DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey - BMW Championship

Welcome to this weeks Chalk Donkey article for DFS PGA Golf. It’s the third week of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and we have the BMW Championship!

My name is Josh Thomas, and I write 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 need to eat the chalk especially in cash games, and take a deep dive into some pivots using our Research Station and the Domination Station.

Bryson Dechambeau is looking at ten million dollar pay day here real soon with his second win of the playoffs. Think about this for a second…he has the same amounts of wins as Rickie Fowler. Thats crazy! I’m already thinking about buying clubs that are all the same length like him.

Tony Finau had another strong week, and while Justin Rose faded a little bit on Saturday he was able to fight back and finish solo 2nd which was a great considering he missed the cut badly the week before.

Maybe the biggest story last week for me was Cam Smith’s second 3rd place finish in a row. This is a guy that missed four consecutive cuts earlier this year, but on the back of a couple strong finishes here and a 5th place finish at the Masters’ he’s sitting at 8th place in the FedEx cup and is safe to make it it the Tour Championship regardless of what happens this week.

Last week fade of Billy Horschel paid off as he WD’d after 10 holes on Thursday. No way did I think he would do that, but not having any really helped. We also nailed the Joel Dahmen fade. Having a ton of Tyrell Hatton was great in GPP until Sunday when he faded down the stretch.

This week is the last big’ish tournament of the year before the fall swing. We have 69 golfers in the field this week and they all will play all four rounds barring a player WD’n mid round. Next week the field gets cut to 30 players and its not really a week I like to play because of the small field and volatility that comes with that.

With a no cut event there is a bit of strategy that goes into building your rosters in gpp and cash and we will go over that but first lets look at Aronimink Golf Course which is hosting an event for the first time since 2012.

Course Preview:

The event this week is held at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. Aronimink is a Donald Ross design (we just played on one 3 weeks ago at the Wyndham Championship) and will be the first of two Ross designs the players play as the tour championship at East Lake is another Ross. Some of Donald Ross’s other famous designs are Pinehurst No. 2, and Seminole. He is known for his natural design, not moving much dirt to create a course and letting nature take its course and we see that here at Sedgefield as well. He is also known for a straightforward course that tests every single club in your bag.

This course was redesigned by Gil Hanse since the tour last played here (I feel like I’ve been saying that every week…and I have) and this will be the first time many of the players have seen it since then. The redesign wasn’t an overhaul by any means, mostly just widening the fairways to create different angles, increasing the green sizes, and adding about 100 small bunkers all over the course.

Above, is the hole breakdown from the last time the tour was here in 2011. The course played at 7237 yards then and will play just a smidge longer this year at 7260. As a par 70 thats a pretty long course and players will have some long irons into these four par 4’s that are over 450 yards, but they also should have some wedges into the four shorter ones. The Par 5’s are reachable in two for the longer hitters and scored as two of the easiest three holes on the course last time.

Fairways and greens are both bent grass which is the same as last week, and I think it would be wise to take a look at last weeks leaderboard as those players will most likely be good course fits here too as well as riding some momentum.

If we look at the stat correlations for the event the last time the tour played here you can see that as usual, SG Approach is going to be king, but we also see that SG: Off the Tee makes a bigger difference here than at a normal event, so we will want to target guys who are killing it off the tee too.

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.

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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 BMW Championship.

Before we get into the stats this week, I wanted to provide you guys with a link to some info about Strokes Gained Data. Strokes Gained is a confusing topic and DFS Army member (And Milly Maker winner) @redkacheek has put out a great article explaining how they work better than I ever could over at his site Fantasy Golf Bag. I normally don’t link other sites but this is just too good not to share. Give it a look here! How Do Strokes Gained Stats Work?

One thing I like to look at first before we get into the key stats is the Results by Stokes Gained tab on the RS as well as the Averages by Finish tab to see what we want to target this week.

From these two tabs we can conclude a couple of things. It’s important to note that Season Long Average in the Averages by finish tab is what those players were doing coming in.

You have to putt well here to contend, but you don’t necessarily have to putt well coming into the event. These are some really difficult greens and you will have to do well to read them so we don’t really need to target putting this week even though it looks like it correlates. In tournament its important but thats usually the case every week.
SG: Approach is king…again. As with almost every week we want guys gaining strokes in approach.
SG: Off the Tee is more important here than a normal event. On average the players who do well here gain more than half a stroke better off the tee than normal. Targeting guys who are gaining strokes off the tee recently is a good place to start.

Value Tab:

The second thing I look at every week when I open up the RS is the Value tab and at a major it is no different. 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.

DK kept Tommy Fleetgoat in the 8K’s again this week and he is another supreme value. My big concern is that he is struggling a bit off the tee and his approach game hasn’t been great either. He’s just been sort of mediocre.

If you’ve read this article long enough you would know that I’m a Patrick Cantlay fan boy. He got priced up last week, finished top 25 and now is back at 8.5k and a great value. He’s been crushing it off the tee and in approach, top ten in both last week, and looks primed to make a run up the leaderboard.

I love the other three here and I think that Emiliano Grillo is a cash lock this week.

SG: Approach – L10

As you can see from the charts above, and as is the case almost every week, SG: Approach will be huge this week. I’m going to look at players last ten rounds as that goes back a little more than two tournaments and gives us a decent sample size. The course this week should play pretty similar to last weeks so it’s good to have those rounds in there.

No surprise that Tiger Woods is crushing here. Unfortunately he can’t really putt to save his life. It was a bit better last week, but now I’ve seen that he’s going back to the blade Scotty Cameron which concerns me a bit.

Hideki Matsuyama is primed for a big run here as well, but again his putter is holding him back. Hell outside of Billy Horschel lately all of these guys are pretty bad putters.

Tyrell Hatton faded on Sunday but had a really strong week in every single area of his game. I really think Henrik Stenson is more hurt than he is letting on and thats the reason for his poor play lately. On the season he is one of the best players on tour in Double Bogey or Worse % and he had 3 last week, including 2 on Sunday. Not good.

SG: Off the Tee – L10

Strokes Gained Off the Tee is another key stat that I want to look at this week. It looks like SG: Off the Tee correlates well with players who contend here and specifically players who are gaining strokes recently off the tee.

Abraham Ancer is one of the hottest golfers on the planet right now. Since the Quicken Loans National he has three top tens including last weeks T7. He also has two missed cuts in there. DK still hasn’t priced him up and while he will probably be chalky, but he’s been great lately.

I keep going back to the Brooks Koepka well and this seems like an excellent course fit for him. Bubba Watson is my sneaky play of the week. I think this course is similar to Riviera and players who have had success here have had success there as well. Bubba crushes Riviera and is starting to get his game together again and was T7 last week.

You know who else crushes Riviera? Patrick Cantlay, oh and weird he shows up in this stat too. I don’t know if its just confirmation bias but I love Cantlay this week.

Other key stats to consider this week, that I’ll get into in my breakdown of the chalk donkeys:

Projected Course Score, Fantasy Points/Hole, Double Bogey or Worse %, Birdies Gained and Long Par 4 scoring. I’ll specifically look at any changes in the Strokes gained categories in the last 5 as opposed to the season for players.

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Who are this week’s DFS 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:

With the top 7o golfers this year left, we have a stacked upper echelon this week and outside of Rory McIlroy they all have a legitimate chance at taking the down the FedEx cup at the cool 10 million dollars in annuities that goes with it.

Bryson DeChambeau: DK $10000/FD $12000

Coming off back to back wins, Bryson is clearly going to be one of the highest owned in this range, regardless of the fact that he’s priced up among the big boys. As a whole the ownership here will be fairly spread, but I see Bryson coming in at 15-20% owned and leading the group in market share.

Outside of his back to back wins here, Bryson has been just kind of mediocre over the last few months. He’s been paying off his salary for the most part, but thats because he’s been priced in the low 8K’s. Now that he’s priced up, he needs to top 5 to pay of the 10K price tag and theres a lot of things that go into me thinking he’s due negative regression.

Anytime you are coming off a win there’s usually a let down. That didn’t happen last week. Now hes coming off back to back wins and should have elevated ownership? That right there is enough for me to fade. He also secured a spot on the Ryder Cup, which is something he’s been playing for over the last few months. There’s plenty for him to play for, especially that 10 million dollar prize for 1st in the FedEx cup, but I think this is a natural let down spot especially since he doesn’t really need to play that well to retain his number one position in the standings.

If this was a cut event, this would be an easy fade for me, but letting Bryson play the weekend concerns me a bit as he is an excellent RD 3 and RD 4 scorer (outside of his collapse at the Porsche European Open).

Statistically, there isn’t a great argument against playing Bryson this week. He’s crushing it everywhere. The only issue I see is that his approach game is a little erratic times. This is more of a narrative/ownership fade and one I’m fairly comfortable with, especially at this price.

The rest of this range will have ownership fairly spread with Justin Thomas most likely being the lowest owned. If he continues to be lower owned the rest of his peers, I’ll continue to be 2 to 3x the field. He’s an elite player and while a t24 last week wasn’t ideal. He has all the skill to win this event. His approach numbers have been elite as well. For him, its just putting together four solid rounds.

I really think in a no cut event like this you need to hitch your wagon to one or two players this in range and be 2-3x the field to leverage the ownership. Just spreading out your shares isn’t going to be enough to have a profitable week in my opinion. Thomas is one guy that I’ll be jamming into as many lineups as I can.

Brooks Koepka might actually push Bryson for ownership this week but I doubt it. He’s my second favorite play in this range as he just continues to play well. DJ, Rory, and Justin Rose are all great plays this week, but I’m going to focus the majority of my lineups around JT and Brooks and hope that it pays off.

Note: Rose won here in 2011. I don’t know how much stock to put in that but its worth noting.

9K:

Two chalk plays and a bevy of good players here, including a player that looks like he’s going to criminally underowned.

Hideki Matsuyama: DK $9700/FD $11000

Deki has had a couple of solid rounds in a row and is really trending in the right direction with finishes of 4, 15, and 11 in his last three starts. He’s had an extremely up and down year as he was hot in January/February and a wrist injury at the Waste Management really derailed his season for a few months. It appears though that the once dominant Hideki is back.

Everyone in the community has taken notice of his great run of form though and that is going to inflate his ownership this week. While his approach numbers are as good as ever, his off the tee numbers are just kind of mediocre and not the type of thing I want to see coming into a tournament that emphasizes that.

Others in this range have much better OTT numbers and similar approach numbers (Tony Finau) and at a reduced ownership, I think make better GPP plays than Hideki this week. The big concern for me though is that he is due for a regression in his putter.

Recency bias is a real thing, and people are going to play Matsuyama based solely on his run this weekend at TPC Boston. He played well, but putted way above his norm. He’s capable of putting average, but this weekend was well above that. On these difficult to read greens that roll fast and undulate, I think I’m going to be fading Deki while the rest of the field flocks to his gaudy approach numbers and the birdie fest he had on the weekend at the Dell.

Tiger Woods: DK $9200/FD $11300

Everyone and their mother is going to play Tiger Woods this week. Seriously, my mom is babysitting my son this week and she said he’s winning. I think he pushes over 25% ownership this week. And he’s in a fantastic spot to perform well.

Thats what I wrote about Tiger last week and it turned out to be true, everyone did play him and it looks like they are going to again. Tiger is going to get massive bumps in ownership every time he plays because he’s Tiger but looking at the stats and the recent form, I don’t know that Tiger even really deserves to be priced here.

He’s got winning upside obviously and everyone is waiting for that first win, but I don’t think we see it this year, and especially not this week on a tough track like Aronimink. My big concern for Tiger here is his ability to gain strokes off the tee, switching back to the Scotty Cameron putter, and his Long Par 3 scoring which he is kind of atrocious at.

With three long par 3’s, Tiger’s game will truly be tested. Making a 5 on these par 3’s is easy to do (There were 27 last time this course hosted a tournament on the long par 3’s). Tiger has the ability to put a couple good rounds together, but holes where he blows up cost him and he digs himself a hole he can’t get out of. And there are plenty of those holes on this course. I just don’t think he’s ready to win yet and will be fading him again this week.

I’m willing to roster everyone else in this range. Rickie Fowler is coming off an injury and just screams value to me at reduced ownership, and especially at the price point on FanDuel. Its a risky move, but the upside in GPP is SO HIGH. He legitimately could win here and will be feeling some pressure after watching Bryson tear it up the last few weeks.

Tony Finau is probably my favorite play, as he just has been so consistent and is trying to make the Ryder Cup team. He’s a lock and load play for me in both cash and GPP. I’ll eat whatever chalk he becomes.

Jason Day is an interesting GPP play at miniscule ownership for a guy of his pedigree. He was bad last week. Like really bad. Off the tee, Approach, and Putting were all awful. But he got some extra rest and time to practice. I think having a share of him in GPP could be a very smart play.

8K:

One mega chalk play here that I can’t but eat, and the rest of the ownership will be fairly evenly spread. There are a few full fades for me that I’m going to get to.

Patrick Cantlay: DK $8500/FD $9900

My boy Cantlay could push to be the highest owned player in the field this week. I think he’ll be chalky, but maybe not as much as others are projecting.

He’s priced down this week after being in the 9k range last week and I think he’s just doing so much well that you can’t ignore him. And at this price anything better than T20 means he hits value.

As you saw earlier, he’s crushing every statistic. Our simulator has him with the third best top 20% in this range. And he has one of the best projected course scores in this field. He’s an absolute smash play and will be part of my core in GPP and cash this week.

I think you need to differentiate the lineups with him in GPP and a way to do that is by pairing him with some of the lower owned plays priced above him. A Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Patrick Cantlay core is a pretty unique lineup and you can play around with some of the lower priced options below.

For me I will be full fading a few players in this range. Phil Mickelson, Tommy Fleetwood, Paul Casey and Billy Horschel are pretty easy fades for me this week. The only one that really concerns me is Fleetwood because of his winning upside, but the guy CANNOT put four good rounds together. Last week was uninspiring to say the least and he has recently been struggling off the tee. Not a good sign.

Phil was just brutal of the tee in RDS 1 and 2 last week and had to rely on his putter to save him on the weekend. Not something I want to target.

Billy Ho got pouty and walked off the course last week. No thanks. That will kill every lineup you have this week if something like that happens. Casey can’t score on par 4’s and has been below average recently.

I’m going to go right back to the Jon Rahm well here and hope that he pops at some point. Another course that he should be able to take advantage of with his length, its just putting everything together for him and avoiding some big numbers.

Francesco Molinari should be well rested after a few weeks off and due to that little break should come in with a bit of depressed ownership. I think he’s a viable cash option and an interesting GPP one as well.

7K:

A great range here that will win you or lose you a gpp this week so its important that we get this range right this week.

Bubba Watson: DK $7600/FD $10000

Ugh. I wanted to play him last week. I was going to write him up, and I got scared and didn’t trust my gut. That was a mistake as Bubba ended up finishing T7 and smashing value.

Now everyone is going to be on Bubba this week as he’s projected as being one of the highest owned players in this range.

Bubba has been absolutely mashing it Off the Tee. Like actually kind of ridiculous the last few weeks, and thats what we are looking for heading into this event.

Its been fairly consistent around 1 stroke gained off the tee and I think thats going to be absolutely essential this week. I have some concerns about his approach game and putter on these difficult greens, but I think you have to eat the chalk here as he’s in just such a smash spot. Our simulator likes him to do well and he has the 3rd best win % in the 7K’s.

I love me some Bubba this week. I probably won’t pair him with a chalk player like Cantlay but at his price its really hard to ignore.

Tyrell Hatton is generating quite a bit of buzz off his solid performance last week and will be owned but is another guy I really like. I have some concern about his off the tee game and that the putter goes bad so I’m going to temper some expectations here. He’s a fade candidate if you are making 3-5 lineups but if your making 20, matching the field around 20% would be the best play in my opinion.

Cam Smith will be chalky after another solid performance, but I’ll fade him and hope that he regresses back to the Cam Smith we saw the majority of the year. He really doesn’t do anything outstanding and he really struggles to hit greens, which he’s going to have to do here to contend. I’ll fade him and let the donkeys’ chase his recent form.

The rest of the range should be fairly spread ownership wise and here is who I will be playing and fading.

Plays: Gary Woodland, Brandt Snedeker, Emiliano Grillo, Louis Oosthuizen, Luke List (I love him this week), Kevin Kisner, Aaron Wise

Fades: Henrik Stenson, Cam Smith, Byeong Hun An, Zach Johnson, Ian Poulter

Below 7K:

With such a small field we see some great plays down here. Be careful on Draftkings because they messed up the field early in the week. If a player has a O by his name it means he’s not playing.

We might have a mega chalk donkey down here in CT Pan this week garnering over 20% ownership after a solid couple of tournaments. I really will have zero Pan this week as down here I think you can pivot and differentiate. Everyone will be going for the players who have recent form, and I think the best bet is to find the guys crushing it off the tee and those scoring lots of fantasy points.

Off the tee we have three players who clearly stand out in this range. Abraham Ancer, Keith Mitchell, and Chesson Hadley. All three are viable plays and all three can fill it up when they get hot. Mitchell is my favorite play of the bunch but I can see myself getting some exposure to Chesson too.

Others I like in this range are: Peter Uihlein, Jason Kokrak, Si Woo Kim, and Charles Howell III.

Don’t dip down here unless you really have to as most of these guys don’t have a shot at making it to the tour championship unless they win.

Weather:

Weather looks interesting for the tournament. It’s going to be hot on Thursday and then cooling down with chances of shower the rest of the week. There’s no real tee time draw since everyone tees off within two hours of each other.

Overall, the weather may play a factor but more in softening and lengthening the course than anything, which could lead to bombers being the play on the weekend.

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. This is going to be a great week and I can’t wait to see some of those green screens and winning lineups!

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!

DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – BMW Championship