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: Only two of five players made the cut and averaged 54.75 DraftKings points. It was the worst week in Five Under Five‘s brief history.
- Rafael Cabrera-Bello: MC, 9.0 DraftKings points, 2.36 percent average ownership
- Rory Sabbatini: MC, 22.0 DraftKings points, 2.57 percent avg ownership
- Russell Knox: MC, 13.5 DraftKings points, 0.97 percent avg ownership
- Kyle Stanley: T25, 71.5 DraftKings points, 1.61 percent avg ownership
- Morgan Hoffmann: T67, 38.0 DraftKings points, 0.29 percent avg ownership
Although Hoffmann made the cut at just 0.29 percent ownership, his 38.0 DraftKings points didn’t help lineups much. Stanley was the only good play of the bunch with his T25 finish and 71.5 DraftKings points at less that two percent ownership.
With 96 players in this week’s field, it’s very possible nearly 80 percent (or more) of golfers will make the cut; being on the right low-owned plays this week is more crucial than ever.
Woody
Last week, Gary Woodland was owned at an average of 18.69 percent and was top-seven chalk in the big $888 Mega 8’s Championship at 23.68 percent. Woodland promptly missed the cut and left a bad taste in a lot of daily fantasy sports players’ mouths and got a $1,000 salary increase on top of that. For those reasons you should jump right on him again. Woodland’s stellar 68.6 Course Adjusted Round Score ranks seventh among players with five or more starts at TPC Boston, and he has two top-15 finishes here in the last two years. Gary’s 315.2-yard Recent Driving Distance (DD) ranks seventh, and he is tied for 26th in the field with his 65.6 Recent Greens In Regulation (GIR) percentage. Prior to last week’s missed cut, Woodland had played the weekend in eight straight events.
His Name Is Not Charles
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.
Nobody is talking about Charl Schwartzel, who is tied for 19th in the field with his 69.0 LT Adj Rd Score this week. Charl also stands out in our LT Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Bird Avg) metric: He is tied for 12th overall with his 14.0 average. As an added bonus: Per our PGA Trends tool, when Schwartzel has previously had a Round 1 tee time between 8:00 and 8:59 am, he has produced a +11.42 Plus/Minus with 76.9 percent Consistency in 13 starts. Charl tees off at 8:39 am on Friday.
Not Dustin
Zach Johnson was owned at an average of 4.16 percent last week when he missed the cut. Johnson has been incredibly shaky this season, but prior to last week’s missed cut he had two top-five finishes in a stretch of four tournaments, including a runner-up at the Bridgestone Invitational; he is tied for 12th in the field with his 68.2 Recent Adjusted Round Score. Johnson is clearly not a bomber, and TPC Boston is known as a bomber’s course, which should help to suppress his ownership this week. That said, Johnson’s course history at this track is excellent, as I noted in this week’s PGA Course Breakdown:
Johnson has averaged a healthy 69.0 DraftKings PPT with a +12.55 Plus/Minus, 100 percent Consistency Rating, and 7.3 percent ownership in the three tournaments at TPC Boston in our database. Per our new and improved PGA Models, he ranks fourth with his 67.1 LT DA percentage, and he is tied for 12th in the field with his 68.2 Recent Adj Rd Score.
Dr. Watson
Speaking of shaky seasons, Bubba Watson has had an incredibly shaky one. That said, Watson has looked like he is turning things around recently. In fact, Bubba is tied for 23rd in the field with his 68.8 Recent Adj Rd Score, thanks in part to his 10th-place finish at the Northern Trust last week. Now the bad: Watson’s course history at TPC Boston is not great; he’s missed two cuts here in the last five years and hasn’t finished higher than 29th during that time. Watson’s 70.1 Course Adj Rd Score is the eighth-worst score in the field among players with at least five starts here.
Spiderman
This is weird to write, but Camilo Villegas has the ninth-highest DraftKings points per tournament average (75.3) in the field over the past month. A string of five made cuts, including two top-20 finishes in that time, has improved Villegas’ Recent Adj Rd Score to 69.3; his 15.7 Recent Adj Bird Avg ranks ninth overall this week. Camilo has played well enough at TPC Boston: Among golfers with at least four starts here, he is tied for 14th with his 69.3 Course Adj Rd Score.
