DFS Golf: Early Look at the Masters
By Josh Thomas
DFS Golf: Early look at the Masters’
We are T-minus 8 days from heading back to Augusta for my absolutely favorite DFS Golf tournament of the year, The Masters! The Masters is a legitimate holiday in my household. My wife walked down the aisle to the Masters theme. We had an Amen Corner themed birthday party this year for my son Eamon, and we dressed him in a custom white caddy onesie. I already have Friday off and I’ll be doing nothing but watching the live stream on my computer at work on Thursday. It just doesn’t get any better for me than the masters.
Fellow @fantasycpr contributor @2locksports is heading down for a practice round on Tuesday and I would love to hear from anyone else who is heading to Augusta. Reach out to me on twitter @dfsupnorth if you see anything worthwhile noting during the practice rounds and I’ll include it in an update next week! Last year some members of the DFS community who were at the practice rounds noted how Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia were both just tearing up the course and what do you know they ended up 1-2 and they cashed some big pay days stacking those two!
As with any major, we have a Milly Maker this week with the top lineup taking home a cool onemillion dollars on DraftKings. The first Milly Maker of the year is always a $20 entry with 150 Max entries. LOTS of Non-Golf DFS’rs will be playing as well as many casual players so there is often a significant edge for those who put in the time and research. With 205,000 entries in this tournament, projecting the ownership and pivoting off highly owned players can give you a significant edge. Later in this article I’ve identified a few players who I think will be highly owned, and I’ll be back next week with some final info on projected ownership as trends start to come into focus.
DFS Golf: Course Breakdown – Augusta National
Amen Corner, Magnolia Lane, Hogan’s Bridge, Pimento Cheese Sandwiches, Rae’s Creek, does it really get any better than Augusta National? Located in Augusta, Georgia the Master’s is played at the pristine Augusta National Golf Course. Designed by the legendary Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie it opened in 1933 and has hosted the Masters’ every year since 1934. The course plays at 7435 yards and is a par 72 with ten par 4’s, four par 5’s, and four par 3s.
https://twitter.com/Hainesy76/status/976971013547331584
Saw the picture above on Twitter this week and thought about how much Augusta has changed, but how much the layout has truly stayed the same, at least in hole routing. As usual the players will be putting on Bent Grass with Bermuda Fairways that are overseeded with Oregon rye. The rough will be short and the fairways fairly easy to hit. The real test at Augusta is the undulating greens and avoiding the trouble in the forms of creeks, ponds, woods, and sand traps. If you look at past winners of this tournament you find that the majority are either A) Great Ballstrikers B) Bombers or C) Both.
2017: Sergio Garcia -9
2016: Danny Willett -5
2015: Jordan Spieth -18
2014: Bubba Watson -8
2013: Adam Scott -9
2012: Bubba Watson -10
All of the above with maybe the exception of Willett are world-class ball strikers and Watson/Scott bomb the ball off the tee. Outside of Jordan Spieth’s dominant performance in 2015, the average score of the winner is around -9, and most of the winners have shot par or better in all four rounds, avoiding the blow up round that seems to knock players from the top of the leaderboard every year at Augusta.
Knowing what we know about the players who have had success here we can start to widdle down the key stats. Strokes Gained: Ball Striking will make our model, as well as Strokes Gained Tee to Green. While putting here is important, it’s not a stat we’re going to include in our model. Par 5 scoring and the ability to take advantage of the par 5’s gives you a huge advantage on the field and will be another key stat. If you look at Birdies gained and Bogeys avoided over the last 4 years, number one in both categories is Jordan Spieth. While he only has one green jacket to his name during that time, he has been solo leader or tied for the lead in 8 of those 16 rounds. So those are two more key stats we will look at. Hitting fairways here is not hugely important as the rough is not as penal as other major venues, but with the difficulty of the greens and the undulation you want to be on the green in regulation to give you the best chance to not only score, but avoid the big number so the last key stat we will look at is Greens in Regulation.
Key Stats:
SG: Ballstriking
SG: T2G
SG: Par 5
Birdies Gained
Bogeys Avoided
Greens in Regulation
Augusta National is a private club, and they are VERY private, so much so that they don’t allow the PGA to keep stats as they normally would, like Strokes Gained so the data you can get on Augusta isn’t what we would have a normal week. For our stat model this week I’ll be making one with all six of our key stats at courses similar to Augusta and one with the bottom four key statistics only at Augusta. We will use both models to help us identify the golfer’s we like for next week!
DFS Golf: Master’s Preview – Early Player Pool Thoughts
As with any major, the DFS sites make the pricing fairly soft, meaning that you are able to construct rosters filled with some of the big time stars in the game. They do this to attract those Non-Golf DFS’rs that I talked about earlier. So instead of having to make difficult decisions, you often have to make them in that 8K range, and like I said earlier you should be taking ownership into consideration when doing that. We know that we very rarely have a leaderboard at a major with the top 5 being all major stars, you often have an upstart somewhere, think back to the 2015 Master’s that Bubba Watson won, do you know who finished second? I couldn’t remember until I looked it up…Jonas Blixt. If you had Blixt in your lineup you most likely made a bunch of money as he would have come in at extremely low ownership. If you feel really good about someone, you can eat the chalk but my general game theory rule of thumb is that you want your ownership to add up to less than 80%, so you need to differentiate your lineups somewhere with someone like a Jonas Blixt or my hopefully low owned favorite this year, Jimmy Walker.
First let’s look at who I think should be chalk for this tournament based on the pre-tourney sentiment that I’m seeing on Twitter and the Player’s pricing. I consider “Chalk” to be anyone that is around 17-20% owned or higher.
Chalk List:
Tiger Woods: DK $10000/FD $11500
Justin Rose: DK $9200/FD $11400
Paul Casey: DK $8800/FD $10900
Bubba Watson: DK $8700/FD $10300
Sergio Garcia: DK $8600/FD $11300
Henrik Stenson: DK $7800/FD $10700
Rafa Cabrera-Bello: DK $7300/FD $7400
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As I said, you’re difficult decisions will come in that 8K Range with Casey, Watson, Garcia, and Rose. The game-theory play might actually be to fade all of them and build from the 9K and 7K range but any of them could win it. The FanDuel pricing is much tighter than the DraftKings as you can see outside of Cabrera-Bello who should be 100% owned in all formats on FanDuel. I can’t believe that he’s $7400. That is $3000 less than Angel Cabrera, that’s ridiculous. I think RCB will hover around 20% owned on Draftkings at $7300, I can’t imagine what his ownership will be on FD unless people forget to scroll down. Sergio’s pricing on DK is also egregious for last year’s champion who is coming in with phenomenal form. Tiger will draw massive ownership regardless of price as we have more non-golf DFS’rs playing this week than normal. Jordan Spieth could become chalk though I hope people are off him because of his recent performance on the greens. I honestly hope he misses the cut at the Houston to drive ownership down a bit so that we can jump on.
If I have to only choose one from the above it will be Paul Casey. While he was unable to make it out of the group stage at the WGC-Match play he has a win in the last month and has really been a man on a mission for the last year or so, racking up top tens in what seems like every week. His last three years at Augusta he has gone 6, T4, T6. He ranks out 4th in model of Augusta Statistics above all of the other Chalk List. At some point he will win a major, I really think that’s inevitable, and his game is a great fit here. He’s contended here every year and this could be the year he gets over the hump.
Now lets look at the Top Players from each of our Custom Stat Models:
As you can see from the model’s above we get a good spread of players for our player pool but the first ones we want to start with are the guys who show up on both lists. These are what we consider our core players to build GPP and Cash Game Lineups around.
Core Players:
Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Paul Casey, Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Henrik Stenson, Jon Rahm, Rickie Fowler, and Daniel Berger.
Obviously you won’t be able to play this entire list of players but its a good starting point. I would probably fade Henrik at super high ownership but I think the rest are extremely good starting points. You will most likley only be able to pair two of these guys together in your lineup build. I really like that Daniel Berger shows up on both as he is a great value at $7500 and someone I hadn’t really thought of. GC of Houston is a good comparable course and he has played well there in a past so it will be interesting to see what he does this weekend. Berger has made the cut here in both appearances, including a top ten in 2016. Another good course comparison for Berger is the Waste Management Phoenix Open and he’s never missed the cut there and has had two top tens. Berger wasn’t on my radar at all but now looks like he has found a way into my core builds for next week and I will be locking him in a lot of my lineups.
DFS Golf: Masters’ Preview – Upcoming Content
Hopefully this will help you get started on building your lineups for the Masters’. It truly is a tradition unlike any other. Be on the lookout for my Masters’ Sleeper picks sometime this weekend and my final thoughts with ownership projections on Wednesday!
Next: DFS Golf - Houston Open Preview
Make sure you get in on our DraftKings contest this week as that should be a lot of fun and follow along this weekend at the Houston Open with me on twitter @dfsupnorth!