This piece focuses on five golfers projected to have less than five percent ownership in large-field guaranteed prize pools on DraftKings and FanDuel. Be sure to check out our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after contests lock to track ownership rates across all buy-in levels.
Five Under Five
Last week’s results: Three of five players made the cut and scored 57.6 DraftKings points or more.
- Kevin Chappell: MC, 18.0 DraftKings points, 1.28 percent average ownership
- Martin Kaymer: T37, 58.5 DraftKings points, 2.55 percent avg ownership
- Mark Foster: MC, 20.5 DraftKings points, 0.07 percent avg ownership (MC on final hole Friday)
- Andrew Dodt: T44, 56.0 DraftKings points, 0.95 percent avg ownership
- Thongchai Jaidee: T27, 58.5 DraftKings points, 0.15 percent avg ownership
No player was owned at an average greater than five percent. Jaidee and Kaymer scored equal points, but Thongchai was my favorite play of the bunch: He scored 58.5 DraftKings points and was owned at a nearly invisible 0.15 percent.
Sick To My Stomach
As always, the first way we can use FantasyLabs to find potentially low-owned yet talented golfers in our Models is to leverage our Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score) metric. If you sort the field by LT Adj Rd Score, you are looking at a list of players who have been the best golfers over the past 75 weeks. Among these golfers, those who have low salaries could also have low ownership.
No single player has let me down more than Ryan Palmer, but he is tied for 15th in this relatively weak field with his 69.7 LT Adj Rd Score. Palmer’s results haven’t been great lately — he has three missed cuts in his last five tournaments — but he has actually been striking the ball very well. The problem has been his putting: His 32.3 Recent Adjusted Putts Per Round (Adj PPR) ranks one spot away from dead last in this field. If you compare his LT Adj PPR (29.7) to his recent mark, there’s reason to believe he will starting sinking more putts sooner rather than later. Palmer has made the cut and finished 43rd or better here in each of his last three trips: His 69.7 Course Adj Rd Score ranks 10th among golfers with at least three starts at Glen Abbey in our database.
A Secret Canadian
Jason Kokrak played high school and college golf in Ohio, but he was actually born in Ontario, Canada. Like Palmer, Kokrak has one of the better LT Adj Rd Scores in the field: He is tied for 17th with his 69.8 mark. Kokrak surely has the length off the tee — his 306.6 LT Driving Distance ranks 12th — to score well on the short Par 5 holes at Glen Abbey. Kokrak’s -3.0 LT Average Adjusted Par 5 Strokes (Adj P5 Avg) is one of the better scores in the field, and, according to our Trends tool, golfers with similar salaries and Adj P5 Avgs have produced a +3.40 Plus/Minus with 56 percent Consistency when playing at Glen Abbey.
The Other Rory
No, not McIlroy: we’re talking about Rory Sabbatini. Before you stop reading, allow me to elaborate. Sabbatini has solid course history here: He finished in 12th- and 11th-place here at Glen Abbey in 2013 and 2015. Moreover, he’s playing great golf right now: In his last two starts, he’s produced two top-20 finishes, while averaging 84.0 DraftKings and 90.8 FanDuel points per tournament. As pointed out in this week’s PGA Course Breakdown, Recent Driving Accuracy (DA) has been a solid indicator of value at this track, and Sabbatini’s 70.8 percent Recent DA is one of the top scores in the field this week. His 18th-ranked 13.7 Recent Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Bird Avg) won’t hurt him either.
Slumpbuster
It’s not pretty right now: Scott Piercy has missed four straight cuts, during which time he has seen his Recent Adj Rd Score balloon all the way up to 72.5. But, like Palmer, it hasn’t been Piercy’s ball-striking that’s led to his miserable finishes — it’s been his putting. His 33.0 Recent Adj PPR is the worst score in the entire field, but it’s also much higher than his 29.5 LT Adj PPR numbers. Additionally, Piercy seems to suddenly appear in contention for wins (he finished seventh at the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational) when people least expect it. Piercy has the ability to score at this course: He is tied for ninth in the field with his 0.4 LT Adjusted Eagle Avg, and he has a top-35 LT Adj P5 Avg score.
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Fans of DraftKings’ Weekend golf games will surely remember the name of Rick Lamb, who went absolutely ham (I’m into nursery rhymes) with rounds of 63 and 66 at the John Deere Classic on his way to a T3 finish in which he accumulated 112.5 DraftKings and 111.7 FanDuel points. But Lamb didn’t just fall off the wall out of nowhere; he also posted a 17th-place finish at the Travelers Championship and has now made three of his last four cuts. Lamb’s Recent 69.5 Adj Rd Score, 70.8 percent GIR, and 75 percent DA all rank him squarely inside the top-20 of this field for those recent metrics this week.
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Good luck, and be sure to do your own PGA research with the FantasyLabs Tools and watch our PGA videos on our Premium Content Portal.
