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DFS Army: UpNorth’s PGA Preview – Valspar Championship Advice

Who will tame the Snake Pit at this year’s Valspar Championship? 

My name is Josh Thomas, and I am a PGA and NFL Coach here at DFS Army! Welcome to the 2019 PGA Season! We here at DFS Army have got you covered this year for DFS golf with my weekly preview out on Sunday Nights, Chalk Donkey article breaking down the ownership projections, where to pivot, and GPP strategy out Tuesday Nights, and our Research Station that is full of more information than you could ever need!

Checks my 2018 notes…”Play light at the players, carnage happens”…did I listen? Kind of. I stayed away from cash because of the volatility, and while the 2019 Players Champion, Rory McIlroy, made it into one of my core lineups, in fact, my top lineup for the week, he was accompanied by four, count ’em, FOUR, players who missed the cut!

Kept away from going after any other bets this week just because of all the carnage that I was predicting. Didn’t want to sink any more money into this tournament than I felt comfortable with and wanted to have some left over to take a shot in the tournament. No outrights hit and no one really scared the leaderboard.

Paul Casey’s missed cut was not ideal as I was pretty heavily invested in him. I also had some pretty nice lineups with Chesson Hadley as my only missed cut. Xander Schauffele missing the cut didn’t do me any favors either. While I was over the field on McIlroy, Fleetwood, and Rahm, it didn’t matter much as the rest of my lineups were fairly mediocre. It’s an important reminder that it’s about all 6 golfers, and not necessarily just picking the winner.

Regardless, it was an extremely entertaining week of golf! We saw Rory get over the Sunday hump, Jim Furyk turns back the clock, and Jon Rahm let his emotions get the best of him while in the final group as he limped his way to a 12th place finish. We saw to unreal putts on 17 by Jhonnatan Vegas and Eddie Pepperrell, and Tiger actually had fun on the golf course with Kevin Na. 

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With the excitement of the Players’ Championship winding down, it’s time to turn our focus to the Valspar Championship! We are only 3 weeks away from the Thursday of the Masters! Time to start building that bankroll and looking at satellites for some of the big contests during Masters week!

The Valspar Championship is a similar test to the players in that it requires an excellent driver of the golf ball, an impressive iron game, and a good putter. Players will also be tested by infamous “Snake Pit” as they come down the stretch trying to win the golf tournament!

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Course Breakdown:

The Valspar Championship takes place at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Florida and is played on the Copperhead Course. The Copperhead course is a Larry Packard design and is known for its infamous “Snake Pit” stretch of holes 16-18!

As a 7,340 yard par 71, the course plays fairly long and is an extremely difficult test most years with the winning score being right around -9 or -10. While the Snake Pit is infamous as one of the toughest closing stretches on tour, the back as a whole actually plays a bit easier than the front due to the gettable par 5’s.

Not only is Copperhead a par 71, its a weird par 71 in that it has five Par 3’s, four par 5’s, and nine par 4’s which is a bit of a weird spread. Par 3 scoring will be something we need to focus on more than normal, especially with four of them measuring over 200 yards.

Copperhead is another course with Bermuda grass overseeded with Poa. It features smaller than average greens that run anywhere from 11 to 12 on the stimp. Very similar to last week at the Players. The fairways are somewhat difficult to hit and when we look at the average driving distance we can see that this is a course where players are often pulling less than driver off the tee to give themselves the best chance of putting it in the fairway.

Players will be tested on every single shot at this course and it truly is a course where we have seen the more strategic ball striker excel. 3 wood or hybrid off the tee and long iron into the green will be on order on lots of the par 4’s with very drivers at all in play. Position off the tee allows players to attack the smaller greens. With alow green in regulation % though, players will be testing their chipping skills quite often to save par. In fact, last year it really came down to Patrick Reed hitting a fairly poor chip shot into 18 that caused him to make bogey and allow Paul Casey to take home the win.

If we check out the tournament comparison tool in our Research Station we can see just how tough of a test this course is. Our database has 65 courses in that the tour plays on a regular basis and goes back 3 years and includes every course the players have teed it up at, even alternate field events. The average score here ranks 54th out of 65. The driving distance also ranks in the bottom 7 at 275 yards and the greens in regulation % rank dead last. Players won’t make many birdies per round here with an average of 2.8. Avoiding bogeys will be key here.

We can also see that though the fairways are hard to hit, the amount of fairway strokes per round is pretty high (includes chip shots around the green). We can also see that players hit 9% more approach shots from 175-200 yards than the average tour event. Lots of long irons into these smaller greens.

While water will come into play and it’s not as heavily intertwined in the course as one may think with it really only coming into play on 7 holes. The tree-lined fairways are the bigger test, and making sure you avoid them will be key. The trees also help to knock down some of these Florida wind, but they do cause it to swirl some when it gets high enough (over 10-12 mph), and that can cause the players some headaches.

Overall, this is an extremely difficult test and one that players will have to think their way through. You can’t overpower this course like you can at others, and the old adage slow and steady wins the race is truly the best way to play this course.

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Key Stats: 

Key Stats to look for this week –  Driving Accuracy, SG – Approach, Birdies Gained, Long Par 4 Scoring, Par 3 Scoring, SG: Around the Green, Course History, and Projected Course Score.

You can find all of these key stats in our DFS Army research station accessible ONLY for our VIPs.

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The Field:

In this section, I’ll cover who is in the field this week, the odds, any pricing discrepancies, and a few of my favorite plays on first look!

I’m pleasantly surprised by the strength of the field this week. With the move of the players to March, pushing this event back a week and right after it, you would assume that lots of the top players in the world would be skipping this event, but that hasn’t been the case. We get world #1 Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm off a disappointing finish at the Players, and Paul Casey back to defend his title.  18 of the worlds top 50 and 7 of the worlds top 20 will tee it up at Copperhead this week.

DJ and Rahm lead the way at the top of the board here, followed closely by last year’s winner and runner up Paul Casey and Patrick Reed.  While I may be a little hesitant to pay up for DJ this week he should be the clear cut favorite here. The concern is that he is struggling off the tee a bit, but his ability to club down and find fairways should be of benefit to him. While you can’t overpower this course,  being able to hit a shorter club off the tee just as far as a shorter hitter’s longer club is an advantage. DJ gained a RIDICULOUS 9.6 strokes approach at the players to lead the field. That was just under 2 strokes more than his ridiculous 7.9 strokes approach at the WGC Mexico. He’s never played here, but he’s the number one player in the world for a reason and I’ll have my fair share this week.

Patrick Reed leads the field in strokes gained here over the last 5 years. The concern is that his iron game has pretty poor the last few events and normally I would be off him, but if we look back to last year where he finished 2nd and gained 8.4 strokes approach, he had lost strokes 2 of the 3 events leading in as well. (and then won the Masters a few weeks later).

While short at 20-1, Webb Simpson is probably my favorite play this week. Webb has been playing some fantastic golf lately, he actually hasn’t missed a cut since last year’s Traveler’s, and now comes to a course that he has had a fair bit of success at with finishes of 8th last year and 41 the year before. He’s had some gaudy approach numbers this year and is now starting to find his off the tee game as well. Webb was 4th in driving accuracy last week at the Players, hit 78.4% of fairways. He was decent with his irons but more importantly he was great at scrambling and saving par, only making 6 bogeys for the week. Webb is in great shape, and likely goes a bit under-owned in DFS this week.

Deeper down the board, I have quite a bit of interest in guys like Jason Kokrak and Tyrrell Hatton who both have legitimate shots to win this week. Adam Svensson, and Roger Sloan are both guys that pop for me too as they are solid off the tee and approach.

As always, playing the ownership game is going to be vitally important this week and I can’t wait to break it down more in depth, including ownership projections and pivots, in my weekly ‘Chalk Donkey’ article for our DFS Army VIPs!

March Madness and the NCAA tournament starts this week! Get set to dominate your office pool with our guys at Beat the Bookie!

March Madness Betting Strategies

Beat the Bookie Betting Card:

Something new I’m adding each week to this article is my personal betting card for the week for Outrights, First Round Leaders, Top 5’s and Top 10’s. The real bread and butter with golf betting is a tournament and round matchups but I’m saving those for our Beat the Bookie VIPs!

As a rule, I typically don’t bet many outrights under +3500 unless its an extremely weak field (DJ at the FedEx St. Jude last year comes to mind) It’s just not a +EV most weeks when you think about 156 guys teeing it up. Hitting 3-4 outrights a year is a fantastic year for most golf bettors. The return on investment of hitting an outright at 50-1 can pay for a long dry spell (which is fairly typical in golf betting if you are only playing Outrights, FRLs, and T5/T10).

Starting off my card this week is Webb Simpson. I don’t love the 20-1 number but everything is lining up for him to contend here. He’ll by my highest owned player in DFS this week as well. I want some exposure to DJ in the betting market but I want to wait on him. The hope is he has a mediocre round one and I can get him closer to this 20-1 number in RD 2.

Jason Kokrak just continues to play fantastic golf. You can’t deny it anymore. He’s had success here in the past and there’s no reason to think he won’t again. He falls right in that range that I like to hit for outrights. It was between him and Abraham Ancer there for me and once Ancer WD’d it was an easy click. His iron play has been so fantastic, and while his off the tee game leaves a bit to be desired at least last week at the Players, it seems to be more of an anomaly than anything. I expect him to be all over the first page of the leaderboard all week.

Way back in January, I stated that this course was the perfect set up for Sungjae Im. He’s just so good in every single statistical category. A poor performance at the Players has kept his number down, and will likely keep his DFS ownership down as well. Tons of value on 60-1 for Sungjae and I’d kick myself if I didn’t hit it.

And finally, our lottery ticket of the week in Adam Svensson. Svensson struggles with the putter but the rest of his game is so solid. Played his collegiate golf in Florida and is used to the weather despite being a Canadian (though Canadians have traditionally had some success here). 300-1 is just too big for a guy with his caliber of play. Popped at the Honda before falling back on the weekend and I think that experience will help him here.

I’ll have Head to Head and full tournament matchups posted for our Beat the Bookie VIPs on Wednesday. And there are some reaaaaly juicy ones this week! These are truly where you can make your money in golf betting, while not as sexy or as big as an outright win, they are much more profitable.

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Final Thoughts: 

Similar to last week, there WILL be carnage. With tight tree-lined fairways, and small greens being off your game just a little bit will have you slamming your trunk on Friday afternoon, regardless of if you’ve played well here in the past.  it’s still a great week for all formats, cash, gpp, multipliers, play it all but just temper expectations a bit. It’s really a difficult stretch of golf tournaments to handicap until we get to the Masters’ in 3 weeks.

We will have content for you all through the week at DFS Army. Our research station and domination station optimizer will be updated on Tuesday and I will have my full Chalk Donkey article breaking down all the ownership and GPP strategy for our VIP’s on Tuesday night! If you aren’t a VIP yet, use code UPNORTH for 20% your first month!

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!

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