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DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – Wyndham Championship- DFS Army

It’s the last event before the FedEx Cup playoffs and players last chance to get into the top 125 in the standings! 

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!

Can we quit saying that Brooks Koepka only cares about Majors? It’s a stupid narrative and hopefully, he put that to rest this week with his win at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. People might claim that it’s a WGC and isn’t a regular tour event…what does he need to do? Win the Sanderson Farms Championship? The guy is good at golf. He’s an absolute killer when the putter is rolling and he’s good enough to win even when it’s not. Rory McIlroy had his typical Sunday collapse, and with it went my winnings for the week. Had a solid Rory/Rahm lineup that was in 1st in a GPP before they teed off and then went continuously backward over the course of their rounds. Disappointing, to say the least, but such is the nature of DFS Golf. It’s full of ups and downs and that is exactly why we love it!

100k two weeks ago at the Open, 20K last week! Congrats to DFS Army VIP EasyMcDZ on this huge win! 

 

This week, the tour heads to Greensboro, NC for the Wyndham Championship, the last event before the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Guys will be scrambling to get into that top 125 in the standings so that they can play next week at the Northern Trust Open at Liberty National. It’s a fun course that sets up to be quite the birdie fest if you can keep it in the fairway and hit the greens.

Course Breakdown:

  • Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro, NC
  • Par 70  7127
  • Greens: Bermuda
  • Fairways: Bermuda
  • Designer: Donald Ross
  • Course Record: 59  Brandt Snedeker (2018 Wyndham Championship)

Sedgefield has hosted the Wyndham Championship since 2008 (and many years before that) and has an eclectic group of winners

Previous Winners: 

2018: Brandt Snedeker -19

2017: Henrik Stenson -22

2016: Si Woo Kim – 21

2015: Davis Love III -17

2014: Camillo Villegas -17

All of these guys have taken it low here. and that is likely to be the theme of the week. Birdies will be plenty. The other thing they have in common though? Not overly long hitters by any means. This is a course that you can’t really overpower. In fact, when Henrik Stenson won in 2017 he didn’t even have a driver in his bag.

As you can see, over the years the course has played almost a stroke and a half under par! This makes it one of the ‘easiest’ courses the tour plays all year (4th)! It’s second in eagle percentge and 12th in birdie percentage. Guys are going to take it low here. That being said, it’s a Ross design and with that comes a few staples. Turtleback greens that don’t reward anything but a perfect approach shot. Big collection areas. Tight fairway landing zones. All of these things lead to a certain type of player finding success here.

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This chart in the Tournament Comparison section of our Research Station is one of my favorites to look at every week as you really get a feel for what this course requires. The fairway strokes per round are right in the middle of average, while the rough strokes are higher than average by over a full stroke meaning that guys hit about one more shot from the rough than average here. That tells me these fairways are a little harder to hit.

Despite it being a Ross design the sand strokes per round are lowest on tour. Ross loves his bunkering which is what makes this a little interesting, but I think it probably has more to do with how old this course is, and not that it needs a redesign, but many of the bunkers aren’t really a worry for average tour players here.

There are about 2% more shots from the 125-150 yard range this week, and 7% more from 150-175 with the rest all coming in below the average tour event. What does this tell us? That it’s going to be a wedge/short iron fest despite having a couple of the longer par 4’s the players play all year.

I also broke down the course and the field a bit with my PGA Preview video below!

NOTE: I had tons of issues with my video editing this week and had to put it up and two different files! Hope this works for everyone and sorry for the inconvenience!

 

Weather:

At first glance, it looks like a gorgeous week with barely any wind and only some rain to soften things up, but as we dig a little deeper we find that they actually have a chance for some heavier thunderstorms Thursday afternoon/evening and Friday afternoon/evening. These storms are going to bring frequent cloud to ground lightning. The tour will play through rain no problem, but any lighting within a few miles of the course and the horn will blow. These storms are expected to be spotty, particularly Thursday afternoon so right now that makes me think that the afternoon wave will have a bit of an edge.

With the rain/storms Thursday evening/overnight the course should be sufficiently soft and in prime scoring conditions for the guys going off Thursday morning giving them a small advantage in terms of the wave. It’s possible that the Friday afternoon storms push the guys back into Saturday morning giving them similar scoring conditions though.

These are the weeks I actually like to try to get funky and play a few tee time stacks in GPP. No one is talking up the weather this week and if we can get a slight advantage, we will take it.

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 Wyndham 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.

Interestingly this week, we have lots of value plays in the 7K Range which makes it fairly easy to build a lineup that consists of two players above 9K.

Nick Taylor leads the way here at the incredibly cheap price of $6800. He was 8th here last year and hasn’t finished worse than 46th in his last four events, which would absolutely smash value this week.

Anytime we get a course with lots of par 4’s, Sebastian Munoz is going to pop and he’s been great, particularly the last two weeks where he finished 11th at the Barracuda and 9th at the Barbasol. $7000 is cheap for a guy playing great golf right now at a course that fits.

The other Taylor is priced way too low given his ‘current’ form. Vaughn hasn’t played since the John Deere Classic but had two top 6’s in three events leading into this. Had this event taken place right after the JDC he would be priced $1000 higher. Recency bias at its finest and he makes a great value play.

Lucas Glover is an excellent play this week as he has been on fire. And guys like Denny McCarthy are nice to see here because he’s typically an excellent putter. So if the course fits him, and he gets his putter rolling like he should, watch out.

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.

Like I said earlier, lots of medium length par 4’s and Munoz is going to pop. He looks like a great play this week at such a cheap price.  Webb Simpson has crushed this course over the years, so no surprise to see him here.

Doc Redman pops as well. He missed the cut here last year and I think he’s overpriced. I made the argument in the coaching channels earlier that Charlie Danielson and Redman are pretty close to the same player and Danielson is $1500 cheaper.

Charles Howell III is going to come in way under-owned this week and makes some sense here as he really crushes these medium length par 4’s. He also brings a ton of eagle upside for these short par 5’s. He hasn’t played here in a few years but has done well.

And despite Patrick Reed getting all the love up top, Hideki Matsuyama actually projects as a better play at about 5% less owned.

SG: Approach L25

As we’ve talked about with the turtleback greens at Sedgefield, you not only need to hit them but be close to the pin in the right spot if you want to score.

A couple of things right off the bat. I love Kevin Streelman this week and I think he makes a very intriguing value play and will be a guy I’m pretty heavily invested in. His irons are so good. He’s on absolute fire and everyone has forgotten about him since he didn’t play the WGC or the Cuda last week. He has middling history here, but at this price, I’m very interested.

As a pivot off all the chalk at the top, I love me some Paul Casey as well. I think he has winning upside even though this is a birdie fest which hasn’t necessarily been his strong suit. He has the iron game to play well here, he just needs to be a bit more aggressive.

Hideki Matsuyama is a similar pivot off the chalky Webb Simpson and Collin Morikawa. I think he has a better pedigree than both of them and will likely be 5%-6% lower owned than each, if not more.

Finally, Charlie Danielson is a guy getting some buzz from the industry this week and someone I really like. He’s from Wisconsin, was the Big Ten Golfer of the Year in 2016 and has been playing great in his return from his third knee surgery. He made the cut at the US Open and was 7th at the Barracuda last week, showing that he can absolutely score in a birdie fest. Despite a lot of the industry talking about him this week, the majority of players are scared to play someone at $6100, despite how solid of a play he appears. The game log watchers might be intrigued but they often don’t even scroll down this far. I think he is an excellent play this week and. that price makes some really unique lineup constructions work.

 FedEx Cup Standing:

This literally doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t let it influence you and your lineup decisions. The idea that players on the outside of the top 125 with a chance to make it in are more motivated to play well and in fact in some touts eyes, more likely to play well, is the biggest bunch of you know what I’ve ever heard. Here’s the deal, most of these guys have had an entire SEASON to get into the top 125. You think now that they are at the end of it they are going to play better because they’re close? No. They are ranked down here for a reason. And that reason is that they aren’t that good of golfers (Obviously they are good golfers, but relative to the rest of the tour there are at least 125 better than them). The exception would be for the Europeans who have limited PGA Tour Starts like Alexander Noren. 

Don’t fall into this narrative trap this week. It’s all the Golf Channel will be talking about and it drives me insane.

Other key stats to consider: Fantasy Points Gained, Birdie or Better %,  Double Bogey Avoidance,  SG: Long Par 4, Driving Accuracy %

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. 

 

Our Domination Station Optimizer is ALWAYS improving and recently it went through a big update.

Check out our fearless leader Geek breaking down how to use it for PGA!

 

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

Patrick Reed: DK $9,700/FD $11,200

Projected GPP ownership: 20%-23%

I actually really like Reed and think his game is starting to trend in the right direction. He’s a winner here in the past which should give him some comfort, but I have concerns about Patrick Reed Chalk week.

Over the past two years, Reed has been over 20% owned three times (not including the Hero where only 17 players tee it up). His results? MC, MC 25/32 (Sentry TOC no cut). Not so good, but that’s a pretty small sample. Let’s look at it when he’s between 15% and 20%.

Reed was owned over 15% five times, never cracking the top 10. T41  2018 Players, MC 2018 Travelers, T28 2018 Open, T35 at 2018 Dell, T12 2019 WGC FedEx St. Jude. Not great.

So if we were to give an MC a 75th place finish, over the last two years when Reed was over 15% owned (8 times), he finished on average in 46th position with 5/8 cuts made. And that’s skewed a bit by the 28th at the Tournament of Champions. That’s not very good. His average salary for all these events is about $8600. A 46th place finish at $8600 probably isn’t the end of the world if they are a good DK scorer (Reed’s not) but it’s a GPP death sentence at $9700.

Above 9K Pivot: 

Paul Casey: DK $9,800/FD $11,400

Projected GPP Ownership: 9%-12%

There aren’t very many projected low owned players above 9K this week with most everyone getting some sort of ownership that’s close to double digits, so I wanted to highlight one guy that I’m very confident in this week.

Paul Casey finished third here last time he teed it up (2015) and I think his game really fits. He hits tons of fairways and greens (particularly with his driver, which not many can do here) and he crushes the medium and long par 4’s, and short par 5’s that are key here. Outside of Webb Simpson, I think you could make the argument that he’s statistically the best play here. I’m blown away that more aren’t playing him this week, particularly at this discount off the top guys.

The concern I have with Casey is that he’s not a great scorer. He tends to find the middle of greens and isn’t ultra-aggressive like some of his contemporaries. The weather though could turn this into a bit of a slog and I think that probably benefits a guy like Casey more than anyone.

I don’t know that I love Casey to win, but I don’t think he needs to at this price. He’s perfectly capable of a top ten and if things break his way he could be in a really good spot come Sunday.

Other highly owned players (over 15%): Hideki Matsuyama, Webb Simpson, Viktor Hovland, Brandt Snedeker (possible that we see Collin Morikawa sneak up here if people see him projected around 11%-12% and try to jam him in).

7.5K – 9K Chalk

Scott Piercy: DK $8100/FD $9900

Projected GPP Ownership: 17%-20%

With everyone clambering to play guys above 9K, this range sort of gets forgotten about this week. Sungjae Im and Scott Piercy are the two likely highest owned players in this range. I’m obviously not going to talk bad about Sungjae so, let’s take a look at Scott.

Piercy had a nice little run earlier this year when he had a second-place finish at the Byron Nelson and a third at the RBC Heritage (on a comp course), but since then as you can see above his game has started to take a bit of a dive, particularly off the tee and with the putter. He’s regressing back to his mean with his putter as he has traditionally been an awful putter over his career.

The approach numbers are OK, and while he’s not gaining off the tee, he’s not really losing because of accuracy as he finds fairways at a decent clip, more so because of length and position.

He’s not an awful play by any means, but at this sort of ownership, I just think there are guys with more upside that you can go to. Piercy has the potential to bomb out and miss the cut here if his irons are even just a little bit off because the putter likely won’t save him as it did earlier in the season.

7.5K – 9K Pivot:

Charles Howell III: DK $8900/FD $9000

Projected GPP Ownership: 5%-8%

CH3 has been sneaky really good and is a great example of a guy who no one is playing because he hasn’t teed it up in a bit and they forgot about him.

Prior to his break for the Open Championship (which he withdrew from because he apparently doesn’t like going over there), CH3 had three straight excellent finishes, capping it with a 6th place finish at the John Deere Classic.

His history at this event is fairly solid, though his best was a 4th back in 2011. He won the RSM Classic last fall in the swing season which I think are two great comp courses at Sea Island. The course fit is reinforced by the fact that we project him as the 4th best round score and 6th best fantasy points per round.

Not only is CH3 a great fit, but he’s also a great scorer, particularly good at making eagles. He’s 4th on tour this year in total eagles.

I think CH3 makes an excellent play regardless of ownership, but the fact that he’s projecting this low make him close to a core play for me this week.

Other highly owned players (over 12%): Sungjae Im, Adam Hadwin, Byeong Hun An, Kevin Streelman, Kyle Stanley, Doc Redman. 

Below 7.5K

As is usually the case in this price range, there is no real chalk. Vaughn Taylor is projecting around 7% owned and that’s the highest in this entire range. Both the Taylors are great plays this week like I mentioned earlier so I want to take a peek at some guys that will be even more under the radar this week.

Charlie Danielson: DK $6100/FD $7100

I don’t know that this is a misprice, but Charlie Danielson is a MUCH better player than the $6100 price tag implies. He’s 3 for 3 in cuts made on tour this year, including one at the US Open. He finished 7th last week at the Barracuda and has two top tens in Canada. He has only played 6 events this year as he’s been working hard on recovering from his third knee surgery. He’s a former Big Ten Golfer of the year at Illinois and is really starting to find his game. I think this course sets up well for him as he’s an accurate driver of the ball, a decent approach player, and has an excellent short game. This price allows you to do some crazy things with your lineup construction and if he’s projected at around 3% owned, I’ll have at minimum 5x that in big gpp’s.

Sebastian Munoz: DK $70000/FD $8600

Munoz has back to back top 11’s and now tees it up at a course that is full of medium length par 4’s, the length of hole he crushes. He actually rates out as the number one projected point per dollar player this week by a long shot. He missed the cut here two years ago, but he’s a much-improved player at this point in his career. I love Munoz this week and will be jamming him in wherever I can.

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: 

There are going to be a ton of narratives this week. From ‘good putters’ to ‘only accurate drivers’ to the FedEx Cup bubble. It’s hard to sift through that sometimes. Play good golfers and you’ll be fine. I know that seems like oversimplifying it, but don’t play a guy who is 130th in the FedEx Cup standings just because he’s ‘motivated’ to get in the top 125. Guys are in 130th for a reason, don’t forget that.

Be smart with your bankroll this week as with the FedEx Cup playoffs starting next week, DK will be offering much bigger contests!

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!