Euro Tour DFS Is Here
Beginning this week, DraftKings will offer Euro Tour golf contests. We’ve got the data for it, so head over to our Player Models and begin building a lineup for this week’s Euro Tour event: The BMW PGA Championship.
As Bryan Mears has said, we will have dedicated weekly content for Euro Tour tournaments starting next week. Eventually I might cover some Euro Tour golfers in this piece. For the time being, though, this article will continue to focus solely on PGA Tour events.
Side note: Bryan visited Europe last week. We were all under the impression that this was just a little vacation for him, but I find it a bit suspicious that, the week he returns from Europe, we find ourselves with Euro Tour DFS contests. Without jumping to conclusions, I would like to thank Bryan for singlehandedly going to Europe, finding the Euro Tour, and bringing it stateside for us to use in DFS form.
DEAN & DELUCA Championship 2016
The PGA Tour will remain in Texas for the DEAN & DELUCA Championship, this season’s final event in the Lone Star State. This event is held at Colonial Country Club — a Par-70 course that stretches slightly over 7,200 yards. Missing the fairways here can create plenty of trouble, as the probability of being blocked out by a tree runs high, so accuracy will be a statistic of importance this week. I won’t be forgoing driving distance entirely (I never do), but most of my adjustments will be focusing on greens in regulation and accuracy off of the tee.
This field isn’t akin to the one we saw two weeks ago at The Players Championship, but there are still some elite golfers to choose from: 15 golfers in this week’s field have already won a PGA Tour event this season, and several recent winners are back to try their hand at once again taking this event down. Course history is plentiful this week.
Take a look at the top-25 finishers from the last five years:
Nine golfers finished in the top 25 at least three times in the past five years, and seven of them are in the field again this year. Here are the finishes for those golfers at this event, again dating back to 2011:
Let’s get straight into the player breakdown.
$9,000 – $12,800
Jordan Spieth ($12,800) and Adam Scott ($11,300) are the two best golfers in this week’s field and warrant roster consideration any week, but the first guy I want to highlight is Zach Johnson ($10,700). The course-history plays have failed to meet expectation recently, but I won’t persecute Johnson for the crimes of his peers. Plus, his history here is truly elite. Dating back seven years, he has made the cut seven straight tournaments, finished top-20 in six of the seven years, won twice, and set a 72-hole tournament record at 21 under par. Johnson’s GIR has decreased by six percentage points through his last four tournaments, but that number is dragged down considerably due to the third round at The Players Championship — a round in which the greens were impossible to hold and he hit less than 40 percent in regulation.
I am going to roster Matt Kuchar ($10,500) any time that there is an emphasis on accuracy and no excessive necessity for distance, which is exactly the situation we find ourselves in this week. Kuch’s form through his last four tournaments — 66.7-percent GIR and 67-percent driving accuracy — sets up perfectly for a run at Colonial. My concern with Kuch lies within game theory more than data or his specific statistics. Here’s something I wrote about him last week:
“The problem with Kuchar is that he played incredibly well last week, resulting in a third-place finish. In theory that’s good, but it’s also likely to lead to high tournament exposure.”
That statement will continue to hold true, as Kuchar is again coming off of a third-place finish and is likely to carry high tournament exposure. Last week, he could be found in about 20 percent of tournament lineups, and I think that we can expect a similar number this week. Rostering him in large-field guaranteed prize pools is dependent upon your playing style, but don’t be afraid of giving him the nod in cash games. In a sport in which fantasy consistency is seemingly impossible to find, Kuchar has quietly had 95-percent Consistency on the year.
If you don’t want to cross into the $10,000 price range, then Kevin Chappell ($9,600) makes a strong case for inclusion in a few lineups. With 84-percent Consistency, 61-percent Upside, and an average Plus/Minus of +17 on the year, he’s comparable to Spieth and Jason Day. In strong form — he has made four straight cuts and finished second place at The Players — Chappell has a Recent Adjusted Round Score of 67.7, which is tied for the second best in the slate.
$7,000 – $8,900
Coming off of a top-25 finish at last week’s event, Jason Dufner ($8,400) has all the makings of a tournament play. His recent struggles getting up and down (49.1-percent scrambling) would be more concerning if he were in a scrambling position more often, but he has a recent GIR of 73.1 percent, largely negating the need to scramble for par. His recent putts per round average of 30.2 is the biggest blemish in his recent form, but if he can work toward his long-term average of 29.5 then he will have a great chance to compete over the weekend, which he has done previously with two top-5 finishes here in the past.
Colt Knost ($8,300) leads this range of salaries in Recent Adj Rd Score, which isn’t a shock, given his back-to-back top-5 finishes. Colonial CC places an emphasis on hitting fairways, and Knost is coming off of the Byron Nelson where he hit 44 of 56 fairways in regulation — second best in the field. Knost is likely to be a popular play, and I do like the idea of fading him (and this price range altogether) in order to use more of a stars-and-scrubs approach. Colt’s course history here isn’t stellar — he missed the cut in four straight appearances before finishing tenth last year — but I wouldn’t be too concerned with that, as rostering Knost has much more to do with relying on his recent form and less with what he has done in the distant past.
Danny Lee ($8,900) has a Course Adj Rd Score of 69.5, which is tied for the highest of any golfer in this price range with at least two appearances at this event. His best finish was last year’s T10. He ranked top-25 in driving accuracy and strokes gained tee to green on his way to a T18 finish last week. He is averaging 1.3 more birdies per tournament over his last five events and has made the cut in each of the last four.
Worth at least a brief mention is Jim Furyk ($8,600), whose Long-Term Adj Rd Score is the best among golfers below $9,000. Having played only twice since returning from injury, Furyk carries enough risk to make him worth fading in cash games. However, his long-term form — 68.3-percent GIR and 68-percent driving accuracy — is enough to make him a tournament option this week. Team ugly swing for life.
$5,700-$6,900
This is an important price range if you want to fit a few of the top-tier golfers into your lineups. I am going to forgive Lucas Glover ($6,800) for what he did to my lineups last week. His struggles at the Byron Nelson came Friday, when he hit only half of his fairways and posted a two-over 72. He returned to form Saturday, though, hitting 12 of 14 fairways on his way to a three-under 67, barely missing the cut. He, along with Emiliano Grillo ($6,700) and Jhonattan Vegas ($6,600), leads this salary range with six Pro Trends.
Keegan Bradley ($6,800) is a golfer in the PGA tour. That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about him at the moment, but I am going to attempt to make a case for him as a tournament option. I get that he can’t putt, but he is simply too cheap for his ball-striking capabilities. He is long off of the tee and has hit over 65 percent of his greens and fairways in regulation recently. Last week was one of those weeks in which people (namely I) decided to give Keegan another shot and then, after starting strong, he missed the cut. He should be low-rostered, and if he can get his putter hot, or even slightly above freezing, then he should slide past the cut line and be able to compete through the weekend. At this price, I have no problem investing some of my tournament exposure on Keegs.
Long Off Of The Tee
For the video this week, we have a Phil Mickelson highlight from this event in 2008. Let me set the scene: He is walking up the fairway, discussing some stock options with a friend . . . wait, my bad, wrong story.
It’s the 72nd hole and Phil hits his tee shot left, leaving him with a tough lie behind a few trees. His goal here was to somehow hit the ball onto the green and then two-putt to force a playoff. This is what happened:
Good luck this weekend!
