In every Golf DFS Plays of the Week post, a few FantasyLabs writers will use our Trends tool and Player Models to highlight each one golfer to roster heavily in cash games and/or tournaments.
Here are today’s plays of the week for the 2016 Lyoness Open.
Colin Davy: Gregory Bourdy
Bourdy is the Matt Kuchar equivalent of the European Tour, as he easily has the best Consistency of all the top options in the field. Tied for second in Pro Trends, he makes for a great cash game play. Bourdy’s long-term cut-making percentage is the highest in the field, and he has enough top-20 finishes on the Euro tour to provide a healthy amount of Upside.
Pro Trends, Consistency, Upside, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
Also, don’t miss Colin’s most recent piece in his series on course history.
Bryan Mears: Bernd Wiesberger
In this week’s Golf Daily Fantasy Flex podcast, Colin raised an interesting question regarding Euro Tour data: Does home-country advantage matter? We saw last week that golfers from Sweden generally performed very well at the Nordea Masters. Should we prioritize golfers when they compete in their home countries? Should we give Austrians a bump this week?
That question leads us to Wiesberger, an Austrian golfer who is tied for the highest implied Vegas odds at 12.5 percent. Deciding between him and Joost Luiten will be the challenge this week, as both of their Adjusted Round Scores (as well as Chris Wood’s) are significantly higher than those of the rest of the field.
Wiesberger, in particular, boasts an elite Adjusted Round Score of 69.7, the highest mark of the tournament. While he struggles a bit with accuracy off the tee, Wiesberger does boast excellent marks in both Driving Distance and Greens in Regulation, the latter of which, along with Adj Rd Score, serves as a decent proxy for talent.
The data shows that Wiesberger is the best play of the tournament, independent of DraftKings pricing. And if you factor in the potential ‘home-country advantage,’ his star shines even brighter this week.
Be sure to check out the Euro Tour segment in this week’s Golf Daily Fantasy Flex podcast, with Bryan, Colin, and Peter Jennings (CSURAM88).
Kelly McCann: Joost Luiten
Colin has recently written about course history at specific courses. Diamond Country Club, where this week’s Euro Tour Lyoness Open is played, is a very ‘specific’ course, unlike any other. It presents two different par-five holes with island greens. I’m not sure if there’s another course on any tour in any country that provides that particular challenge. Additionally, water comes into play on 13 of the 18 holes.
I bring this up because Luiten has ridiculous course history. He has played this event three times, with all his starts coming in the last four years, and he has won once and twice finished third. As you might guess, Luiten’s 68.5 Course Adj Rd Score is the best in this week’s field.
The past five winners at this event have excelled in GIR and Driving Accuracy. Unsurprisingly, Luiten does well in these metrics, ranking third in Long-Term GIR at 72 percent and first in Recent GIR at 74.1 percent. Meanwhile, his 69.6-percent Recent DA is ninth best in the field. And did I mention that he has never finished worse than third at this event?
Use Joost with supreme confidence in all formats this week.
Also, be sure to check out Approach Shots, Kelly’s article breaking down the 2016 Lyoness Open.
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The Plays of the Week series is our answer to the question, “Who do you guys like today?” We publish a Plays of the Week article every Wednesday for Euro Tour and PGA and a Plays of the Day every weekday for MLB.
