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Last week was … well, it was last week so let’s just move on.
This week we have a stacked field heading to the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral Miami, or as it is more commonly referred to, the Blue Monster. This is an interesting week for a few reasons – the best players in the world will be there and there is no cut, meaning we can expect all of our golfers to get four full rounds of play in.
The Blue Monster has been susceptible to the longer hitters on tour and has been the home of some incredibly low four-round scores. 2011 and 2012 saw Justin Rose and Nick Watney win with a final score of 16 under. That was followed up by Tiger Woods winning by two strokes at a score of 19 under par in 2013. The next year was the first time the tour visited the Blue Monster after it underwent a renovation adding bunkers, more water, length and additional changes in an effort to make the course more difficult. That year, the winning score was brought back down to four under par, but the 25mph winds on a weather-delayed Thursday could have had something to do with that. The following year we saw the scores return closer to scores of past with Dustin Johnson taking down the tournament at nine under.
Keeping the theme of past articles going, let’s take a look at the top-25 finishers from the past five years.
We see a lot of the same names year after year, so course history will probably be a hot topic this week. Below, we can take a look at the finishes at the Blue Monster for golfers who have had at least three top-25 finishes in that time. This only includes players who are in the field this week.
There is some impressive recent course history there. Rory has finished in the top 25 each of the past five years, with four of those finishes being in the top 10. Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson both have finished in the top 25 in four of the past five years with three of those being in the top five. Adam Scott, who is coming off of a win at last week’s Honda Classic also shares five consecutive top-25 finishes that include a T4, T3, and T6. These four players have a few things in common – being all-around, incredible players while being among the longest hitters in the game. Distance has been key to a finishing high at the Blue Monster and currently those four players are among the top-10 ranked players on tour in Driving Distance.
I was originally planning on focusing this week’s article on Driving Distance and a few other statistics that can help negate not being very long off the tee, but the more I looked, the more I felt like moving in a different direction. Don’t get me wrong – Driving Distance and Strokes Gained: Tee to Green are still some statistics that I am going to pay close attention to, but I think I am going to look elsewhere from the aforementioned heavy hitters.
Rather than give a few players who I will be focusing on, I think this week I would rather give a few different methods of roster construction that I am contemplating.
A few things jumped out immediately when looking at this week’s PGA contest. First, there is no cut, which will allow us to take some chances on some lower-priced guys, and second, the long-ball, high-priced players have been tearing this course up recently. This week seems to be begging me to take a stars and scrubs approach to building a lineup. That very well could be the winning strategy this week given the level of talent in this field and the fact that we will get four rounds out of all of our golfers barring a withdrawal, but I do think there is merit to going with a different approach when dealing with some of the larger GPPs.
Being primarily a GPP DFS player and exclusively a GPP PGA player, I can’t help but to become weary of the obvious. The stars and scrubs approach seems obvious, and I will probably still have some exposure to that form of roster construction, but I think there is an opportunity for some unique lineups in the more balanced approach. If you start your roster construction with two of the higher-priced studs, you are going to have a difficult time fitting in many, if any at all, players at the $7-9k range. Starting your lineup with two golfers in that range could alone be enough to ensure a contrarian approach in the larger-field tournaments.
If you are uncomfortable with going completely balanced, there are still some guys in the $9k price range who are interesting plays this week. I think this is where I will focus a lot of my lineups: avoiding some of the highest-priced guys above $10k and starting with some of the other studs who fall just below that salary. There are plenty of solid options at this price point. We have J.B. Holmes coming in at $9,400 and ranks third on tour in Driving Distance while carrying a second-place finish at this tournament in 2015. Louis Oosthuizen, priced at $9,600, is currently unranked in Driving Distance on the PGA Tour this year, but when taking the average from the 2014 and 2015 rankings he would fall in at a very respectable 38. Couple that with the fact that he is coming off of a win on the European Tour where he hit 67 of 72 greens in regulation – he has the potential of being an elite play this weekend. I think there is a lot of value in this price range when looking at the upside of some of the players and the salary that it leaves us to play with. I this most likely end up being the starting point for a lot of my roster construction.
This weekend is going to be a ton of fun. The best players in the world competing at an awesome golf course with no fear of a cut line – if you haven’t played PGA DFS before, this will be a fun week to give it a try.
