Last week, I looked at Masters statistics through the lens of Plus/Minus. I thought this was a particularly useful exercise because, although we have a century’s worth of data on Augusta National and how the Masters plays, we only have a couple years of Plus/Minus data, or data on how statistics are either priced in or not priced into player salaries.
For example, we can know that Driving Distance and Greens in Regulation (GIR) are important stats at Augusta National – as shown in a variety of studies, including at 538 – but those findings aren’t really useful to us until we salary adjust them. Like Vegas odds (which have a nearly perfect correlation every week with pricing), if GIR data was perfectly priced into salaries, it wouldn’t help us that much. Focusing on that particular stat wouldn’t be very useful, as you can’t find any value, since you’d have to pay the relative amount to get up to a golfer with a better GIR number.
However, stats (outside of Vegas) rarely have perfect correlations, and especially since we’re looking at a variety of them every week for tournaments. Because of this, I believe it was useful and will continue to be to look at the Plus/Minus’ – both long term and short term – of four important stats for each salary tier on DK: Adjusted Round Score, Greens in Regulation (GIR), Driving Distance (DD), and Driving Accuracy (DA). Last week for Augusta, we found some value in the middle two categories – let’s see what we can find for the RBC Heritage in South Carolina this week.
The following table is the Plus/Minus of each salary tier for players who were tour average or better in these four categories:
Now let’s go through each statistic individually and see what we can learn.
Adjusted Round Score: Interestingly, the high-priced golfers in the last two years were all better than tour average with regards to both long-term and recent adjusted round scores. For the middle tier, we saw a negligible bump for players better than tour average, although I think the most interesting part of that data is how negative those middle golfers were independent of any other filters. Finally, the lower tier of golfers who were above tour average were incredible values the last two years at this tournament.
GIR: Like at the Masters, hitting greens (and not water, sorry Jordan) seems to be really important at this week’s RBC Heritage. The best Plus/Minus – by far, too – was with the elite golfers who have excelled at hitting greens recently. However, all tiers of golfers saw a Plus/Minus boost when they were above tour average in GIR either in the long term or recently.
Driving Distance: Unlike the Masters, driving distance seems to be not important at all here. Every single tier saw negative Plus/Minus movement if they were above tour average in long-term or recent driving distance. This is very interesting actually, as it even suggests that being a long golfer actually hurts you at this course. In this article, I’m looking for stats to focus on more than the others, but this is a case where I also want to focus on driving distance – I want to fade long golfers this week.
Driving Accuracy: Instead of distance, being accurate off the tee has been really important the last couple of years at the RBC Heritage. Focusing on this category along with shorter drivers could be a really nice edge this week when finding your values.
Good luck this week!
