The Weeklong Hangover
Welcome to the hangover that is the week after a PGA Major event. After watching a star-studded field at Oakmont, we now will see a Quicken Loans National without any of the ‘Big 3’ . . . ahem, I mean the ‘Big 4.’ Dustin Johnson has earned the right to be included in that group after winning the US Open, conquering his Major demons, and navigating the USGA’s handling of a penalty situation.
The Quicken Loans National — it’s a big week for Dan Gilbert, by the way — takes place in Bethesda, Maryland, at the Congressional Country Club. It was previously called the AT&T National and ran up until 2014. We had no tournament last year at Congressional, which is notable for one big reason: Sample size. PGA DFS at DraftKings has been around for only a short time, and while for most tournaments we typically have two years’ worth of data for the Quicken Loans National we have only one year. Thus, the confidence we have in the data is less than usual.
However, we will still go through our typical process to find the most important PGA DFS stats this week. We will look at four important metrics — Adjusted Round Score, Greens in Regulation, Driving Distance, and Driving Accuracy — and see which of them had the strongest correlation with golfer success back in 2014. But, first, let’s establish our baseline, using our free Trends tool.
At least $9,000: -16.67
$7,000 to $8,900: -5.66
No more than $6,900: -9.09
As you can see, we have highly negative Plus/Minus values across the board. Of course, because we established a baseline, we know that the depressed values aren’t worrisome, since everyone has historically failed to meet salary-based expectations.
Plus/Minus, Adj Rd Score, GIR, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
The 2016 Quicken Loans National
The following tables show how golfers for each salary tier have performed when above Tour-average in the four key metrics listed above. The first table is conditionally formatted together. The second is formatted by tier.
Adjusted Round Score: The top golfers in 2014 really struggled in this tournament, as shown by their overall Plus/Minus of -16.67. Justin Rose, priced at $10,100 that year, won the tournament and posted a week-high 99.0 DraftKings points. However, the other top golfers — headlined by Jordan Spieth and Jason Day — all struggled mightily: No golfer in this range other than Rose managed a score higher than 64.0 DK points. What does this mean?
I believe in a stars-and-scrubs lineup approach. However, it’s important to note the overall field strength of each tournament. Golfers are priced largely according to their Vegas odds to win the tournament. As a result, bad golfers — as shown by poor Adj Rd Scores — could be priced very high for a week if the rest of the field, relatively, is poor. In such a scenario, a golfer priced at $10,000 isn’t necessarily great. Perhaps a stars-and-scrubs lineup approach is a bit riskier in weaker-field tournaments, and the Quicken Loans National is such a tournament.
Greens in Regulation: Overall, this tournament (based on the 2014 data) looks to be similar to Oakmont last week: Accuracy and hitting greens is critical. GIR was the most positive statistic for each tier of golfer, and that’s especially true for Recent GIR. Weight this metric heavily across the board.
Driving Distance: Distance, as was also the case with Oakmont, doesn’t seem to be very important here, perhaps because of the correlations between GIR and DD. Distance and accuracy are very often negatively correlated. Golfers with distance typically aren’t accurate, and vice versa, especially less-talented golfers. Distance may be important this week generally, but because the field is weaker and we’ll likely have to choose between distance and accuracy, we should deprioritize distance.
Driving Accuracy: DA is strongly correlated with golfer success in every range except the lower-tier of golfers. My theory is that in this tournament presents us with an extreme example of the dilemma mentioned above: Golfers priced below $7,000 — especially in a tournament like this — typically aren’t great in several categories. If they were, they wouldn’t be priced below $7,000. As a result, you’ll likely need to make concessions when picking these players. While GIR and DA are typically related, perhaps that diverges a bit at this course.
Good luck this week!
