Every week of the year the PGA Tour plays on a new course. There are some examples in other DFS Sports of environment 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 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
CIMB Classic Review
Justin Thomas – T5 – 124 DK Points
JT was the obvious play this week and although he was never really in contention a very strong Sunday saw JT finish inside of the top five. As the week went on it became obvious that everyone would be on JT, he ended up with a 43.87% ownership average across major GPP’s.
Ryan Moore – T66 – 60 DK Points
IF you were looking for a pivot off of JT my favourite was Ryan Moore. I figured outside of Billy Horschel (who I did not want to pay that much for) Moore would be the lowest owned above 10k. Well this was true none of it really mattered as Moore struggled all week and finished near the bottom of the leaderboard. Luckily my love for JT helped keep my ownership down on Moore who, despite the result I still think was a good play in a good spot.
Brandt Snedeker – T66 – 65 DK Points
I thought the price reduction would make Snedeker higher owned, turns out this was only really true in the low buy in GPP’s. As the buy in got higher, the ownership got lower as Snedeker saw 15.8% ownership in the $6 and only 10.8% in the $555. I am still surprised as I thought more of RCB’s owners would go to Snedeker. In this range, as long as you got off of the Snedeker (expected) chalk you were fine as every other option put up a solid showing.
Kevin Tway – T27 – 93.5 DK Points
I liked Tway as a lower owned alternative to Cameron Smith and Pat Perez. I think anytime you can get someone who has shown form at a cheap price with reasonable ownership you should seriously consider that option. Tway checked these boxes for me but unfortunately was outscored by 5.5 points by Cameron Smith and his 22.45% average, at least he outscored Perez.
Thomas Pieters – T30 – 91 DK Points
I liked Pieters and apparently so did a lot of other people as he saw the 2nd highest average ownership on the week. The DFS community is continually improving and Pieters has become known as a great play in these no cut events due to is ability to pile up the birdies. Pieters was unable to ever really get it going on the week and finished in the middle of the pack with a T30.
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CJ Cup Preivew
For the second year the PGA Tour will head to South Korea for the CJ Cup. Once again for everyone playing rosters will lock at 7pm on WEDNESDAY NIGHT!!!. Just like last week we have another no cut event with many top players in the world. The course this week, Nine Bridges, is a par 72 measuring 7,196 yards. Last year the event saw Justin Thomas defeat Marc Leishman in a playoff. JT got off to a quick start with a -9 round on Wednesday but played the next three rounds at even par and saw the field slowly catch up to him. While the leaders finished at -9 the rest of the field was not as lucky with only 24 of the 78 players playing under par for the week and plenty of high scores posted across the four days.
As this is only the second year of this event we are still learning exactly what the course is all about. Without shot tracker we cannot know exactly where players who were successful were gaining strokes. However, we did have a full four rounds to analyze from last year. I key feature last year was the amount of trouble players can get in. The fairways are forgiving but if you happen to be off there are plenty of holes that are tree lined and water spread throughout the course. Avoiding the big number is a key here and I will be looking for the guys that can just do that.
As always, Shots Gained Approach is huge here. Not only can you set yourself up for birdie putts but you can also take out a lot of the difficult situations Nine Bridges presents by hitting greens. The bogeys do not hurt you as much relatively in a no cut event but they are still important to avoid.
Finally, you can never go wrong with guys that have been showing good form and have already acclimated themselves to the time difference. I think it is one of the things that is either overstated by some or understated by others in the DFS industry but I do think when you get into this extreme of a time difference (especially when you are going forward) there is a big adjustment to be made.
Interesting Plays
Justin Thomas – DK: $11600 FD: $13100
Thomas is $400 more than Brooks on DraftKings and $800 more on FanDuel making him the highest salary for the week by a pretty significant margin. This discrepancy does make sense for a few reasons; JT won the event last year and has already shown he is in great form. JT is interesting to me this week as he was essentially 50% owned last week and showed up. This event has many more options which will definitely bring down the ownership somewhat but I still think we see JT as chalk. That makes for an interesting question – with other top end more affordable options is JT worth the extra salary?
Paul Casey – DK: $9900 FD: $11300
After a bit of a late season lull Casey is getting back to the dependable player all of us cash game players know and love. Outside of a WD, Casey has finished T21 or better in his last three starts. I like Casey this week and have him as an early target of mine.
Emiliano Grillo – DK: $8800 FD: $9600
No one was on him last week and I could see the same this week with his salary being tough to fit in depending what you do up top. Grillo fits the course, showed recent form last week and (hopefully) comes in under the radar.
Sungjae Im – DK: $8000 FD: $8400
I think Im is a little overpriced on DraftKings and a little underpriced on FanDuel. I am very interested in Im’s performance this week and am trying to figure out where I stand on him. I think Im has garnered a bit of hype after a strong first performance on tour but I would like to see more before I commit. The narratives will be flying this week with the South Korean playing at home and depending how much we see these impact ownership will likely dictate my decision on Im for the week.
Joaquin Niemann – DK: $7600 FD: $9900
Niemann is extremely interesting to me. After one bad performance we see Niemann receive an extreme price decrease on DraftKings. I saw enough out of Niemann to get over one missed cut and will definitely be on him somewhat this week. I will definitely be relying on @dfsupnorth and his ownership thoughts to help dictate in what % of ownership I will have of Niemann this week.
As always, these are initial thoughts and not necessarily the plays I will be making. As the week goes on I will update my thoughts in our member SlackChat as well as discussing multiple other players and my thoughts for both Cash and GPP’s.
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