Let’s just go ahead and get it out of the way; Danny Lee screwed us pretty good by withdrawing from the CIMB Classic with a blister last weekend. The first thing I heard on it was that it was a finger injury. Now, if I see a bone protruding from a hand, I am willing to concede that a withdrawal may be an appropriate course of action. Perhaps, even an ugly dislocation would suffice as a decent reason to exit the event and to seek proper medical attention. However, when Danny Lee tweeted out a picture of a blister on his hand, I had to remind myself once again that PGA golfers are not quite in the same ballpark of toughness as athletes from other sports. It soured what had been up until that point, a very solid weekend of picks, which included the winner, Justin Thomas, and Kevin Na, who finished in 3rd.
Outside of what we learned about Danny Lee, there are a couple of good lessons here to discuss. Lee was one of my favorite plays going into last week. His emerging tee to green play, solid iron play and reliable putting made him an easy pick, particularly on a scorers course. However, as I like to preach with cash games, you never want to be all in on anyone in a given week. Even in an event with no cut, you never know what may transpire to derail your hopes of winning. Although I very much wanted to start Lee across the board in my cash games, I held back and stuck to my rule of not using a player in more than two of my three cash game lineups on a weekly basis. My third team did well on the performances of Kevin Na and Brendan Steele, allowing me to recoup some of my losses and helping to limit some of the volatility in my bankroll.
Another valuable lesson, if you had not learned it already, is that it really is not worth risking a lot of your bankroll on events without a cut where there is a smaller field. You just do not get paid off as well when others make big mistakes in selecting their lineups the way you would if there were a cut. There were people who won big GPP events last week that had Jerry Kelly in their lineups. That would not have happened had there been a cut and those lineups more than likely would have struggled to earn back any money. Plus, with smaller fields, there is even more clustering than normal around the players that stand out the most in the field so that it is even harder to find those players who would otherwise be overlooked by owners.
What I want you to do for the week in terms of strategy is to keep your bankroll exposure small and to drop down a bit and to build more teams in smaller buy in events. If you play at the $9 level, focus more on the $3 GPP this week. If you normally do $3, drop down to the Quarter Arcade and build extra lineups. Take advantage of the opportunity to practice building a lot of lineups and also in choosing players that you know are going to be underowned. Start with our ownership projection tool and start building lineups that veer away from what others in the field are going to be doing. There is going to be a bit more variance for these types of events so give yourself the extra bullets to fire in the smaller events.
Finally, a good reason to pull back a bit is that the contests right now for GPPs just is not as appealing as during the regular part of the season. Without the $100,000 prize for the $3, there just are not going to be as many people entering the contests. It is already very time consuming to build dozens of lineups, so if the payoff is lowered, it does not always feel like it is worth the extra effort. Let DraftKings know that you are frustrated with how they have limited the size of the events over the last three weeks. This will mark the third week in a row that all the GPPs fill well before the event tees off. We understand why they are downsizing a bit due to the start of the NBA season and the fact that the NFL is in full swing, but there is now a specific group of players who love DFS Golf above other sports and are going to play regardless of how many other sports are going on at the same time. Let your voice be heard. We want to see the game expand in the next year so stick with it and send out a few e-mails or tweets to show your love for the game.
This week the Tour heads to China where the WGC HSBC makes its annual appearance at the Shensen International Golf Club in Shanghai. Make sure that you examine the last few years of the tournament with the exception of 2012. In the weeks leading up to this event, the tour made a few stops at courses that played much easier than the average courses throughout the season. That should change this week and we should start to see scores more in the normal range again as this Par 72, 7,266 yard course will not be producing scores in the -20 range. The course is longer than the last couple of weeks, but that is not to say that there are not a few scoring opportunities. With four Par 5 holes that the bigger hitters will be able to reach in two shots, scoring opportunities abound. However, the four Par 3 holes are all over 200 yards so while players will have chances to score on Par 5 holes, they will have to fight to hold steady for the Par 3 holes on the course. There are also a number of bunkers scattered around the course, and many of the holes have significant dog legs so we should have plenty of Shot of the Week candidates this weekend.
The key statistics that we are looking for this week are:
Strokes Gained Tee to Green
Birdie or Better Percentage
Par 4 Scoring
Greens In Regulation
Par 5 Scoring
Scrambling
Strokes Gained Putting
At this point in the season, looking at the stats on the PGA Tour page is not going to be a great help to us. The stats for this season only cover a couple events, and last season’s numbers are not quite recent enough to totally give us a true idea of how players have performed in the most recent of events. Fortunately, for FGI subscribers, we are working on a solution to this problem as we are working on segmenting statistics and will start to deliver them based on recent form so that you can compare and contrast them with how they look for the entire season. This should help in determining who is actually the best fit on a given week, particularly if the player had struggled through a portion of the season, thus ruining their overall numbers for the year. As you look at the players this week, it is okay to check out their numbers for the first couple of events, but also go back and flip through their previous seasons to get a better idea for their tendencies.
One of the best ways of evaluating players this time of year is to take a look at how Vegas sees the field each week. Combining the odds with early season stats and recent form is really helpful when working through the numbers. As the season wears on, the PGA season stats will become more and more reliable, but at this point in the year, it requires a little more leg work and dare I say, artistry, to rank the field and to come up with recommendations. Also, you really should be using the ‘Who’s Hot’ page, specifically for events like this where a number of European and Asian Tour regulars join field and we have little to rank them by other than how they have played in events around the world. These players represent a bigger risk, but also a bigger reward for those that do their homework ahead of time. This is the time of year when even some of the top fantasy players are still unfamiliar with some of these players so finding the ones that can jump in immediately and contribute can give you a nice edge in both cash games and GPPs. Much like last week, I will give you a few of those players who I believe will have immediate success.
Good luck this week with your lineups. Please remember that lineup lock takes place on Wednesday night at 6:45 pm Central Standard Time. Be sure to get your teams entered early in the day as the main GPPs are going to fill pretty easily. I am sure that there will be secondary contests, but obviously, the payoff on those is not nearly the same. Keep us informed as to how things are going for your teams and if any of you have a good shot of the week, tweet us a picture of you doing the shot and which player it is for and we’ll give you a shout out on our show next week. We had some great ones last week so keep them coming. It has been a lot of fun getting to know some of the new folks that have joined us recently.
Finally, we are into the last two months of 2015. When 2016 hits, we will be raising our prices, but not for those that have subscribed this year and maintained their subscription. If you have not already subscribed, do so now so you can lock in your rate today and be sure to let any friends out there know about us so that they can take advantage of this opportunity as well. We tend to send out swag to folks who bring in new subscribers so let us know if you helped us out and we’ll send you out a t-shirt as a sign of thanks and appreciation.
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