It’s time for RD 4 of the Open Championship and we have all the info you need to build a GPP winning lineup!
My name is Josh Thomas, and I’m a PGA DFS Coach at DFS Army and every week I look at who the chalk plays are in DFS Golf and who you can pivot to in my ‘Chalk Donkey’ article. I also provide notes/strategy content for the Showdown golf contests on Draft Kings and the Weekend contests on Fanduel for our VIP’s inside our slack chat.
RD 4 Showdown Scoring:
Here’s a quick reminder about RD 4 Showdown Scoring. There ARE points for finishing position in RD 4 , as well as Birdies, eagles, bogeys, and pars.
As you can see from the scoring chart above, eagles/birdies are king. Bogeys don’t hurt you too bad, especially if you make enough birdies. Most of the time we are looking for 4 birdies, more often than not a player that makes 4 birdies will hit ‘value’ for the round. Finishing points matter to a certain extent and I’ll go over that in a bit.
Showdown Strategy:
So how do we build a showdown lineup? Should we just take the guys at the top of the leaderboard? They are the ones crushing it so just load up on as many as you can and you’ll win right? Not so fast.
Leaders/Top 10:
RD 4 Showdown scoring takes into account finishing position on DK (on FD it doesn’t matter so don’t worry about this) What I’ve found is that if you have the winner in your RD 4 showdown lineup you are more than likely to cash unless the rest of your lineup blows. In GPP I try to target 1-2 Guys in the Top Ten, 1-3 Guys that are primed to jump up the leader board in 10th-20th, and 1-3 Guys with early tee times that have the chance to go low and jump the leaderboard. This varies tournament to tournament. In Cash though I think you need to target the chalk and play 4 guys in the top 10 and 2 outside of that that are good plays. That seems to get you to the cash line most weeks.
Weather:
Tomorrow, we might need to employ a different strategy based on the weather. While the early tee times will have to contend with 12-15 mph winds, it won’t be very gusty. The afternoon tee times will have to deal with 16-17 mph winds gusting up to 21-23 with local weathermen saying they may even see the odd gust of up to 30 mph.
I think we actually see the real CarNasty tomorrow with the leaders having to play in this and it sets up for one of two ways to play tomorrow which I’ll get to in a second.
SG Approach + / SG: Putting –
We don’t get SG stats on the Euro tour since they don’t utilize shotlink (which is dumb but thats an entirely other article for me to write) but we can look at Greens in Regulation (GIR) and Number of Putts to get a general idea of if a player is hitting greens and if he is ,how’s he putting? This led us to attack Justin Rose and Alex Noren in RD 3 which paid off. Its not perfect though because we also target Luke List (puke).
Tee times:
When players tee off tomorrow is going to play a huge role, here’s a link to the tee times.
Open Championship Final Round Tee Times
Fantasy Points Gained/Round
In our research station at DFS Army we have a tab that is strictly for showdown and shows how many fantasy points are gained per round by each player based on the specific round. This is huge and a great way to identify guys in great spots. We also have it sorted out by AM/PM to see if someone scores better in the morning or afternoon traditionally.
Disregard the tee times (They are wrong, I just forgot to delete the column) But Tommy Fleetgoat is coming up as the best RD 4 scorer and he looks to be in a good spot tomorrow. Satoshi Kodaira might be someone worth targeting too.
RD 4 Lineup Construction:
There’s basically three ways to attack tomorrow.
- Continue to play the best plays statistically even though many lineup in the top 20 with the worst tee time draw.
- Stack guys going off early (within the first two hours) and hope they can go low while everyone else blows up
- Mix the above two strategies and hope you can hit on the guys out late that can handle the wind.
Personally, I’m going to be employing all three, but if I were to only make ONE LU, I’m probably going with the mix and firing some GPP bullets on low owned guys off early.
Player Targets:
One interesting thing to look at is players who gain the most strokes in windy rounds (Found at Josh Culp’s Website Future of Fantasy)
Jason Day (3.149 sg:total)
Rory McIlroy (2.734 sg:total)
Jordan Spieth (2.701 sg:total)
Phil Mickelson (2.447 sg:total)
Rickie Fowler (2.409 sg:total)
Paul Casey (2.358 sg:total)
Henrik Stenson (2.232 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (2.186 sg:total)
Patrick Reed (2.124 sg:total)
Justin Rose (2.085 sg:total)
Adam Scott (2.006 sg:total)
Tony Finau (1.978 sg:total)
Webb Simpson (1.947 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (1.907 sg:total)
Pat Perez (1.902 sg:total)
Byeong Hun An (1.885 sg:total)
Alright, lets get to who I’m targeting for RD 4 tomorrow:
Alexander Noren: 2:15 PM
Went low today finally and despite a bogey on the last (After hitting it in the Barry Burn once, and almost a second time) still shot -4 on the day. He’s hitting a ton of greens in regulation and getting a lot of good looks at birdie. Has one of the more difficult tee times, but is well suited for it having won the 2016 Scottish Open in a windy final round.
Paul Casey: 9:20 AM
We get one of the elite wind/links players in the world teeing off super early on a course thats gettable. Sign me up. Casey has struggled pretty mightily over the last few days seemingly following every birdie and attempt to build momentum up with a bogey. Hitting a ton of fairways and greens but the putter just hasn’t really been cooperating. The hope is he puts it together tomorrow with an early tee time.
Jason Day: 10:15 AM
Arguably the best wind player in the field according to the site above at an early tee time, is worth a GPP shot. REALLY has struggled this week to do much only making 6 birdies. This was a course we thought he would crush due to this short game, but that hasn’t panned out yet. Hit a significantly higher number of fairways in RD 3 than the rest of the week and more greens, yet shot his worst round (though he had an eagle). Again, you get an elite player at an early tee time with low ownership. Sounds like a good GPP Play to me.
Sam Locke (Amateur) 9:55 AM
Hear me out here, I know I’m touting an amateur but this kid can play. He is second in the field in birdies made this week. Unfortunately for him he is first in the field in bogeys made. The kid can light it up though and not only that but he is top in the field in putting. Shot 69-66 in his open qualifier to win it over a slew of professionals. Scotland native, I love the narrative here and he’s ultra cheap. Get him in and hopefully he can go nuts. Understand there is a chance he shoots 80 though.
Patrick Cantlay: 12:00 PM
Not a great tee time, but not the worst either. Will have to play in the wind but he has really been playing well the last two days. Had some hiccups coming in which killed a really good round today. Someone I really like tomorrow to sneak up the leaderboard.
Others I’m considering in my player pool:
Rickie Fowler
Henrik Stenson
Brooks Koepka
Bernhard Langer (Seriously, fire him up, great in the wind won’t get rattled)
Satoshi Kodaira (Great RD 4 Scorer)
Adam Scott
Tommy Fleetwood
Tiger Woods (duh)
And my pick to take this thing down tomorrow…..
Jordan Spieth
I’m still researching as the night goes on here and will be in slack for any questions. Lets take down another big RD 4 Showdown GPP!
