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DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – John Deere Classic – DFS Army

It’s the last chance for players to qualify for the Open Championship and it’s going to take a TON of birdies to do it! 

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 Gthan you could ever need!

What a fun finish! We haven’t had an ending like that on tour yet this year, with most events being fairly anticlimactic on the 18th hole, but the 3M Open brought the goods with their fantastic finishing hole. Knowing he needed at minimum a birdie to win, Matthew Wolff took a less than aggressive approach hitting three wood off the tee and being well back of his playing partner Collin Morikawa who was in the same spot. As they got to their balls, Bryson DeChambeau drained his eagle, meaning both players needed birdie to force a playoff and eagle to win. After his approach leaked left of the hole, which had been a dead all day for players, Wolff was stone cold draining the birdie putt for the win. These young guys have put the old guard on notice that they are here and they are ready to play. And not only are they ready to play, but they are ready to win!

Check out all of our PGA tools, the research station, articles, and coaches notes here!

—-> DFS Army PGA Content <—-

A few weeks ago 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 Open Championship!

Course Breakdown:

The John Deere Classic takes place this week at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Illinois. TPC Deere Run has hosted this event since 2000, and is known as a birdie fest.

TPC Deere Run is a par 71 that plays at 7,248 yards and typically is pretty easy to score on. The average score here last year was -1.6 strokes under par and there was just over double the number of birdies as they were bogeys.

Key Stats:

Designer: D.A. Weibring

Course Record: 59 – Paul Goydos

Greens: Bentgrass

Fairways: Bentgrass

Average Cut Line (10 years): -3.4

Average Winning Score (10 years): –21.6

As you can see, you clearly need to make birdies here. An average winning score over the last ten years of -21.6 is insane. And at only 7,248 yards this isn’t a very long course. We have wide fairways, and easy to hit greens and a crazy high eagle rate. Should be a bombers paradise right? Not so fast. Take a look at the winners here over the last few years. Michael Kim, Bryson DeChambeau, Ryan Moore, Zach Johnson, Brain Harman, Jordan Spieth, Steve Stricker not exactly a list of the longest guys on tour. So how do they protect this course? Expertly placed bunkers, dog legs, and elevation changes.

The bunkering on this course is great. It’s not extremely penal in that you can’t make par from a fairway bunker, but you are going to be hard pressed to make birdie. The fairway bunkers are placed directly in the landing zone/run out areas for all the bombers. Most tee shots over 290 yards bring trouble into play. You’re going to see lots of guys hitting 3 iron/3 wood off the tee to avoid that.

Along with the bunkering, 8 of the 14 par 4/5’s have some sort of dogleg to them. Forcing players into yardages that most of the time aren’t driver. There are a few holes, particularly number one that is going to require maybe even less than 3 iron to put yourself in the right position in the fairway. Most of the doglegs are on the front as the course opens up a bit on the back. Along with the doglegs the course also has quite a bit of elevation change and after two weeks in a row on relatively flat courses that may be a bit of an issue for anyone who hasn’t played here before. There are multiple greens that are at a different level than the tee shot whether that be above or below. This is going to require some calculation from players and caddies to get the distance right.

If we look at some of the approach shot numbers we can see that the majority of what these guys have into greens is going to be wedges.

Combined, players will hit 5% more shots from 150 yards and in and 4% fewer shots from 200 yards and out compared to an average tour event. The majority of those shots will be fairway as this course ranks second in not only shots from the fairway but also in the least amount of shots from the rough. Find the fairway, wedge to the green, make the putt. That’s the formula here.

Overall, this is a really fun golf tournament. Lots of birdies, but there’s trouble if you go looking for it. Slow and steady tends to win the race here. If we look at the winners, with the exception of Spieth in 2015, they’ve been pretty consistent with their efforts. Four straight 66’s will win you this golf tournament. If you don’t shoot in the 60’s for a day though, you likely need a low one like Spieth in 2015 where he opened with a round of even par 71 but had a 61 in the third round. Similar to last week, the All four rounds under 70 bonus is going to be huge. There also is a good chance we see lots of bogey-free round bonuses on Draftkings and those can be the difference between winning a GPP and finishing tenth.

Weather:

A pretty typical July forecast for the midwest. Hot, humid, and essentially a chance for a pop-up storm each day.

Any sort of rain will make this course even easier so the hope would be that the course dries out a bit by this weekend. Wind will be a non-factor for most of the week, so enjoy this week and get ready to be glued to the European Radar stations next week!

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 John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run.

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.

Essentially the entire 7K range is considered a value this week. With the overpriced young studs at the top, we have tons of value options down here, many of whom have not only won on tour, but competed for a long time.

Vaughn Taylor leads the way here on the back of some current good form, and good course history. The course sets up perfect for him as he’s not very long but great with his irons. He should be fairly popular this week.

I’ve already bet Peter Malnati here as he’s just been playing great and while the history here isn’t great, he also hasn’t come into this tournament with the type of form he’s exhibiting now. Sam Ryder is another bet I’ve made, he was second here last year and is 5th in projected course score here.

Johnson Wagner has some incredible course history here, while not as extensive, it rivals Zach Johnson’s. A 23rd for Wagner last week is a good sign that he can contend here again.

I expanded this list to 11 players because I think Jhonattan Vegas presents a really interesting value this week. He’s coming into this event with a bit of poor form having missed three cuts in a row, one on the Euro tour, at the US Open, and the Memorial, but this price is incredibly low. He’s made 9 of 15 cuts this year and has 3 top 10’s. Lucas Glover has made 10 of 15 cuts and has four top tens. Vegas’ best finish here is third. Glover’s is 15th. Vega’Glover is priced $2400 dollars more than Vegas. That’s insane to me. Maybe this means that we should be fading Glover instead of playing Vegas, but I like Vegas to bounce back here and will get some exposure 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.

Though the sample is very small, Collin Morikawa rates out exceptionally well here, almost a full point higher in projected DK points/round than the next closest guy, Wyndham Clark. While it feels uncomfortable paying up for these young guns in what amounts to essentially their fourth or fifth start, Morikawa is the guy that I have the most interest in.

Clark is coming off an excellent performance at the 3M Open and sees a huge price bump accordingly. He gets a little wild off the tee and that gets him in trouble, but with the ability to club down here he should be in good shape.

Ryan Palmer is a guy who rates out really well here but has for some reason never played well at TPC Deere Run. He’s gone 0-4 in cuts here since 2010 and he hasn’t played since the beginning of June at the RBC Canadian Open. That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in me, but he should be low owned.

Sam Ryder and Joaquin Niemann are both projecting to be very popular, and for good reason, both should be solid here.

An interesting player this week that I have quite a bit of interest in at low ownership is David Hearn. Hearn lost in a playoff here in 2013, the year Spieth chipped in on 18 to get into the playoff and then went on and won on the 5th playoff hole. He was 18th here last year, continue a stretch of pretty good form at TPC Deere Run. He’s clearly struggled this year but has seemed to have found his game a bit since returning to the Web.com for a start where finished 7th. I’m willing to take a flyer on him this week.

SG: Approach L25

As we’ve talked about, earlier, the only real defense this course has is the water. It won’t really be in play as much off the tee, but a lot of these greens are protected by water or bunkers, so approach will be huge here.

Small sample, but look who is up top here. Morikawa is joined by his fellow rookie Viktor Hovland though who has had great irons as well. What’s holding back Viktor is the putter, and e know how fast that can change.

Two guys I’ve been on continuously for the last month or so are 3rd and 4th here, in Peter Malnati and Cameron Tringale. Both have a good, not great history here, but neither have ever played as well as they are right now.

Hank Lebioda is a guy who’s been playing some great golf and heading to the John Deere for the first time. He’ll have to rely on this great iron play to continue his run of good form. He’s able to rack up the birdies though, and at this price, he makes a lot of sense.

Birdies or Better Gained;

Scoring will be massive this week and how do we score? Birdies and Eagles. This stat looks at who does that the best, relative to the field.

Starting to see a trend? Again, we need to caution that this is a small sample size, but these guys keep showing up. The other issue is that they’ve all played essentially four birdie fests in a row, but still these are birdies or better ‘gained’ on the field, so above field average.

A couple of guys I want to highlight here are Sungjae Im and Jhonattan Vegas. Vegas is woefully mispriced as we stated earlier, but Sungjae is probably underpriced here too. Sungjae has 6 top tens this year, and four straight top 21 finishes. He’s a birdie machine, and a proven winner albeit not on this level yet. This course should set up excellently for him as it emphasizes all of the things he excels at. He makes tons of birdies, accurate off the tee, excellent approach numbers, and a serviceable putter. He excels at par 5’s and can really score there which you need to here. There’s also not much water for him to find. I love Sungjae every week, but this week feels like ‘his week’.

Other key stats to consider: Fantasy Points Gained, Double Bogey Avoidance,  SG: Long Par 5, SG: Par 4  Field Rank Weak Field %

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 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

Joaquin Niemann: DK $10,200/FD $10,700

Projected GPP ownership: 24%-27%

Holy chalk batman. In the course of 3 weeks Jocko has gone from ‘Guy with lots of talent who can’t put it together’ “Guy who just reeled off three straight top 25’s including back to back top 5’s’ We saw this type of form last year from the 20-year-old, and in a stretch after the Masters’ in 2018 he had three top tens and three missed cuts. It leads me to believe that this sort of consistency is not something we should expect from him.

Niemann crushes the par 4’s, which is what we want here, but he tends to struggle a bit on the par 5’s, particularly the longer par 5’s, of which we have 3. Players NEED to score on these long par 5’s if they are going to be successful. That gives me a bit of pause. I think he’s a solid play, but at this ownership, it only takes one or two things to get me off a guy. If you are going to play Niemann in GPP this week you need to really play him to get leverage on the field. 50% at a minimum.

For me, I’ll take my chances fading him, especially when I can pay up $500 for a lower owned Collin Morikawa. I think this is the perfect week to fade lots of chalk.

Above 9K Pivot: 

Daniel Berger: DK $9,300/FD $10,700

Projected GPP Ownership: 2%-5%

Daniel Berger is coming in this week at absolutely criminal ownership. He had a struggle to begin the year but has since been playing solid golf including a 15th place finish last week at the 3M Open.

The issue with Berger of late is that his irons have been a bit off, but he’s shown spurts of really solid play in the last twenty rounds, with 50% of his rounds being positive and two impressive 2+ strokes-gained approach rounds. His putter has also been heating up, gaining a whopping 3.7 strokes-gained putting in the final round last week on similar greens.

Oftentimes, Berger tends to struggle with his approach numbers when he misses the fairway. He’s not a great ‘rough’ player. That shouldn’t be an issue here with the wide fairways. He will be one of the players that really benefits from the high percentage of iron shots coming from the fairway.

Berger was 5th here in 2017, his only appearance when Bryson DeChambeau won so he’s clearly comfortable here. I think he makes an excellent pivot off the chalk in this range and is one of my favorite GPP plays of the week.

Other highly owned players (over 15%): Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Matthew Wolff, Sungjae Im, Brian Harman, 

7.5K – 9K Chalk

Joel Dahmen: DK $8400/FD $9700

Projected GPP Ownership: 19%-22%

Chalk Joel Dahmen? We’ve been here before and it’s ended poorly. There are not many guys I like on tour more than Dahmen. He seems like an absolute beauty. His caddie Geno Bonnallie is a great twitter follow as well. That being said, I don’t think I can talk myself into playing him at this ownership, regardless of the field strength given his current form.

Dahmen’s long term bread and butter have been his excellent iron play. Tee to green he’s been a monster over the last year or so, but it’s slowly been falling back towards and as such his performance has suffered. Outside of an outlier 2nd place finish at the Wells Fargo where he gained a whopping 6.2 strokes approach, he’s lost strokes with his irons in five of his last 8 tournaments.

When the irons are off, they are waaaay off as you can see above. If he has one round like that here, he’s dead in the water and looking at an MC. There are just so many options this week and there are no players that are clear cut studs in this range, so for one to garner this much attention just because he was 2nd here last year, is ridiculous. Fade the chalk this week. Some might hit, but in GPP you will be MUCH better off not playing guys at this ownership.

7.5K – 9K Pivot:

Bud Cauley: DK $8700/FD $9900

Projected GPP Ownership: 2%-5%

Priced a bit higher than Dahmen, Cauley is my favorite low owned pivot in this range.

Cauley has been solid with his irons and improved with his around the green game as he’s slowly started to find his form after a return from a serious car accident last year prior to the Memorial. He’s another player who will benefit from wide fairways as he’s not the most accurate off the tee. Never a great putter, he is a better putter on bentgrass than any other surface. He’s gained strokes approach in four his last five tournaments, which is a positive sign for this week, where he will likely have to rely on strong iron play.

His history here is excellent, with back to back top 15 finishes in his last two trips here and all things being equal in this range, I’ll take the low owned player in gpp every single time this week!

Other highly owned players (over 12%): Joel Dahmen, Kevin Tway, Ryan Palmer, Scott Brown, Peter Malnati, Cameron Tringale, Vaughn Taylor. 

Check out my Course Preview Article for my full betting card!

–> UpNorth’s PGA Preview – John Deere Classic <–

Below 7.5K

Not surprisingly given the lack of pedigree below 7.5K this week there is no player who is looking like massive chalk. The ownership appears to be pretty spread out with most players around 3%-4% owned. The only player I can see cracking the 10% mark would be Johnson Wagner given his solid history at this event. He popped last week with a 23rd place finish at the 3M Open but is extremely volatile. Fading him at this ownership in large GPP is likely the smart play.

Hank Lebioda: DK $7100/FD $8200

Hank should end up being somewhat popular at this price but I wanted to mention him anyways. He’s been very consistent over the last few months, making 8 of his last 10 cuts. He’s an excellent iron player and one of the best fantasy scorers of anyone below 7.5k with decent sample size. He’s cash viable and someone I’ll have quite a bit of in gpp as well.

Robert Garrigus: DK $6300/FD $7500

Was a sneaky play we were on last week and he played fantastic on Thursday/Friday but ended up struggling on Saturday and falling to the MDF. He’s got three straight top 30 finishes at the JDC and his price actually went down $100.

David Hearn: DK $6900/FD $8300

David Hearn is someone I mentioned above that I have some interest in, particularly at this price point. He’s got a great history here. He ranks 7th in projected fantasy points and is an excellent iron player. He’s also much better on bentgrass with his cheater long putter. I love him in GPP this week as a super low owned pivot.

Russell Henley: DK $7100/FD $8500

Henley is not someone who on the surface looks like a great play this week as he’s been plummeting down the OWGR from 95th at the end of last year, to his current rank of number 200. He’s missed 4 of this last 5 cuts, and 7 of his last 10, BUT there are some signs of life. He’s been gaining strokes off the tee in three of his last five events and approach in five straight events. What’s been holding him back is his putter. Which is crazy when you think that over his career, he’s been a positive putter in term of strokes gained. At some point, that’s going to come back, and even if it just gets back to close to even he’ll contend. I’m willing to take that chance in GPP, especially in a week like this.

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 fun week, and while the weak field with barely any recognizable names isn’t always ‘fun’ there is typically a big advantage to those of us who put the time and effort into research!

Remember, this is the last week before the Open Championship, so don’t be afraid to enter some satellite contests for Milly Maker tickets!!

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!