This week we stay in Florida as the PGA Tour heads to Orlando to play in the Arnold Palmer Invitation at Bay Hill Club and Lodge. This tournament is always a lock to bring out a strong field and this year is no different.

When golf season hits New England, my friends and I obsess over the game. It is the only thing we talk about and some years back we would often bounce the idea off one another of moving to Florida and attending a PGA school. Only one of us ended up packing up and heading down there. He has spent the past few years enjoying the Florida sunshine while working at Bay Hill, as well as working his handicap into the low single digits. Meanwhile, I still live just north of Boston, work from home, and suck at golf. Okay, enough about my awesome life decisions, let’s get into it.

Course History

Same story as last week – here are the top-25 finishers at the API for the past five years. This week, I also included how many strokes back each golfer finished from the lead.

True to form, here are the players that have finished in the top 25 in at least three of the past five years. I have not included players outside of the current field – sorry, Tiger.

You will hear different opinions on whether or not course history matters (it was discussed in detail on last night’s PGA podcast, by the way). I don’t think I have offered my take on that, so buckle up because here comes a room temperature one. Yes, it matters, but it may not be in the way that you think it does. This will probably be dependent on your style of play, but if you also live that Ricky Bobby life than I think you’ll pick up what I am putting down.

One could easily preface the course history question with a preceding statement: Some people think there is merit in weighing course history, but does course history really matter? My answer to a question like that will always be, of course it does. If you asked me does course history really serve as a predictive measure, you may get a different answer, but if you walked up to me and asked, “Jon, some people think the color of a player’s pants matters, but other people think it doesn’t at all. What do you think?” I would also answer that question – yes, it matters.

If other people think there is merit in something, it is important to me. If something is being weighed by the public or by my opponents then it is useful, specifically to the attempt at predicting ownership. If you don’t think that it assists the effort of predicting an outcome then it may matter even more, because in that case, not only do we have another measure of where ownership may go, but we have people making decisions based on trivial information. If something matters to you, it matters to me.

I use it in both ways – if I am making a cash game lineup and I am stuck between Ian Poulter and another player who has not played at Bay Hill in the past, I am probably going to lean towards Ian. However, if I am stuck between any player and Matt Every, than I am going to lean away from Matt Every due to what I perceive being an ownership percentage that far outweighs his value.

Does course history matter? I suppose I haven’t truly answered the question, but that is because I don’t think the question needs an answer. I think a better question would be: is course history useful? That answer is yes; it just needs to be used correctly.

Recent Adjusted Round Score

Once you check out the Player Models you are going to notice a ton of data. If you have any experience in PGA DFS then you are also going to notice a ton of data that is unique to FantasyLabs. One of the many things that I am excited about is the statistic Adjusted Round Score (AdjRd). Adjusted Round Score is the average adjusted strokes per round with adjustments being made to account for the difficulty of the course and the strength of the field. Another thing I am super excited about is all of the recent statistics that we have to offer. These offer a look at how a golfer has performed over a running six-week period. This is something that was a real pain in the ass to try and put together and is now sitting at our fingertips. I really can’t explain how excited I am about that.

One of the things that I look for in any DFS sport is whether or not a statistic plays a part in the assigning of a player’s salary. If it does, than I am not overly interested in it; instead, I am looking for statistics that are not already weighed into a player’s pricing. Finding those stats will help to lead us towards the path of value. For example, if a player’s rank in Stroked Gained: Putting moved in perfect correlation with a player’s salary rank, than there would be no need to pay any real attention to that statistic. You could replace SG:P as a measure of predicting performance with simply looking at who was more expensive. That is not something for which I would find any use.

The DraftKings’ salaries are very closely correlated with the Vegas odds to win. It is not perfectly correlated, so at times there can still be a value in those regards, but I am looking for something that isn’t factored as much, or at all, into a player’s pricing. This week, I ranked each golfer by salary, odds to win, and Recent Adjusted Round Score. Then, I took a look at the difference between each player’s salary rank and odds rank. I did the same for salary rank and Recent Adjusted Round Score rank. As expected, there is a much tighter correlation between salary and odds to win than there is between salary and Recent Adjusted Round Score. To give you a small picture of the difference, here are the top 15 players in difference between salary rank and odds to win.

As you can see, there is still some perceived value there. The range of outcomes for this was 28 to -24, leaving us with 52 different outcomes. Next, take a look at the top-15 players in difference between salary and Recent Adjusted Round Score.

There is a much greater range when looking at this. The range of outcomes in this example was 61 to -82, leaving us with 143 different outcomes. Compare that with the 52 different outcomes when comparing odds to win, and we can see that Recent Adjusted Round Score is weighed much lighter into a player’s salary. In fact, Recent AdjRd is a statistic unique to FantasyLabs and is almost certainly not factored into the pricing of the players. Knowing this allows us to identify value as well as players we may want to avoid when combing through the data found in the Player Models. Also, weighing things like Vegas odds less than the field when it may be overvalued can present itself as an edge as well. I know that Recent Adjusted Round is a slider that will be getting some of my attention this week.

Looking for a Bump in Recent Form

Here is one of the places that PGA separates itself from most other sports. When looking at sports like NFL or MLB – both event-based sports (we’re waiting on events like touchdowns and home runs) – it makes sense to target players who are on a cold streak. Those player’s salaries have probably gone down along with their ownership, and we can expect them to ascend to their median. Also, you might want to avoid a player who has been on a hot streak of late because, unless they are Doug Baldwin, we can reasonably expect them to regress to their median.

Throw those two trains of thought out of the window when it comes to PGA. Recent play means much more than in other sports and with some of these new statistics available at FantasyLabs, we can easily take a look at recent form. I was building a model and heavily weighing some of the recent form statistics when I became curious at how players have performed when their recent form exceeds their long-term form. Oh, you are curious as well. Cool, well let’s take a trip to the Trends tool where we can quickly take a look at that.

Adjusted Round Score is a great measure of a golfers overall game, so let’s continue to focus on that statistic. Open the Trends tool and follow along.

Trend: Adjusted Round Score – Long-term less than 60% – Recent form over 60%

Step 1: Long Term Form Filters > Long Term Adj. Round % > Set to “0 to 59.9”

Now, what we have here is all golfers who have been below 60% in Long-Term Adjusted Round Score. We can see by referencing the top right corner that we have a sample size of 6,480 and a Plus/Minus of -0.64. Not too good, but we aren’t done yet, as we want to look at players who have seen a bump in this statistic. Select “OK” and get ready to add the next filter.

Step 2: Recent Form Filters > Recent Adj. Round % > Set to “60 to 99.7”

Finally, we have a look at players who have been below 60% Adjusted Round Score over their past 75 weeks, but are over 60% over the past six weeks. We still have a respectable sample size of 1,405 and a nice Plus/Minus of +2.26. Select “OK” and you should be left with this.

Notice the “Current Matches” tab located near the bottom of the screen. This will show us all current matches for this upcoming tournament. Go ahead and select that to bring up this screen.

If you scroll down you will see the rest of the 13 current matches for this trend. Alright, we wanted an answer and now we have it. I did this same trend at a few different percentages and the Plus/Minus’ fluctuate, but the positive trend holds true. For example, if you used 70% as the marker, you would find the count drop to 1,228 and Plus/Minus at +1.24. PGA is very much a sport of its own and although we may have been taught to ignore the hot-hand fallacy, we might want to keep that thought process on the shelf until MLB starts.

I feel like we have covered a lot and the crazy thing is that we have really only dug into one of the new statistics that we have to offer at FantasyLabs. I am not even close to being done digging around and familiarizing myself with all of this new data – I suggest that you do some digging yourself and see what profitable trends that you can come up with.

I am going to leave you guys the same way I did last week – with a clip from a previous Arnold Palmer Invitational. This may not be the craziest shot that you have ever seen, but Rory is 184 yards in and with a six iron picks this ball clean out of the bunker, which is something that my body/brain combo refuses to allow me to do. Good luck this weekend!