The 2016 Travelers Championship
Although the last major of the year is behind us, the action rolls on as the PGA Tour heads to Cromwell, CT, for the Travelers Championship. This event is held at TPC River Highlands — a Par-70 course that plays slightly over 6,800 yards. The lack of length needed at TPC River Highlands will surely help some of the ball strikers who rate highly in Long-Term Greens in Regulation (LT GIR) and LT Driving Accuracy (DA), even if they don’t hit it long off of the tee. Targeting those players in cash games makes a lot of sense, but I will also be targeting some of the bombers who make a lot of birdies in large-field tournaments. This is because some of the holes featured at TPC River Highlands can be overpowered by the longer hitters. Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Birdies) will be a focus in both cash games and tournaments because of DraftKings’ current PGA scoring and how many scoring opportunities are available at this course. TPC River Highlands is the every-year host of this event, so for the first time in a few weeks we have ourselves some solid course history to consider.
Course History
Here are the top-25 finishers from the last five years at TPC River Highlands.
Now, here are those golfers who have at least three top-25 finishes at TPC River Highlands dating back to 2011.
There are only four golfers who qualify, but that does not speak negatively about the value of course history this week. Five additional players qualified but are not currently in the field this year.
Player Breakdown
$9,000 – $12,300
Bubba Watson ($12,300) is Mr. Course History this week, but he is also Mr. Most Expensive. Fitting him into your lineup won’t be easy, as the low-priced options leave a lot to be desired due to an incredibly weak field relative to our past three events. However, it would be difficult to ignore Bubba’s five consecutive made cuts at this event, 10 consecutive made cuts on the year and field-best Course Adjusted Round Score (Adj Rd Score) of 68.7 (excluding golfers with only one recent start at this event). Bubba has a reputation as a bomber with inconsistent accuracy from the tee box, and as his statistics show — 312.3-yard LT Driving Distance (DD) and 56.8 percent LT DA — he has lived up to that reputation. However, he is wildly consistent in regards to DFS scoring: His 15.4 LT Adj Birdies per tournament are a large contributor to his 78 percent Consistency and 42 percent Upside ratings this year.
Matt Kuchar ($10,600) missed the cut last week, which ended his streak of 11 consecutive tournaments in which he made it into the weekend. However, ‘Kuch in cash’ will remain a thing (I don’t think it ever was a ‘thing,’ but work with me here), because one missed cut is not nearly enough for me to turn a blind eye to his 88 percent Consistency rating on the year. Kuchar offers safety that is similar to (if not better than) Bubba’s, and he leaves you with $1,700 more to spend when filling out the remainder of your lineup. His LT Adj Round Score of 68.7 trails only Bubba’s among players in this range of salaries, and his 28.8 LT Putts Per Round (PPR) is reason to believe that he can bounce back from his poor performance on the greens at the PGA Championship.
It is likely that you have heard this question asked in the past weeks: “Is Jim Furyk ($9,400) back to form after returning from injury?” If you are unaware of the situation, here is a reminder: Furyk withdrew from the BMW Championship in September of 2015 with a wrist injury and later had surgery, which kept him away from the PGA Tour until he returned in May of this year to compete in the Wells Fargo Championship. He missed two of three cuts in May but has since made the cut in seven consecutive events, including a second-place finish at the U.S. Open. This led me to believe that Furyk had returned to form, but returning to form and making cuts do not necessarily result in DFS value. The question now is whether he is providing the same DFS value that he provided before. Now that he has 10 events under his belt this season, it’s a good time to turn to the Trends tool for some insight.
I first took a look at his performances prior to surgery, which includes each event he played in the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 seasons. What I found was that Furyk had averaged +9.25 points above his salary-based expectations and met those expectations in 68.6 percent of his 35 events played. Next, I looked at the 10 events he has played in the 2015-2016 season (since returning from injury), and the results are far from those of his past. In fact, he has averaged -6.34 points below his salary-based expectations and met the expectations in only four of the ten events.
To be fair, his shaky month of May is playing a significant role in those results. I decided to take a look at his seven events since May in which he made every cut, and I found that he still yields a slightly-negative Plus/Minus of -0.89. All of this is done with a low sample size, but he still hasn’t done much outside of his performance at the U.S. Open to show that he is back to being an above-average fantasy option. I think that I will be backing away from Jimmy in cash games but still including him in my tournament lineups with the hope to have him on my roster when he fully returns to his +9.25 Plus/Minus ways of the past.
Did I just waste three paragraphs on Furyk? You are d*mn right I did.
$7,000 – $8,900
Francesco Molinari ($8,900) finished 22nd at last week’s PGA Championship and is coming into this event having made the cut in five consecutive tournaments. He is coming into this event in incredible recent form, as shown in his Recent Adj Rd Score of 67.7 — the best of any player priced below $9,000. Through his past four events, he has hit 71.2 percent GIR and 70.1 percent of his fairways in regulation. Additionally, he has averaged 14.5 Adj Birdies per tournament, which is more impressive when one considers that two of his last four events were major championships. He played in this event last year and finished 25th despite averaging 30.5 PPR, which is 0.8 PPR more than his long-term average.
Russel Knox ($8,600) is an intriguing play despite his one-week +$1,100 Salary Change. Knox’s LT DD of 282.6 yards shouldn’t hurt him at TPC River Highlands. He leads the PGA Tour in GIR from 200-plus yards this season (59.63 percent), so he can still take advantage of some of the longer holes the course has to offer. His 29.7 average LT PPR comes along with a 37 percent Dud rating on the year, so you may want to look elsewhere in cash games. In his four starts at this event, he missed the cut once and withdrew last year. However, his six-straight made cuts, which include three major championships, warrant tournament consideration.
If Watson is the king of course history this week, then Ryan Moore ($7,800) is the prince. Excluding players with only one recent appearance at this event, Moore’s 68.9 Course Adj Rd Score is the second-highest in the field. He missed the cut in 2008 but made the cut in each of his next six appearances as well as finishing within the top 15 on five of those occasions. His last three events have been major championships — the U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship — and he made the cut in all three. He is not long off of the tee, but he gets it done by hitting 68.5 percent of his fairways and averaging only 28.8 PPR (through the last 75 weeks).
$5,000 – $6,900
Aaron Baddeley ($6,900) has been a birdie-making machine of late. He has averaged 17.8 Adj Birdies per tournament through his last four events. He made the cut at last week’s PGA Championship, and he won the Barbasol Championship the week before. He is only $100 more expensive than he was at last week’s major championship, and this field is significantly weaker than the one he faced last week. Still, his flat iron hasn’t done him any favors recently, as he has averaged 29.9 PPR through his last four tournaments. Although he has been putting like his last name was Bradley or Glover, he has hit 76.4 percent GIR and 63.1 percent of his fairways through that span of time. If his putting can come back toward his 28.1 LT PPR, then he should be making plenty of birdies at TPC River Highlands this week.
Jason Kokrak ($6,400) is another player who has struggled on the greens lately, as he has averaged 30.5 PPR through his last two events. His LT DD of 306.4 yards places him firmly on my tournament radar this week, but his LT DA of 56.5 percent places him light years away from my list of cash-game targets. Although he has been putting terribly, he averaged 14 Adj Birdies Per Tournament through his last two tournaments. His ability to make birdies can be attributed to his recent-form GIR of 74.3 percent. He is a bad putter who hits the ball a long way and has been finding a large percentage of his greens lately. Sign him up for some GPP consideration this week.
Bubba Golf
And now I leave you, but not before including a random golf video. This week, we have Bubba hitting spectacular shots at last year’s Travelers Championship. Bubba hits drivers when he shouldn’t hit drivers. That makes him very fun to watch, unless you are sweating him as he floats around the cut line Friday afternoon. Enjoy!
Good Luck!
