Daily Fantasy Sports
Sharp App
Season Long Fantasy
Free Month
Wall of Champions
Discord

DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – Players Championship – DFS Army

The Players Championship takes it’s new spot on the PGA Tour calendar this week! Can Webb Simpson defend his title? 

My name is Josh ThomasP, 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!

What a week!! The Arnold Palmer Invitational was a fantastic week for DFS Army VIPs with huge wins on the DFS and the betting side! This article is FREE every single week and last week we tipped our first outright winner of the young season with Francesco Molinari making a huge charge on Sunday with a 64 to post a score of -12 and he held on to win. It was capped by a bomb of a birdie putt on 18 to give him just enough breathing room to take it down.

It was a huge week for all our tips, with all five of them making the cut and 4 of the outrights finishing inside the top 25! Only Keegan Bradley (who was in the final group in RD 3 and in true Keegan fashion blew up over the week to finish T46).

Not only did we have a big week on the betting side, but we also had multiple huge wins on the DFS side as well. DFS Army VIP Oysterdood one-upped my 1k win on Friday ‘s Showdown slate with a 5k takedown in the Saturday showdown contest! He used the notes we provide our VIPs after each round of the tournament to build this lineup that took the contest down by .4 points!

As fun as last weekend was and as good as it was for our VIP’s bankrolls, it’s time to move on to the Players Championship and the HUGE GPP’s that go along with the ‘Fifth Major’!

Course Breakdown:

The Players Championship takes place at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The tournament takes place a full two months earlier than it’s traditional slot on the PGA tour calendar as we get the PGA Championship moved up to May. This jump up the schedule will affect the course a bit, but more on that later.

At 7,289 yards, TPC Sawgrass is a short, gettable par 72 for those who keep it in the fairway and is what many would consider a ‘ballstrikers’ paradise. TPC Sawgrass is a Pete Dye design that has been some golfers dream and some’s night mare over the years. Pete Dye is known for making daunting tee shots, and having difficult sight lines. He’s also known for bringing the short and medium par 4’s back into play on courses. Typically with a Pete Dye design, length isn’t necessarily a huge bonus and many of the golfers will be hitting shots from similar landing areas.

The greens here will be TifEagle Bermuda that has been overseeded with Poa and Bent. That won’t be too different from what the players are used to in May, though they may be a bit more receptive. The big difference will be around the greens and the collection areas. They won’t be as firm and fast and the overseed of the bermudagrass should make them a bit easier to chip off of. As a whole, the course shouldn’t play near as firm as the players are used to in May, and in fact, they may be able to hit a few more drivers than they are used to as well.

Rumor has it (from Phil Mickelson who is the ultimate troll) that the rough here is nowhere near as long as the players are used to and that could bring some of the more…’wayward’…drivers like Phil into the mix here. If that’s the case, I think we see the scores go even lower than they were last year, and also hurt some of the shorter hitters.

So what does that necessarily mean for the course? The sight lines won’t change. Pete Dye is diabolical. He’s going to make you second guess yourself everywhere. But the penalty for missing the fairway won’t be near as much as it normally is. Add in that the course will likely be a little less firm and fast than when the tournament is in May and you have what I think may be a pretty soft test. We do have some data though on the course in March as the Players was playing March up until 2016.

What we see here is that the scoring average was actually a little higher in March. I take that with a bit of a grain salt as the scoring average as a whole is better now than it was then as the improvements in equipment, even in the last ten years has been drastic.

There are five par 4’s of over 450 yards this week and they all rank within the 10 hardest holes on the course. That being said, there is no real edge here in terms of targetting a specific skill set that we can target as TPC Sawgrass, like any Pete Dye course, is a true test of ALL facets of your game. The one area may be strokes-gained approach like usual. Add in that we have some of the smallest greens on tour this week, putting yourself in position to score will be huge. Anyone who strikes the ball well and puts just a little bit will be in contention this week.

You are going to hear A LOT about some players not being able to play at TPC Sawgrass. That their skill set doesn’t work here. That it’s a mental thing. I don’t believe that for a second. It may be a mental block for some guys, but that doesn’t mean they can get around that. I actually love playing the exact opposite of that narrative this week. Phil Mickelson can’t play here? Fine, give me double the field. I’ll take my chances on a world-class golfer figuring it out for the week (especially with the move back to March where for all intents and purposes it should play easier).

Check out our hole by hole break down below:

There are a couple of big takeaways from the hole by hole breakdown of TPC Sawgrass above.

  1. There is water on 15 of the 18 holes on the course! No wonder the bogey rate is so high!
  2. While everyone worries about 17 and the island green, the par 3 8th hole is actually the hardest. And getting through 17th isn’t the end of the work as 18 is the second hardest hole on the course.
  3. The back is actually probably the preferred starting spot as you get a stretch of easy holes to start and while you finish with the difficult number 8, you get the easy par 5 9th to finish on and hopefully get inside the cut line if they need a birdie.
  4. Similar to last week, you need to make your hay on the par 5’s as they are the only holes that play more than .4 strokes under par. While some will tout par 4 scoring this week, it’s not that you need to score on those holes while its a benefit, you really just need to make par.

If we look at the historical strokes gained data, you can see that being able to gain strokes approach, particularly more than 1 stroke approach has yieled top 40 finishes. Strokes gained off the tee isn’t near as important, but you can’t be negative off this week or you’ll likely be staring down a missed cut. You’ll hear many people talk about strokes gained around the green, (myself included) but it’s not necessarily that big of a deal and it actually has a bit of an opposite effect, the more strokes you gain off the tee, on the positive side, the lower finishing position you will have. That’s because if you miss greens and have to gain strokes there, you’re likely not contending.

The interesting thing this year with the early tee time is the temperature.

Thursday/Friday looks like its going to be fairly cold in the morning. When you think back to last year where it was high 80s on the weekend, this will be a fairly big adjustment. With the cooler temperature, and the less firm fairways you are likely going to see guys hitting quite a few more drivers and longer irons into the green. The ball just wont travel as far. Players in the afternoon on Thursday are going to be dealing with a bit of wind as well.

The other issue will be the rough. At this time of year in Florida its likely that the ball will settle into the rye overseeded rough. Meaning that some of the shorter hitters will have a difficult powering through it and getting balls to fly out of there as the bermudagrass underneath hasn’t quite grown up enough yet. It’s possible that its cut short enough where it really won’t matter, but still something worth noting.

While this is usually a very fair test with no real advantage given to a short or long hitter, I think this week I’ll be giving a bit of a bump to the longer stronger guys. While traditionally accuracy has been key here, I think the softer conditions will benefit guys who typically struggle a bit to hit it in the fairway, especially those who are able to hammer it out of the rough. The prevailing north wind at this time of year is going to make it longer as well. Particularly 17 where players won’t be used to hitting it into the wind into the island green.

One other bump for the longer guys…in Rory’s press conference today, he stated that he hit Driver/6 Iron into the 18th green today. He also said he doesn’t remember ever really hitting more than sand wedge or pitching wedge into that green before. This course is going to play drastically different this week, and if you play this week based on what guys have done here in the past 3-4 years, you likely will be in trouble.

As of right now there looks like a slight advantage to having a Thursday AM/Friday PM tee time because of the wind, but it won’t be something I’m chasing too hard. The narrative is there if you want to set up a few tee time stacks, but there’s so many variables here anyways I don’t feel like its really necessary to tie yourself to one wave when the reality is there might not be much of an advantage at all.

Are you using the Domination Station to build lineups? If you are building more than 20 lineups and aren’t using it quit wasting your time! Check out the tutorial to learn how!

–>Domination Station PGA Tutorial <–

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 Players 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?

Value Tab: 

The first thing I look at every week when I open up the  RS is the Value tab. 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 is basically a formula that takes our projection for points this week x 1000/their salary. So essentially its points per 1k.

An intriguing list to say the least and includes three guys that I’ve been heavily invested in this year, and two that I have started to come around on.

Lucas Glover looks like the best value this week, but hasn’t had a ton of success here over the years, that being said he’s also playing better golf than he realistically ever has (not counting when he won the US Open in 2009, though even that was quite the surprise). He’s just been consistently really good in every area this year and gets another tournament with bermuda grass greens of which he’s a bit more comfortable on.

Ian Poulter will be another guy I’m going to be heavily invested in this week. He’s just been so good in 2019 and has great history here. The price is fantastic, and he is striking the ball so well right now. A return to bermuda grass benefited him last week where he gained over 6 strokes putting. I expect more of the same here this week.

Another player that has just had an unexpected resurgence in form this year is Charles Howell III. It used to be that you would only play CH3 on the west coast or in certain tournaments that he had great course history, but now it seems we can fire him up every single week as he just keeps finding ways to finish inside the top 20.

Jason Kokrak and Rafa Cabrera Bello are two players that you just can’t deny the form on. Both are playing excellent golf and while Rafa has a bit better course history here, Kokrak is significantly cheaper though and I think provides a bit better upside. His irons have been hot fire lately and if he putts just a little bit he will contend this week.

Fantasy Points Gained: Short Par 5’s.

We mentioned earlier about how important it is to make hay on the par 5’s as they are some of the easiest holes on the course. While par 4 scoring is going to get all the credit this week, I actually think that par 5 scoring will ultimately be more indicative of success. 3 of the 4  fit in our short Par 5 category on the RS so let’s see who ranks out well.

SUNGJAE! While the sample size is a little smaller than I would like, my boy Sungjae Im crushes par 5’s and hits the top of the list here for DK points.

Following him are two of my favorite plays this week in Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas. Both crush par 5’s and have good history here and both are coming in with great form.

Bubba Watson and Brooks Koepka both are interesting plays this week. Bubba Watson has never finished better than 37th here and Brooks is coming off a pretty poor performance at the Arnold Palmer. Koepka has been ok at TPC Sawgrass, but I think both are going to be hugely benefited by the earlier start date here. Their length is going to benefit them on a course that isn’t going to play near as firm or fast as it does in May. I think both make good low owned GPP options.

Do any of these players score well on Par 4’s? Let’s check.

All in the top 25. Looks pretty good. I’ll have those four as core plays for me this week with a sprinkle of Bubba in GPP.

Projected DK Score:

Projected DK Score (formerly Projected Course Score)is one of our best stats. This takes the current course into account. The FP/H averages by each hole type on the course are added up to create a raw per round FP scoring projection. It’s a good way to find out who is a course fit here and statistically should have success.

JT, DJ, and underpriced Fleetwood lead the way here, followed by maybe my favorite player in DFS this week in Rory McIlroy. McIlroy just does everything well here and while I’m sure he will be highly owned, I’ll eat it.

Sungjae Im appears to be a really nice course fit here and even though he’s taking his maiden voyage around TPC Sawgrass. His countrymen have all had success on Pete Dye Courses and most recently Sungjae shot 64-71 in his two trips around the Stadium Course at PGA West which is also a Pete Dye design. He’s a great fairways and greens player and one that I think can have a lot of success here.

Cam Champ shows up here but is not something I’m interested in playing with the current state of his game. Tony Finau though is intriguing as I think many will be off him this week.

SG: Approach Last 25 Rounds

With iron play being huge here, it’s important to target those guys who have been hot fire with their irons recently.

Hideki Matsuyama leads the way here and its no surprise and no one on the planet is striking the ball better than him right now. It’s also true that no one on the planet is putting the ball worse than him.

Tiger Woods is coming off a ‘neck injury’ but has great history here, including a win in 2013. Dustin Johnson always tends to go overlooked as the highest priced golfer and is interesting.

At Francesco Molinari’s price, he’s going to be highly owned. Not many have been better than him here over the years though and he’s someone I’m very interested in. Jason Kokrak is another guy who will likely be chalky at his price but has excellent irons coming in.

And finally, I’ll have quite a bit of Chesson Hadley this week as he really checks all the boxes for me. Great form coming in, good course history, unreal irons and just need to putt a little to contend.

The one thing I do think is important to look at though is who shows up on the last 25 and who shows up on the last 10. Sometimes a few hot rounds can skew the data. And while it’s important to look at long term form, I do really want guys coming in hot as well.

The players that show on both lists are:

Hideki Matsuyama, Chesson Hadley, Jason Kokrak, Dustin Johnson, Keegan Bradley, and Tiger Woods. 

You could start with a much worse core, but not much better.

Other key stats I’m focusing on in the Research Station this week: Par 4 Scoring, SG: OTT L25/L10, Birdie or Better Gained, Greens in Regulation %, Double Bogey or Worse %

One thing, that puts us at a huge advantage is the Domination Station. If you aren’t using it to build lineups you’re crazy! Check out how it works here! Domination Station PGA Tutorial

What is a Chalk Donkey?

First, let’s break down what I consider to be ‘chalk’.  Let’s look at 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. 

Who are this week’s DFS Chalk Donkeys?

In this section, each price range’s (Above 9K, 7.5k-9K, and Below 7.5K) 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.

It’s important to remember that just because someone is going to be highly owned, doesn’t mean that they are a bad play, but if we can gain an advantage on the field by fading a player owned by 25% or more, typically that’s the right move. There are typically 156 golfers in an event (though only 134 this week, making it more important to get 6/6) and only 70 and ties make the cut. Essentially you have to look at the ownership of a player and decide if the odds of him missing the cut are equal to or greater than the ownership. If that’s the case then a fade is typically the right play.

In a no-cut event, it takes on a little bit of a different spin. A chalky player at the top of the salary scale you have to ask yourself a few questions. Say he’s going to be 25% owned. “Is he going to win?” and “are the odds of him winning better than 1 in 4, equal to, or less?” If it’s less then I think a fade is in order. The same conversation can be had with chalk at the lower salary range. Will he be in the top half of the field? Will he be in the top 20? Etc.

And now, here my friends, are this weeks’ Chalk Donkeys:

Above 9K Chalk

Tiger Woods: DK $10,300/FD $11,100

Projected GPP ownership: 17%-20% 

Tiger is back this week after taking two weeks off with a ‘neck injury’ and the second he stepped on the course in shorts and his hat backwards his ownership jumped 10%.

There have only been a few guys in the world who have had hotter irons than Tiger in 2019. That being said, as usual with Tiger, there have not been a lot of golfers worse off the tee than him too. The concern for me comes in that this course is going to play much longer than we are used to seeing. So if you are banking on the fact that Tiger was 11th here last year, you are going to see a much different course. Tiger was able to irons/3 wood off of every tee last year. This year with the temperature not allowing the ball to travel as far and the wet soft course, Tiger will likely have to hit 6-7 drivers at minimum around here.

He does have experience obviously playing this course in March, including a win in 2001. Anyone that thinks we are going to see 2001 Tiger here can jump in my H2h’s though.

If Tiger is off the mark with his driver, he’s going to have long irons into a lot of these greens out of the rough. While the rough isn’t necessarily that long, it’s long enough to where the ball will sit down and he will have to muscle it out. He’s perfectly capable of doing that, but the question then becomes, can his back/neck take that sort of torque?

The other issue is that, regardless of his two wins here, he’s not necessarily a great course fit. He’s priced as the fourth highest salary golfer, and we rank him out around 23rd for a projected round score, and 29th for projected DK score. While salary isn’t really an issue this week, I still don’t want to pay up for a guy that according to the data, really won’t score that well around here.

It’s possible he comes in a bit under-owned here, but I think we still him fairly high as people will see the ‘better than most’ commercials, and tweets about him all week. Regardless of ownership though, I just don’t think he’s that good of a play and will be fading him almost entirely this week.

Above 9K Pivot: 

Jon Rahm: DK $9,5000/FD $10,300

Projected GPP Ownership: 8%-12%

It’s going to be really hard to find any leverage this week above 9K as most of the guys will be fairly highly owned and the ownership will be spread out. I have Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods, and Jason Day as the three likely highest owned golfers this week due to the discount on pricing.

Rahm gets the “can’t play at Sawgrass” treatment because he hasn’t contended here in his two trips. That being said, he made the cut both times and slightly improved each week. The issue for him is that he lost 6.2 strokes putting last year, and 4 strokes putting in 2017. He putts near his average and he’s looking at back to back top twenty-fives.

The overseeded bermuda should benefit him, as he is one of the best overseeded green performer in the world according to Josh Culp at FutureofFantasy.com  So we get a guy who struggled to putt here but gained strokes everywhere else last time he teed it up at Sawgrass on arguably his best green surface…at low ownership? Yes, please.

He’s another guy that doesn’t necessarily fit the bill in terms of course fit, but prior to a disappointing WGC-Mexico, he has finished top 10 at SEVEN tournaments in a row.

Rahm played a Pete Dye Design as his home course in college and has had quite a bit of Success at PGA National another Pete Dye design. I think the move to March benefits him more than almost anyone with the overseeded greens and he’s going to be a core play for me this week.

Other highly owned players (over 15%): Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka 

7.5K – 9K Chalk

Francesco Molinari: DK $8600/FD $10,100

Projected GPP Ownership: 17%-20%

With the pricing for this tournament coming out before the conclusion of last weeks Arnold Palmer Invitational, Francesco Molinari presents a supreme value for a player coming off a win. With that value also comes an increase in ownership.

Moli has been on fire lately in pretty much every aspect of his game except for putting. He putted out of his mind last week and won. This is something we’ve been expecting from him and a few others (I’m looking at you Hideki Matsuyama and Luke List) for a while now. Can he keep that up this week at TPC Sawgrass?

One would assume the answer to that question is a resounding yes given his history at this course, including three straight top tens over the last four years. (he missed the cut last year on the back of some pretty poor play all around (he actually putted pretty well).

The concern with Moli is that he’s not quite long enough to contend at courses like this, but last week’s performance on an even longer track should shed some of those concerns.

Moli crushes here typically, he’s on fire with his irons, the question is can he putt like last week? Even if he doesn’t he should still be in line for a solid finish, and at his price, he really only needs a top 25 to hit value.

7.5K – 9K Pivot:

Adam Hadwin: DK $7200/FD $9100

Projected GPP Ownership: 1%-3% 

NOTE: Literally everyone between 7.5k and 9K is going to garner ownership this week, so I’m dropping down a bit here to highlight one of my favorite plays.

ALSO NOTE: Hadwin has been in his room all week with the flu. Played nine yesterday and went back to his hotel room. I’m lowering my exposure a bit. 

Back to the well with Adam Hadwin this week! Adam Hadwin had a great week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week even though some may see that 33rd place finish and think it was mediocre. In terms of Draftkings scoring he was top notch. He ended the week with 75 DK points on the back of 20 birdies. He outscored Lucas Glover who finished 10th by 4 points and Ian Poulter who finished 23rd by 14! He did all this all while losing strokes approach. He, unfortunately, found himself in some trouble with his irons. He still ended up hitting the 3rd most fairways on the week and was T12 in Greens In Regulation.

What I love about Hadwin is his ability to avoid the big number. He very rarely makes a double bogey. He also can fill up the cup with birdies when he putts well.

A stat that may surprise some is that Hadwin is 11th this year in Strokes Gained Off the Tee. With the move to march and my assumption that we see more emphasis placed on that, I can easily see him contending this week.

Hadwin’s made three straight cuts here and I expect that continue this week and at $7200 he does bring top 20 upside and good fantasy scoring potential.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Hadwin’s wife is a great twitter follow https://twitter.com/jessicahadwin and they met on Tinder which is awesome.

Other highly owned players (over 12%): Tommy Fleetwood, Hideki Matsuyama, Matt Kuchar, Adam Scott

Check out my Preview Article for my full betting card!

–> UpNorth’s PGA Preview – WGC Mexico <–

Below 7.5K

As with any ‘major’ we have some super soft pricing, especially below 7.5K. Outside of Rafa Cabrera Bello and Lucas Glover no one will likely be over 10% owned. That means you can likely get guys with high upside at low ownership down here.  I’m going to highlight a couple of players down here that I think can help win you a gpp.

Sungjae Im: DK $6800/FD $9000

Sungjae had a great week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and made a charge up the leaderboard on Sunday to finish 3rd place and earn himself a spot in the Open Championship.

This is the time of year that looking at the entire season I wanted to jam in Sungjae every week. Courses that require you to be excellent tee to green and don’t necessarily need you to be an excellent putter.

Sungjae has had a ton of success on Pete Dye courses, and while this is his first time here I don’t really have any worries about it. He is a great course fit and actually rates out as 8th in the entire field in projected course score.

Matt Wallace: DK $6800/FD $8500

Wallace will find himself right back in my lineups after an excellent week at the API. He’s only projecting around 5%-7% owned and is a great course fit here. Was gutted that he didn’t finish well and I think he comes back firing on all cylinders this week.

Talor Gooch: DK $7100/FD $7700 

Everyone and their mother was going to play Gooch last week and he WD’d. I think Gooch makes a good course fit here with his excellent ball striking abilities. More of a Fanduel play for me.

Lucas Bjerregaard: DK $6500/FD $8100 

Bjerregaard had an excellent Honda Classic where he finished 12th and took last week off before teeing it up here at his first players. The 50th ranked golfer in the world looks to capitalize on his first real endeavor into PGA golf. Good wind player gained strokes everywhere but ARG at Honda. He fills it up with birdies, unfortunately, some bogeys too. Great DK Scorer. Love him as a low-end flyer.

Other low owned cheap players I’m interested in: Trey Mullinax, Chesson Hadley (love him this week, check coaches notes), Byeong Hun An, Russell Knox, Sung Kang, Lucas Glover, Emiliano Grillo, Kiradech Aphibarnrat 

GPP Core:

Want to know who is my GPP Core? How bout Taco or Brody’s? Check it out here on our brand new Coaches Notes page.

Final Thoughts: 

This is a really fun week, but know that there is some carnage here. The soft pricing means you will love every single one of your builds. Do some things in GPP that make you a bit uncomfortable to differentiate yourself.

As ownership trends start to finalize this week, I’ll post some updates in my coaching channel 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 our coaching channels this week and let’s 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!