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DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – AT&T Byron Nelson – DFS Army

One last chance to tune up before the PGA Championship, the tour heads to Trinity Forest and the AT&T Byron Nelson 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!

What a win for golf twitter! Everyone’s favorite follow @maxhoma23 broke through for his first win on tour! Less than 9 months ago, he had to birdie the last four holes to make the cut and get himself into the Web.com tour finals. Now he’s a winner on tour. The 417th ranked golfer held off charges from Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, and Rory McIlroy to secure his first win and a two-year exemption. With the win, he gets into all of the majors, including the Masters’. He tweeted this about the Masters’ earlier this year.

Can’t wait to see that next year! Overall, it was a bit of a funky week. We had MULTIPLE WD’s (withdraw) for the first time this year. Sam Burns, Gary Woodland, J.B. Holmes and Byeong Hun An all withdrew either in the middle of rounds or after rounds this week, crushing lineups in the process.

It was a bit of a funky leaderboard, with lots of value players and studs. Homa led the way at 0.65%  but there were 6 players in the top 10 under 10% ownership, and a couple of them were what we would consider ‘studs’. As always, it’s important to target some of these players with the pedigree who are going overlooked in GPP. Sergio Garcia is the prime example of that. He was coming off a really solid performance at the Zurich (albeit a team event) and was trending towards low ownership all week. He ended up coming in at a ridiculous 4.5% ownership and carded a top ten. Patrick Reed and Henrik Stenson both hovered around the top ten all week at similar ownership and while they smashed value, they could have been GPP winners had they not had a poor Sunday.

When playing GPP’s over the long term, making strong plays on guys like this is a profitable strategy. While yes you need the winners, in large GPP tournaments, getting these low owned players who pop are what’s going to put you over the top and climb the leaderboards. My strategy is I play GPP to win, and Cash games to min cash. Not the opposite. Which means that while yes a min-cash in GPP is great, and often helps out a poor week, I want to win them. Trying to min cash them is not a profitable strategy long term. Often to win you need to have that under-owned stud who finds his potential. In the same vein, I’m not trying to win a double up, I just want to get across the line. That means I don’t do anything crazy there, I just build the most solid lineup I can even if it doesn’t have a ton of upside because more often than not, just getting 6/6 into the weekend is enough to get across that cash line.

Last week I posted a video breakdown of how I build GPP lineups here DFS Golf GPP Lineup Building Strategies, Check it out for some great insight into how I go about building lineups for MME! These next two weeks are great weeks to practice this strategy prior to the PGA Championship!

Trinity Forest, the home of the AT&T Byron Nelson for the second year in a row is a good test for those preparing for the PGA Championship next week at Bethpage Black. It’s long, like REALLY LONG. And it’s going to play ridiculously long due to the high amounts of rain they’ve had this year (and more in the forecast for Tuesday/Wednesday), but you can absolutely score here with the big bermuda greens. It’s a bit of a links-style in the middle of Texas with no trees on the property and if the wind picks up it’s going to be an issue. Overall, a really fun test and interesting course that should give the winner some confidence and momentum heading into next week’s PGA Championship.

Course Breakdown:

Located just southeast of downtown Dallas, TX, Trinity Forest Golf Club is a Coore and Crenshaw design that is essentially brand new. The course was completed in 2016 on the site of a former landfill. It is a much different test than the PGA Tour members are used to as it is completely treeless and open to the Texas Wind that can wreak havoc on a golfers game.

This Par 71, played at an average of 7380 yards last year depending on the setup. The tour has the ability to stretch it out well past 7600 if needed, but last year with the rain they kept it shorter, allowing the shorter hits to have a chance. This year, with how much rain the course has had over the past few weeks, and the projected inch of rain it will see on Tuesday/Wednesday, it’s likely that it will be playing EXTREMELY long at least on Thursday/Friday. The typical run off to native areas that Coore and Crenshaw designed to hurt the longer player or player who makes a poor club selection likely won’t come into play as they will be able to grip it and rip it for the most part.

Trinity Forest is known for not only the treeless course and the double green on holes 3/11, but also for their extremely wide fairway. The field AVERAGED 80% of fairways last year with only one golfer coming in under 60%. Despite the wide fairways, and while I think it’s going to be a bombers paradise, there are other ways to get it done around here. Players like Brendan Grace were strong around the greens last year, while Aaron Wise crushed his approach shots, and Marc Leishman putted the lights out.

SG: Approach is probably the biggest indicator of success here. Players need to not only just hit greens (they are the biggest on tour) but get it close as they are very undulating, which is typical of a links-style course. Only one player in last year’s top ten gained less than 2 strokes approach for the week.

The greens are bermudagrass and typically pretty slow. Contrary to popular belief, slow greens benefit good putters and it may be worth targeting some good bermuda putters again this week.

One important thing to note is that over half the field did not play this event last year and will be getting their first look at it. They also might get washed out on Tuesday/Wednesday meaning they will be playing the course a bit blind come Thursday morning. Typically at a regular PGA tour style course, this wouldn’t be a huge deal but at a links-style course, I think we can give a bit of a bump to those who played here last year.

While we saw this course get tore up last year, particularly the Par 5’s, I think we see a much lower winning score this year. I doubt we get to the -23 we saw from Aaron Wise and think this comes in at around -16/-17 for the winner. Regardless though Par 5 scoring will be huge and something I’m targeting.

The Dallas area has been pounded with rain all spring making the course play extra long because of how soft it is. That rain isn’t stopping anytime soon as they were hit again on Tuesday and should get another half of an inch on Wednesday. This course is going to be EXTREMELY LONG. I would imagine that the PGA moves some of the tees up in hopes of shortening it, but I think this is going to be a real factor, at the very least in rounds 1 and 2. I hate to say that you can eliminate some of the shorter hitters because guys find ways to get it around, but I highly doubt we see a leaderboard like last year with players who are notoriously short like Kevin Na cracking the top ten.

This is shaping up to be an extreme case of bomb and gouge this week. Players will be able to hit driver, hard, off the tee and not really have to worry where it goes because of how wide the fairways are and how little run they will get due to how soaked they are. They will then likely have longer irons into the green with many approaches being around that 200-yard mark, into these massive greens. The greens will be very receptive because of the rain and that will allow players with good approach games to fire at these pins.

Ideally, we want to target players this week who bomb it off the tee and have good approach games. I think there could be an argument made for guys who are good Bermuda putters, but that will be more of a ‘push me over the edge on a guy’ than anything. I also think it will be essential to score on the par 5’s this week.

Overall, this is a really fun test of golf and something different than we see most weeks. The field strength isn’t great which makes it a bit more volatile, but I think that benefits those who put in the research. I also like that the field is stacked with Europeans who will go underowned based on name recognition. It’s shaping up to be a great week for the DFS Army!

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 Wells Fargo 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 former 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.

Adam Schenk shows up at the top here and if you’ve already started to build with the Domination Station this week you’ve noticed that he’s getting jammed into a ton of lineups. For good reason in my opinion. He’s an excellent play this week, especially at the price point. He’s been playing great golf lately including a quiet 13th place finish at last week’s Wells Fargo and a 7th place finish last time they were in Texas at the Valero. He’s long off the tee and has an excellent approach game. One of my favorite plays this week.

I like Nick Taylor and Michael Thompson this week, but both fall into that category of fairly short off the tee which concerns me as the course is going to play so long. I think I might lean Taylor if I’m going to play one though.

Keith Mitchell is looking like one of the highest owned players this week and for good reason. He was great here last year, bombs it off the tee, is a great bermuda putter and is playing fantastic golf. He’s a core play for me regardless of ownership, but we can get similar players at a huge discount in J.T. Poston and Wyndham Clark. Both are priced below 7.5K and are what I would consider Keith Mitchell ‘Lite’. Volatile players who are great DK scorers, both bomb it off the tee and can rack up the birdies. The concern is that neither’s iron game has been great lately. At a course that requires some excellent approach shots, I have some concerns.

Rafa Cabrera Bello is also trending towards the chalkier side as lots of players will be doing a ‘balanced’ build and hammering this 8k range. He’s about as steady as they come and while the driving distance isn’t quite what we want, he’s actually been pounding it lately so he’s found something in his swing.

I’ll probably go back to the well with Daniel Berger and bank on some long term form, at a super cheap price, as well.

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.

Brooks Koepka is CLEARLY the strongest player in the field. And he’s not priced so ridiculously that you can’t afford him. He’s a bit of a tricky situation this week. This is obviously a great course fit for him and he’s not a player who ‘has’ to play here to keep his card or anything. He’s a massive favorite in Vegas and in our projections. I currently have him around 20%-24% owned and think that you can easily go 2x the field and feel pretty comfortable about it.

Following Brooks is a guy I love who despite a small sample size looks like a great fit here. If Thorbjorn Olesen played the tour every week he’d be $9700 on DK. Because he doesn’t we get a huge discount on a class player. He’s a core play for me this week.

I doubted Aaron Wise last week and he turned in a real solid performance. He returns here to defend his title and fits the bomber narrative we’re looking for. He played much better after the rains came in last year so he clearly can play this course when it’s long. An all-around solid play.

The runner-up last year Marc Leishman returns with a likely bad taste in his mouth after choking away last year’s event on Sunday. He fits the course well obviously but his current form leaves a bit to be desired and the price is hard to swallow.

Finally, Jordan Spieth is priced up but makes an excellent contrarian GPP option. This is a course he plays all the time (his coach is based out of here) and had a good, not great performance here last year. The big issue with Spieth as always is his driving and not finding fairways. That shouldn’t be a problem here. The price sucks, but in big gpp at lower ownership, I think he makes a ton of sense.

Par 5 Scoring:

While there is only three par 5’s on the course, scoring on them will be absolutely essential. I also like that these players who score well on par 5’s are typically longer, and good with their long irons.

I love this sort as it shows a ton of players that are really viable in GPP.

Starting off at the top, we have Web.com stud Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler, a Texas boy, has been tearing it up on the web with 4 straight top 10 finishes that sandwich a 20th place finish at the Valero Texas Open. He has all the tools to succeed on the PGA Tour and is a guy I think we see up on the PGA Tour full-time next year. The price is a bit high for a Web.com guy but I think he is fully capable of crushing value here and wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the top 20 come Sunday.

Brooks is obviously a great play, but Sebastian Munoz pops again and he has been decent in his last few PGA Tour starts. He crushes par 5’s even in a small sample and at his price is interesting.

Troy Merritt has barely played yet this year but is a winner on the tour as recently as last year and the price is intriguing. He was 1oth at the RBC Heritage a few weeks ago and sets up well here.

Finally, the great Dane Lucas Bjerregaard pops with a very small sample but it makes sense considering how long he is off the tee. I love the Euros this week and will be all over Bjerregaard and his fellow Scandinavian brothers Thomas Pieters and Thorbjorn Olesen. 

Other key stats to consider: SG: OTT L25, SG: Approach, Birdies Gained, Double Bogey Avoidance, SG Medium Par 4’s. 

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

Brooks Koepka: DK $11,400/FD $12,600

Projected GPP ownership: 24%-27% 

Look, we know Brooks is a great play this week. He’s a great course fit. He’s the heavy favorite. His price isn’t prohibitive. So what do we do with him in GPP?

I think this is an absolute slam spot for Brooks and think that in some 20 max contests, and even contests like the 150 entry MiniMax you can go 100% Brooks. If you start your lineup with Brooks you have about 7.7k left for each spot in the rest of your lineup. That leaves you likely pulling from this range of golfers:

There are a TON of great options in here: Thorbjorn Olesen, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Harding, Pat Perez, Trey Mullinax, Kevin Tway, KH Lee, Dylan Frittelli, Bud Cauley, Nick Watney. You can build some very solid lineups just from right here.

If you drop down and throw in a guy like Sebastian Munoz, Jim Knous, or Brandon Harkins now your building up into the 8K range. Heck, you can even pair Brooks with my other favorite golfer this week Keith Mitchell and be able to hammer that low 7K range that is filled with some studs like Wyndham Clark, JT Poston, and Troy Merritt. 

If Brooks was priced appropriately given his odds to win he should be around $12,500 on Draftkings which would make this really difficult to do, but it’s not.

Going 100% on a guy is never for the faint of heart and you have to be ready to take a loss if it doesn’t pan out, but these are the exact types of situations you should. Weak field, heavy favorite. If I don’t max a contest with 100% Brooks, I’m still planning on being around 2x the field with 40%-50% ownership.

Above 9K Pivot: 

Jordan Spieth: DK $10,800/FD $11,200

Projected GPP Ownership: 7% – 10%

Yuck. This feels gross. It’s hard to do, but the reality is that Spieth is likely the best GPP value over 9K (outside of maybe Patrick Reed who I’ll make an argument for in my coaches notes.)

Spieth has flashed some game lately, albeit in short spurts but he’s starting to show signs of the form he had when he won three majors. Most importantly, we’ve seen his putter start to come around and him miss fewer short putts than he has over the last year or so. While the putter isn’t the end all be all, I’m a firm believer that the frustration he encounters with his putter, bleeds out to the rest of his game. If he’s putting well, the rest of his game will be better.

The nice thing for Spieth is that not only is he very familiar with the course (his coach teaches out of there and he’s a member), are the massively wide fairways. As you likely know if you’ve watched him this year he’s been awful off the tee in terms of accuracy. His wildness won’t hurt him as much here as it would at other courses.

His approach game has also been slowly improving and with the lack of rough, he’ll have much easier shots into these greens than he would at a normal event with his wayward tee shots.

It doesn’t feel good to roster Spieth this week, especially considering you don’t have to pay much more for Koepka, but in GPP at this low ownership, he makes a fantastic contrarian play. You need him to contend, but I think he can this week.

Other highly owned players (over 15%):

7.5K – 9K Chalk

Rafa Cabrera Bello: DK $8400/FD $

Projected GPP Ownership: 19%-22%

Rafa is projecting as one of the highest owned in this price range and for good reason, he’s been extremely steady over the course of this year with only two missed cuts in 11 events played.

Rafa rates out extremely well on every type of hole they have at Trinity Forest, ranking in the top 30 of each, and has quite a bit of experience on ‘links style’ courses having won the Scottish Open in 2017.

There are some legitimate concerns about length with Rafa, but I think he’ll be fine and able to get around here no problem. He’s going to be highly owned there’s no doubt about it, and it might actually make some sense to fade him or be underweight in GPP. Golf is one of the most highly variable DFS sports there is and there’s an absolute chance he misses the cut here and takes down a fifth of the lineups with him.

What I’ll probably end up doing is be underweight in GPP and use him in cash. I always cover my GPP lineups with cash and this sort of value in cash is really hard to pass up. If he somehow goes nuts and wins this week I’ll come out even at worst, and if he misses the cut he’ll be so high owned in cash it won’t matter much.

7.5K – 9K Pivot:

Thorbjorn Olesen: DK $8100/FD $9900

Projected GPP Ownership: 3%-6% 

I was blown away when I started looking at ownership projections this week. Scott Piercy, who up until a 3rd place finish at the RBC a few weeks ago was ranked well outside the top 125 in the world, is going to be 5-6x more owned than Thorbjorn Olesen whose been in the top 50 the last two years and the top 100 for 8 years straight? Was I reading that right?

The euro bias is absolutely real in DFS and is something that we need to jump on. Thorbjorn Olesen, Lucas Bjerregaard, Thomas Pieters, and Justin Harding are all world class players and are all projecting at under 12% owned. We should be falling over ourselves to double or triple the field in that ownership in GPP.

Olesen led the field in greens in regulation at the Masters earlier this year and was in contention for a real solid finish if not for a poor Sunday that dropped him to 21st. He’s long off the tee and has experience in these sort of conditions/events. His track record in the US isn’t sterling, but only because he typically shows up here for WGC’s and Majors which pit the best of the best against each other.

The small sample size we have on him notwithstanding, he should crush this course based on our projected course score for him. He’s a core play for me this week and someone I’ll be jamming into lineups (along with his Euro buddies) as often as I can.

Other highly owned players (over 12%)  Charles Howell III, Scott Piercy, CT Pan, Trey Mullinax 

Check out my Preview Article for my full betting card!

–> UpNorth’s PGA Preview – AT&T Byron Nelson<–

Below 7.5K

There is really no one under 7.5K who I think will even push 10% this week so ownership will be very spread out among a lot of guys. Matt Jonesand Dylan Frittelli might creep over but both a great plays this week. I’m going to highlight a couple of players down here that I think can help take down a GPP for you.

Wyndham Clark: DK $7300/FD $8600

Back to the well with Wyndham after he burned us last week. He is a great course fit here. He bombs it and can putt like crazy when he’s hot. Won’t have any issues off the tee, the concern is that his approach game has been pretty poor the last few weeks. The hope is that it’s negated a bit by him hitting shorter clubs into these greens than everyone else. Boom or bust play but someone I’m in on.

Kyoung Hun Lee: DK $7500/FD $9000

Short off the tee which is my biggest concern here but he’s been playing great golf and he crushes par 5’s. Poor man’s Sungjae Im at 2K less. Contended last time they were in Texas.

Troy Merritt: DK $7100/FD $8200

Like Merritt quite a bit here this week as a steady eddy. Hasn’t played a ton this year but is a good course fit and should be able to make the cut. If his putter gets hot he can contend.

Adam Schenk: DK $7000/FD $8500

Schenk is a core play for me this week at this price. He’s long off the tee and has an excellent approach game. Came through with a sneaky 13th place finish last week at the Wells Fargo and has had a couple of really solid finishes this year. Makes a good pair with Brooks Koepka.

Other low owned cheap players I’m interested in: Jim Knous, Sebastian Munoz, Brandon Harkins, Sepp Straka  

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: 

One week till the PGA Championship. Be smart and don’t blow your whole bankroll this week. There are milly maker satellites available and its a great week to play those!

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 Wednesday afternoon! 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!