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: Ouch! Only one of five players made the cut.
- Ryan Palmer: MC, 24.5 DraftKings points, 4.90 percent average ownership
- Jason Kokrak: MC, 31.0 DraftKings points, 9.99 percent avg ownership
- Rory Sabbatini: T23, 96.5 DraftKings points, 1.79 percent avg ownership
- Scott Piercy: DNP, 1.20 percent avg ownership
- Rick Lamb: MC, 20.0 DraftKings points, 1.13 percent avg ownership
It was a rough week for Five Under Five, but Rory Sabbatini was an absolute gem.
Good news: There’s no cut this week, and in this small field we should be able to play some really good golfers at low ownership. In fact, finding the low-owned golfers (that play well) will be essential for those hoping to take down a large-field guaranteed prize pool (GPP) this week since everyone will get 6/6 through Sunday.
I Call Him Frankie
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.
Francesco Molinari ranks 17th in this elite field with his 68.8 LT Adj Rd Score, and he is second overall with his 68.9 LT Driving Accuracy (DA) percentage. Molinari has not played well lately — he’s missed two of his last three cuts — and has seen his Recent Adj Rd Score climb to 70.3. He’s also finished 31st or worse in this tournament for the past four years, which I think will help to suppress his ownership this week. Molinari is one of the better ball-strikers in the field, and I look for him to regain some form here at Firestone.
When In Doubt Go Euro
Matthew Fitzpatrick enters this week with a 69.8 LT Adj Rd Score, 67.5 LT Greens In Regulation (GIR) percentage, and 63.8 LT DA percentage. In normal weeks, those numbers would attract a good amount of attention, but this week I expect Fitzpatrick to go completely overlooked. Fitzpatrick’s recent form is not good (71.1 Recent Adj Rd Score), but Jhonattan Vegas had missed five straight cuts before winning last week.
Eat Italian
Sticking with the Euro theme, Fabrizio Zanotti is another very good golfer that will likely go completely overlooked this week. Zanotti has an elite LT DA percentage (67.9), and he is tied for ninth in the field with his 69.3 LT GIR percentage. Zanotti finished 26th when he last played this event in 2014.
One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
What do Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama, Charley Hoffman, Matt Kuchar, and Andres Romero have in common? They all are ranked in the top-five of Recent Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Bird Avg) this week. Romero checks in with a robust 17.0 Recent Adj Bird Avg, and he recently won the BMW International Open.
From Down Undah
As discussed in both the PGA Course Breakdown and Bryan Mears’ Building An Optimal Model piece this week, LT Adjusted Eagles Per Tournament (Adj Eagle Avg) has had an interesting and positive effect on golfers here at Firestone. Australia’s Scott Hend currently ranks fifth in LT Adj Eagle Avg and inside the top-20 for LT Adj Bird Avg (13.7) this week also.
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Good luck, and be sure to do your own PGA research with the FantasyLabs Tools and watch our PGA videos on our Premium Content Portal.
