DFS Golf: The best bang for your buck

Football has long been king when it comes to the fantasy sports industry. Re-draft and dynasty leagues have been a staple in fantasy for years. Then sites like Draftkings and Fanduel came along and revolutionized the game with Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS). While DFS football is always a great time and the most commonly played, DFS golf is rapidly gaining popularity, and for good reason.

The basics for every DFS golf contest include you drafting six different golfers. Each golfer is priced differently and your total for the team can’t exceed $50,000 in salary. Points are awarded for birdies or better and pars, and are taken away for bogeys or worse. There are also a variety of bonuses that can be awarded throughout the four days of most tournaments.

One of the greatest perks to DFS golf is that you get four days of entertainment for your buy-in. Most sports in DFS include one day, afternoon or night of entertainment. For example, the main slate on DraftKings for football is just the Sunday afternoon games. This can provide you with a day full of entertainment, which is fantastic. On the other hand, if you buy in to one of the standard games for DFS golf you get four days of entertainment. Most PGA tournaments start on Thursday mornings and finish up Sunday evenings. So, comparatively you could buy-in to an NFL slate for five dollars and get a solid seven hours of entertainment and for the same price in a PGA slate get four full days.

Throughout the four days make sure you buckle in for a roller coaster full of highs and lows. Golf is a game full of extreme variance. Therefore, you should expect your DFS contests to mimic that.

Day one of the tourney you are really just hoping that none of your players go out and shoot seven over and take themselves out of contention that day. Cut day, the second day of tournaments, is where the real fun starts.

To maximize your chances of winning, having all six golfers make the cut is optimal. Therefore, keeping an eye on your golfers and what the cut line is can be a real wild ride. They call this the “cut sweat,” because you are sweating your guys making the cut.

Day three involves your golfers trying to making moves up the leader board to put themselves in a position for a win. This is where you can see dramatic swings in your contest, in both directions. You could be low on the board and your players could go on a huge run, springing you towards the top and putting yourself in a great position for the last day.

When you are in contention for a big payday on the last day of a tournament you are going to be sweating every five foot putt that your players attempt. It is going to feel like you are standing with them on the tee box, hoping they stripe one down the middle of the fairway.

There are very few greater feelings in fantasy sports then being lucky enough to enjoy any sort of return on your investment from a four-day DFS golf weekend. While obviously the dream is to hit the big payday, like one of the Millionaire Maker contests for the majors like the Masters (which approaches) the truth is having a long-term vision and an understanding that you may need to grind out a few tough weeks before hitting a nice payday happens.

The amount of different buy-ins that a site like DraftKings offers also makes DFS golf very enticing. For someone who is just starting, you can find games for no cost at all. These types of games allow you to get a feel for what you are doing without having to risk any money doing it.  Once you get the hang of what you are doing, games can start at as low as 10 cents. Then when you really hone in on your skills, buy-ins go all the way up to as much as $10,600.

One of the most popular games every week on DraftKings is the five-dollar drive the green contest. As this contest describes, it is a five-dollar buy-in. The $100,000 payday for first place is one of the reasons that this contest is so popular. Also, this contest guarantees a payout of $500,000 dollars in total. This means that even if the contest does not fill, the payouts will not change. Very rarely will this type of contest not fill though. This contest is what is considered a GPP or guaranteed prize pool.

They also have 20-max, three-max and single-entry formats that are GPPs. This allows you to really find what you like and what your skills are best suited to.

In addition to GPPs, cash games are offered on most DFS sites. Head-to-heads and double-ups are considered cash games. Strategies for these games differ from GPPs and are considered to be a little “safer.” In any game that you chose, being able to utilize the resources available to you are crucial for success.

Having a full understanding of the course and what type of skills it takes to win there can give you a great competitive advantage. There is no doubt that you are going to need to get a little lucky throughout the week, but there are a plethora of resources available out there to give you that edge.

Here is a list of twitter follows that give out great content every week:

@thepme

@gfienberg17

@IamTheGup

@BPSnow11

@MichaelRuvolo

@JazzrazDFS

@FantasyGolfMan

@KendoVT

@ToeTagginTambo

@redkacheek

@thefantasygrind

@reidtfowler

@fantasynational

@TheMoosenomics

@futureoffantasy

@FanShareSports

@drewby417

Here is a list of websites (some stuff is free, while others may require a membership):

https://www.fantasynational.com

Gup's Corner - Friends. Family. Greenscreens.

http://futureoffantasy.com

https://www.awesemo.com/pga/

https://rotogrinders.com/

If you are a fan of fantasy sports and haven’t tried DFS golf yet, I highly recommend giving it a shot. Remember it is entertainment and for as little as 10 cents you can get four full days of it and just from the contests. If you take the time to sift through all the resources, you can get a full weeks’ worth.

Incorporating fantasy games into sports has added another level of enjoyment to it. DFS golf does this as well and is the best bang for your buck.