coming in with outstanding form. I was all over him, this year, not so much. He has really struggled off the tee and his approach game has been awful.
I’d much rather pivot to Gary Woodland or Byeong Hun An my two favorite plays in the 8K Range.
Benny An has one of the best projected course scores in the field and is a great value on DK. He’s long and accurate off the tee, and while he had a poor showing at the US Open, I’ll let that slide as most did.
Gary Woodland has seen his price increase, but not enough and is still criminally underpriced on DK compared to his talent, especially for a guy who has won this year. He’ll carry quite a bit of ownership but he really pops in the RS.
Not only does Gary pound the ball he is actually pretty accurate off the tee, and hits a ton of greens. Thats a great combo here. He doesn’t have course history, but at that price I don’t care. I’ll have lots of Rickie Fowler and Gary Woodland Combos.
7K:
Outside of Andrew Putnam (play him) and Adam Hadwin (Don’t play him) there doesn’t appear to be a lot of chalk in this range, as there aren’t a ton of great plays, so instead of looking for chalk, I’ll give you guys a couple of my favorite plays in this range as getting this range right will be massive for your success in GPP this week.
Billy Horschel: DK $7900/FD $9600
Huh? Didn’t we just see him at 10K for the FedEx St. Jude??? This is an insane price drop.
He’s known to blow up and this doesn’t appear to be a great course fit based on our projected course score, but he hits a lot of fairways and greens and at his price in this field? I think Billy Ho is a smash play in GPP.
Si Woo Kim: DK $7600/FD $9600
I’m going to take a shot on some Si Woo this week in GPP even though we’re not at a Pete Dye Course for one reason and one reason alone. Check out that SG APP number last week!
It’s possible that this is an anomaly, but if he can get his Iron game going, Si Woo is a threat to win every week. He’s a fairly accurate driver of the ball and scores well on long Par 4’s. This is an absolute punt play, but one that I feel comfortable taking on a week like this.
Ryan Armour: DK $7500/FD $8100
One of the best value plays on the board this week, I love throwing Armour into lineups. He’s dead straight off the tee, and while not known as a great fantasy scorer, he actually gains Fantasy Points on the field on average.
He’s actually the most accurate driver of the golf ball in the field. I don’t expect him to win, but a top 20 would be a solid result, and hugely beneficial to your lineup at this price.
Other plays I’ll be on down here: Corey Conners, James Hahn, Richy Werenski, Brian Gay, and John Huh.
Below 7K:
There is NOT much down here and in fact a lot of these guys aren’t even viable to put into a lineup. The only reason I’ll dip down here is if I’m trying to cram some higher priced players with Rickie Fowler.
Some interesting GPP plays down here are:
Ben Crane – Accurate off the tee, Decent Cut Maker, Good on Long Par 4’s
Tyler Duncan – Playing well the last few weeks, hasn’t missed a cut since the Wells Fargo
Robert Garrigus – Great Ballstriker, Can’t putt to save his life.
Abraham Ancer – Makes a lot of cuts, doesn’t do much else. Good OTT, One of the better Projected Course Scores down here.
Lineup Thoughts:
I’m not going to be playing a lot of MME this week, sticking mostly to three entry max and single entries. There’s just not a ton of value that I’d rather make just a couple lineups I feel good about and run them out. If you do MME I’d keep a tight player pool and hope it hits.
Weather:
Chance of T-storms on Thursday, but shouldn’t be too big of an issue. Going to be in the 90’s Friday and into the weekend. If we see any sort of tee time advantage, we will be sure to let you know in slack!
Final Thoughts:
As ownership trends start to finalize this week, I’ll post some updates in slack and make sure to join in and ask any questions.
Join us in Slack Chat this week and lets win some money! I’ll be there off and on all week, but will be in helping build lineups from 9:00 to 10:00 PM CST on Wednesday night getting you guys ready to take down some huge GPP’s!
Also, give me a follow on twitter @dfsupnorth as I’ll be posting updates there as well as useful retweets leading up to this weeks event!