Every week on the PGA Tour a new course means a new set of challenges. This article will examine the course being played and give specific insight on some keys for the week that other previews may be overlooking. This article will also breakdown players who stand out on both FanDuel and DraftKings for Cash Game and GPP formats. Finally, I will be reviewing my picks from before and going into a deeper dive on my Cash Game team in an attempt to better my own process while hopefully helping you with yours. For more updates throughout the week follow me on twitter @_bschnarr
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Review from last week (Genesis Open)
In this section I will break down the players I wrote up from the prior week, how they did and how I played them in my line-ups.
As I took did not play the WGC Mexico, below our plays from 2 weeks ago
$10K and Above (Dechambeau, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Justin ThomasP, Dustin Johnson)
DJ was my favourite play, at the highest salary I thought we could potentially see him come in underweight. After DJ I liked Mcilroy, Rahm, Thomas, Dechambeau. This whole group came top 15 so you couldn’t really go wrong either way up top for the week.
$9K -$10K (Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama, Xander Schaufelle, Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson)
In the end I ended up overweight on Cantlay, Hideki and Bubba while avoiding Spieth, and underweight on Finau/Phil/Tiger, Overall, another group I felt I did really well on for the week.
$7600-$7900 (Martin Laird, Cameron Champ, Jason Kokrak, Tyrell Hatton, Sungjae Im, Rafa Cabrera-Bello, Adam Hadwin, Charles Howell)
While I feel I did a great job up top with my roster, this is where I started to slip a bit. I found myself on RCB/Hatton/Champ the most out of this tier. Hatton/Champ MC’s hurt me and a T25 from RCB wasn’t enough to recover for being overweight on the other two. It always hurts being underweight on CH3 when the top 10 finishes from him hit.
Luke List $7500
The T15 helped ease the pain of a few MC’s.
Si Woo Kim $7400
Si Woo’s run on Sunday had me looking really good in a few GPPS’ – unfortunately for me, my Kim/JT teams weren’t paired with J.B. Holmes in any way.
Overall, a very good week for me that resulted in cash game double-ups and a profitable GPP week with a few lineups being close to doing some real damage.
Course Preview
In this section I will point out a few things that I find interesting about the course. If you’re a member at the Army you also have Josh’s article for more extensive reasoning on what the key stats are and our Domination Station showing what stats have been the most important historically.
- A lot of talk goes into the “Bear Trap”, a stretch of three holes that all play extremely difficult right at the end of your round (15, 16, 17). For guys that like to sweat their players making the cut this stretch is sure to drive you crazy as guys can easily leave here with a few big numbers. Overall, I like this stretch from a viewing perspective and it is interesting on Friday/Sunday to me to see who misses the cut/watch the leaders come in with a challenge but I think the overall importance of these three holes is overstated for DFS purposes. Players will struggle and will leave here on average a little more than a stroke over par (+1.186 last year) but there are fifteen more holes to worry about on the course. If you can find a guy who plays this stretch well over a repeated period that’s great, but that should not mean he’s necessarily a lock on your team for the week – worry about the other holes as well.
- Looking back over the years I think the perception of this course has changed slightly. For all of those who have been around the DFS Golf community for a while this event used to be one where many would argue Accuracy>Distance off of the tee before many became Distance>Accuracy regardless of the course. This event has had a variety of playing types have success here, which I why I think we used to hear that narrative. Overall, I think either way can lead to success here and while I will always lean towards bombers I will be emphasizing SG: Approach more than usual and more so than play off of the tee.
- Only two par fives and virtually no eagles to be had on them (8 total last year) really lowers the importance of par five scoring for me this week.
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Interesting Plays
In this section I will discuss plays that I like/dislike and guys that I find interesting for the week. Because this article comes out on a Monday this list can change, anyone I change my mind on will be discussed later in the week in our PGA coaching channel
Justin Thomas – DK: $11900
I have been writing in tiers but it is really hard to not put JT in his own category. JT Despite not winning in 2019, JT has been on an absolute tear with three top 3’s, a 9th and a T16 in 5 starts. It’s hard to ignore JT and his success this year, especially as the returning champion here at the Honda Classic. My issue with JT is the price is so high (rightfully so) that it becomes difficult to build a team, you can feel confidence in (after you use JT it’s $7620 per player for he rest of your roster. Initial odds for JT were at +550 and at this price you realistically need him to win to get value and even if he wins by a stroke over, lets say Webb Simpson, Simpson at $2,700 and being able to build a better roster would end up being better value per dollar. However, JT does have the ability to run away with a tournament and if we are expecting low ownership I have no issue loading up on JT for the 1/5 chance he wins and 1/10 he wins by quite a few strokes
Rest of $10K plus on DraftKings (Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott, Brooks Koepka, Rickie Fowler)
All plays it is easy to get behind for one reason or another. I personally like Brooks to likely be the lowest owned, and personally like Scott/Garcia and see them likely carrying a bit of ownership at their price. This does not mean that I do not also like Fowler but at this point I see Fowler likely around 15-20% ownership and would rather save $1000 for later in the lineup and use Scott or Garcia.
Gary Woodland – DK: $9800
Outside of one poor performance at the Sony Open earlier this season Woodland has been absolutely phenomenal with a second, two more top tens and a T17. Woodland has carried ownership in his last few appearances and surely will again. A great course fit for me, I will be on Gary this week.
Cameron Smith – DK: $9500
Remember 2 weeks ago when everyone played Smith as an underowned pivot with good recent form? That didn’t work out great as Smith ended up being chalky and didn’t really perform. However, coming off a T6 in Mexico we are sure to see Smith carry lots of ownership in this $9K range. Will we see another performance like the Genesis or will we see the same game we got in Mexico? I don’t know and I am not sure where I will be on Smith come Thursday morning, be sure to check back.
Kiradech Aphibarnrat/Luke List – $8200/$9200
I’m writing these two up together simply because the game logs look very similar. In the past few months both guys have shown an ability to finish in the top five, and an ability to miss cuts. Well this makes them obvious fades in cash games for me both are enticing options in GPP’s.
Russell Knox – DK $7800
Big fan of Knox this week for cash games because of the price and I like him in GPP’s as I think a few of the names in the same tier will carry ownership + those going stars/scrubs are limited in this tier.
Sungjae Im – DK $7300
While some of the hype surrounding Sungjae might have fallen off I think you can justify playing Im in GPP’s. Im has missed two straight cuts, but within that stretch there have really only been 2 bad rounds. Just last month Im had a top ten, and I’M not quite ready to give up on Im yet.
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Cash Game Review
I will end each article going over my cash game line-up for the week, breaking down my plays and reflecting for the following week
This review is of the Genesis Open as I did not participate in the WGC Mexico
The Team (4-2) The winning streak Begins
Paul Casey – T25
Matt Kuchar – T28
Hideki Matsuyama – T9
Charles Howell – 6
Rafael Cabrera-Bello – T25
Jason Kokrak – T37
Well none of my players were ever really in contention for the win the 6/6 lineup with all guys top 40 in a week where less than 5% had 6/6 lineups allowed my team to easily cash with no real concerns midway through Friday. This was the most confident I felt with any team I had this year in cash, I started with CH3/Hideki as absolute locks that I knew I wanted given recent form/course history/price. After that I was also high on RCB/Kuchar. With those four in I had a few options based on price (if I wanted to keep these 4) and both Casey and Kokrak were on my shortlist, which made me feel comfortable about the overall team. I felt all 6 were good shots to make the cut, and Hideki/Casey/Kuchar gave me three guys with realistic upside for a T10.
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