DFS Golf: Chalk Donkey – Tour Championship – DFS Army

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 Tour 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.

With the pricing the way it is this week, we have a ton of value opening up! The players at the bottom of the salary should easily be able to hit 10x value this week at their price, while the studs like JT will be lucky to hit 5x value.

So should we just play all cheap guys and fade the top? Not so fast. While they should be able to come close to 10x value, they likely aren’t going to be able to get very many position points because of how far back they are, and those will likely matter quite a bit come Sunday.

Of these players, some of my favorites are guys like Jason Kokrak who rates out really well, Sungjae Im who is an incredible scorer, and Louis Oosthuizen who is just getting completely overlooked again. Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose are both excellent plays this week but at these prices, particularly Justin Rose should be incredibly chalky.

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.

Wait a second, Justin Thomas is the most likely to win AND he’s projected to be the best play? I know that salary is a bit cost-prohibitive, but my goodness he looks like an excellent play this week. My big concern would be that he jumps out to a big lead and then just cruises the rest of the week.

Brooks Koepka rates out really well, but his game is really struggling right now (for his standards) and is someone I’m likely avoiding for the most part in GPP. Rickie Fowler though has been sneaky good and is coming in under the radar. Yes, he’s priced up compared to his starting score, but I’m not getting hung up on starting scores down low this week.

Webb Simpson is another story similar to Rickie in that he’s priced up and he’s right next to a very popular Jon Rahm. Webb is a great course fit here, and he’s been playing well. He also has three top 5 ‘s at East Lake in last 5 times teeing it up here. Sounds like the perfect ownership pivot to me.

Finally, Jason Kokrak pops as the cheapest player in the top ten and makes an excellent player to pair with a Justin Thomas to free up salary. That and he’s just been playing great golf.

SG: Off the Tee L25

As we’ve talked about with the tight fairways, I want to focus on guys who are gaining strokes off the tee here as being in the best position is going to be vitally important this week.

No one drives the ball better than Rory McIlroy. The guy just crushes it and he’s accurate. He’s also very consistent, he very rarely sees dips in that form. While he’s starting five strokes back, Rory has the upside to get there and catch JT.

Corey Conners is a cheap option that hits tons of fairways and greens and is someone I really like this week.

Paul Casey is another consistent option, he is always at the top of the SG: OTT stats and while never leading he. is just very consistent. If you want to go with guys who have recently been striping it though, Tony Finau and Jon Rahm fit the bill as both have been crushing it off the tee of late. In fact, Finau led the field in SG: Tee to Green last week, besting even Justin Thomas. 

 

Other key stats to consider: Fantasy Points Gained, Birdie or Better %,  Double Bogey Avoidance,  SG: Long Par 3, 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

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)

NOTE: THIS IS CHANGED FOR THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP. With only 30 players in the field, ownership changes drastically. Anyone under 15% owned this week will be considered low owned. It won’t surprise me to see multiple players over 35% owned this week in gpp.

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:

This week, with the funky pricing, I’m breaking this down into two sections, above 8K and below 8k Chalk

Above 8K Chalk

Rory McIlroy: DK $10,600/FD $11,400

Projected GPP ownership: 28%-32%

Rory is projecting to be the highest owned player above 8K this week and for good reason, he’s got more upside than anyone despite starting 5 strokes back.

If you check out how he scores on the hole types here, he’s top 5 in 15 of the 18 holes…which is pretty incredible. He’s number one in that key long par 3 range which tells me that he’s clearly striking his long irons well. Though he has seen a drop in his SG: Approach over his last 10 rounds.

He’s expensive for how far back he is but he’s only three strokes behind second and the 20 DK points that go with it. Rory’s won here and finished second so he’s clearly comfortable at East Lake.

He’s long, accurate, and when his putter is rolling he’s a world-beater. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rory and JT dueling down the stretch on Sunday, and regardless of ownership, he’s going to be a core play for me this week.

Above 8K Pivot: 

Justin Thomas:  DK $15,500/FD $14,200

Projected GPP Ownership: 14%-18%

So what do we do with JT this week? It appears that the rest of the community is going to be underweight on him (at least compared to the rest of the options in his price range), which makes me think that this is a spot to push the chips in.

The question you need to ask yourself is, how important will the finishing position points be this week? Most weeks, I would say that they don’t matter that much, but most weeks are birdie fests, this week doesn’t project to be that. The average winning score here over the last 8 years is -10.75. The average score overall is -.38 per round, for our purposes let’s just say that’s -2. There’s just not that many birdies out there. If we expected the winning score to be -20 (not counting the strokes they already get) then I would say we could fade JT easily, but when most players will shoot on average around -2 for the tournament?

JT has an implied win percentage of 31%. Essentially the books think he wins this event one out of every three times. When you think that in a normal tournament the odds leader is around 7%-9% he’s truly an incredibly heavy favorite.

He also just crushes this course. We have him projected to have the best projected DK points/round and in his three starts here he’s never finished lower than 8th.

So what do you do? With most ownership projections coming out today with him under 20% I could see him climb as people look at him the same way I do. That being said it’s absolutely nothing to match the field here at around 20%-25%. Personally to gain leverage on the field I’m going to be around 50% hopefully doubling, if not tripling the field in ownership. As I said, I think those finishing positions for first will matter more than we realize. My one concern is that he goes low in round one and just kind of coasts the rest of the week not racking up very many birdies etc. Even still I think around 85 DK points is a pretty good floor for him here and that would likely place him in the top 3 of DK Points for the week. That’s not going to hit ‘value’ but I think we need to change our perception of value this week with the salaries being different.

Other highly owned players (over 20%): Patrick Cantlay, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Gary Woodland 

Below 8K Chalk

Justin Rose: DK $6900/FD $9000

Projected GPP Ownership: 30%-35%

I don’t think Justin Rose has ever been within $2000 of this price, but here we are with Rosey way down the list here and he’s likely to be the highest owned player on the slate.

If we look at how Rose ranks out here, he smashes these long par 4’s, but he’s almost dead last in short par 5’s and medium par 5’s. He’s also just been somewhat mediocre as of late, relying on his putter to cover up any issues with the rest of his game. He’s literally losing strokes in every statistical category except for putting and with a switch to Bermuda this week from bent I would expect that to fall off as well. He’s lost strokes off the tee in 7 straight rounds.

Look, I get the price is incredible, but he’s going to be massively chalky and really isn’t playing that great of golf right now, so I’m more than happy to be underweight or fade here.

Below 8K Pivot:

Marc Leishman: DK $6300/FD $7300

Projected GPP Ownership: 8%-13%

Big Leish really got it going last weekend shooting 67, 67 to go -10 on Saturday/Sunday which only Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Sungjae Im, and Vaughn Taylor had better scores.

Despite being priced as the 21st player, he projects as having the 13th best round score, and 17th best fantasy points per round. The concern as always with Leish is that he gets a little wild off the tee but he has actually had some positive off the tee stats lately. He also crushes long par 3’s which is indicative of his great long iron play which should be big here.

Leish is always a great putter and similar to a Rose, if he has a good putting week it can cover up everything else. The positive with Leish is that he’s going to be 1/4th the ownership of Rose, and while they certainly aren’t the same pedigree, I don’t think Rose is 4x the player that Leish is or has 4x the chance to play/score well this week.

Other highly owned players (over 20%): Paul Casey, Tommy Fleetwood, Brandt Snedeker, Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak 

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: 

Since this is the first time we have ever had an event like this, we really don’t know how it will play out. I hope you found the video/article helpful, but if you have any ideas on other strategies I’m more than willing to listen and hopefully we find our way to a GPP win this week!

Remember, this is the last week of really big money PGA contests until next year, so while we preach contest selection and bankroll management, don’t be afraid to go a little crazy!

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!