The 2017 U.S. Open is here, hosted this year at Erin Hills golf course in Erin, Wisconsin. The field is loaded, as 49 of the top-50 golfers in the world will tee up on Thursday. The lone exception is Ryan Moore, who withdrew with a shoulder injury, although Phil Mickelson is currently questionable to make it; he will reportedly try to make his tee time after his daughter’s graduation. Majors are always fun in daily fantasy golf, and there’s no shortage of big prizes in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs) on both DraftKings and FanDuel.
For more on Erin Hills, be sure to check out our U.S. Open Dashboard.
Let’s dive into the U.S. Open.
The Course: Erin Hills
The location of the U.S. Open changes on a yearly basis — unlike The Masters, for example, which is hosted at Augusta National every year — which means sometimes we have little data on the course. That’s the case this year: Erin Hills has hosted just two tournaments since opening in 2006: The U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship in 2008 and the U.S. Amateur Championship in 2011. Many of the players are seeing this course for the first time this week, and some of them are a little . . . shocked at a couple of the challenges.
The fairways are long and wide, but if a golfer misses them, they will be strictly penalized:
Speaking of long fairways, this course is most notable for its length: At 7,812 yards and a Par 72, it is one of the longest courses in the history of PGA major championships. There have been a couple courses in recent years that have been fairly long — Chambers Bay and Whistling Straits, for example — and the data is fairly clear: In comparison to Driving Distance (DD), other stats like Greens in Regulation (GIR), Driving Accuracy (DA), and Putts Per Round (PPR) matter significantly less this week (per our PGA Trends tool). Kelly McCann has recently written about long courses metrics, and he found that on those two courses specifically golfers with high percentile marks in DD led the field in DraftKings Plus/Minus. Our Player Models allow you to weight metrics as much as you want, and this week it’s probably wise to prioritize DD.
That said, we can’t ignore the other challenges Erin Hills brings: That fescue is a popular one, but the greens should also be challenging. Several of them have tricky elevation (be it high or low), and because there are very few trees on this course, wind could be a factor. The problem, however, is that there are really no perfect golfers. Distance is important, but missing the fairway and landing in the fescue is deadly. Not being able to hit the elevated greens in regulation will hurt as well. And, finally, good putters will almost certainly have an edge this week, as Colin Davy mentioned on this week’s Daily Fantasy Flex podcast.
So how many golfers can do all of those tasks well? Not many.
Let’s look at just this field. If we take every golfer’s GIR, DD, DA, and PPR marks and set them as percentile ranks in this specific field, we can create a four-way Venn diagram to find the guys who all hit a specific threshold. It’ll look like this:
Let’s set the threshold low and find the golfers this week — there are 156 in the field — with percentile scores of 50 or higher in each of the four categories. The list is quite small. In descending order of DraftKings salary, they are:
- Rory McIlroy
- Rickie Fowler
- Jon Rahm
- Sergio Garcia
- Justin Rose
- Brendan Steele
- Keegan Bradley
- Lucas Glover
- Sean O’Hair
- Ross Fisher
- Andrew Johnston
- Xander Schauffele
- Joel Stalter
- Jack Maguire
- Brice Garnett.
Some of those cheap guys have elevated numbers because of small samples, so take them with a grain of salt.
What happens if we set the threshold at the 55th percentile in each of the four categories? We have just five golfers left.
Courses that demand excellence in all four categories are challenging to predict, because there are only a handful of golfers who are that skilled and balanced. Take a look at the correlation numbers between each statistic this week:
There’s moderate correlation between golfers who hit greens and those who are accurate off the tee and putt well, but it’s slight. More importantly, there’s strong negative correlation between distance off the tee and other metrics. Again, distance is the No. 1 priority at Erin Hills, and that will likely mean that you’ll have to look hard at golfers who may have below-average marks in other areas. You have to give and take at this course.
The best golfers in the world — those in the middle of the Venn diagram — tend to stand out at the U.S. Open. That’s by design. The best golfers have historically won this event, no matter the course:
- 2016 at Oakmont Country Club: Dustin Johnson
- 2015 at Chambers Bay: Jordan Spieth
- 2014 at Pinehurst No. 2: Martin Kaymer
- 2013 at Merion Golf Club East: Justin Rose
- 2012 at Olympic Club Lake: Webb Simpson
- 2011 at Congressional Country Club: Rory McIlroy
Favor distance at Erin Hills, but also note that the assortment of different skills needed to compete here caters to the best players in the world, because of which it might be wise to go with a stars-and-scrubs approach.
Vegas Bargain Ratings and Lineup Optimization
I’ll keep this section short since I’ve already written an entire article about Vegas Bargain Ratings and have Part 2 coming this afternoon, but there are significant reasons to favor a stars-and-scrubs strategy. The top guys have so much win equity according to their Vegas implied odds that in order to maximize your chances of rostering the event winner it makes sense to cram in two studs and then take fliers elsewhere. It’s a risky strategy depending on just how low you go in the salary scale, but it’s important to remember that winning the DraftKings Millionaire Maker basically requires nailing the winner, who will most often be a high-priced stud.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you take Rory, DJ, and then four DraftKings golfers under $7,000. Let’s go with Marc Leishman, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Billy Horschel, and Ross Fisher, all of whom have implied odds to win between 0.8 and 1.2 percent, which are actually solid marks for guys close to the salary floor. If we add up the total implied odds of our six golfers, we get 23.6 percent odds of rostering the winner. Now let’s create a balanced roster with no guys under $7,000. Even if we still roster DJ and then surround him with five solid mid-tier options . . .
. . . the implied odds of rostering the winner are 21.7 percent. If we remove DJ to build an even more balanced lineup, the probability dips further. While it might feel as if creating a balanced lineup maximizes your odds of rostering the winner — I mean, is a guy named “Ross Fisher” going to win the U.S. Open? — those cheap guys give you access to two studs with unparalleled win equity. Put more simply: The difference between Fitzpatrick and Pieters (for instance) is less than the difference between DJ and Fowler, and much less than the difference between guys in Fowler’s range and someone like Branden Grace at $8,600 and 2.2 percent implied odds to win. Again, it’s not zero percent — don’t come swinging if Grace somehow wins this event — but we’re trying to optimize. Winning a million dollars is hard.
Anyway, read Part 2 of the VBR piece this afternoon; let’s talk specific golfers now.
The Golfers
The field is full of high-priced studs, and this week is unique in that there’s a fairly compelling case for each of the top options for the first time in a while: DJ is the best golfer when healthy, Spieth won the U.S. Open two years ago and appears to have his putter back, Rory fits this course perfectly given the four Par 5s, Jason Day is the world’s former No. 1 and seems to be on the up-swing again, Rickie has seven top-20 finishes over his last nine tournaments, and Sergio has averaged a ridiculous +25.64 DraftKings Plus/Minus over his last 10 tournaments (including a win at the Masters). And those are just the guys $10,000 and above.
Since all of these guys have compelling reasons to roster them, it makes sense to roster those with the lowest projected ownership rates. Unfortunately, the high-priced golfers typically have solid floors and ownership is fairly distributed: No player in this range is projected for lower than 13-16 percent ownership, and it’s only when we get to Brooks Koepka at $9,000 that we find someone projected for even ‘just’ nine to 12 percent. The ownership dynamic between the studs is still important, but it might be a solid strategy to take a stance on a couple of golfers in this range based on data and research and then to find contrarian plays lower in the salary tier.
The most mispriced golfer in this tier seems to be Rahm, who is only $10,300 and $10,400 on DraftKings and FanDuel. He has missed two cuts recently, but the rest of his 2017 results have been impeccable:
Rahm is already a top-three or -four golfer in the world at age 22, and yet he’s somehow priced $1,700 below DJ. He didn’t make it into the middle of the Venn diagram above, but he certainly has that type of game: He is long off the tee with a 305.7-yard Long-Term Driving Distance, and his 28.7 LT PPR shows that he is steady on the greens as well. The narrative is that he’s been disadvantaged this season because he’s playing on some of the PGA Tour courses for the first time, but that problem doesn’t exist this week: No one knows this course well. Rahm will likely be one of the chalkier players given his surprising pricing, but he also has a legitimate shot at winning.
I could justify talking about any of these high-priced guys, but Rory stands out. He’s in the middle of the Venn diagram above, as he’s elite in pretty much every golfing category:
And notice the number in the final column: Over the last year, he has averaged -7.9 adjusted strokes on Par 5s; that is easily the best mark in the field. Daily fantasy golf, and especially a top-heavy tournament like the Milly Maker, favors players like Rory who can string together birdies. Erin Hills is notoriously long with four Par 5s. Take a look at this monster:
And that’s not even the longest hole on the course; all four Par 5s play over 600 yards. The Erin Hills website put it right: Fortune favors the bold. Rory is definitely bold, and while this course is likely to be tough for the field Rory is about as close to a great ‘fit’ as exists.
Lower in salary, Adam Scott is somehow sitting at just $8,800 this week — a full $3,200 less than DJ. He’s coming off solid showings at The Masters and THE PLAYERS, finishing ninth and sixth. He has the distance for this course — his 304.1-yard LT DD is a top-15 mark in the field — and his typical weakness, putting, has actually been solid of late: He’s been under 30 PPR in each of his last four tournaments. He’s the top player in The Sports Geek’s Player Model, and he leads all golfers with 12 DraftKings Pro Trends. He’s one of the best golfers in the world, and yet he’s priced as a mid-tier option. Unfortunately, and this is very important, everyone knows he’s cheap. He’s an elite play in cash games given his low price tag and the salary flexibility he provides, but he’s likely to have negative expected value in large-field tournaments like the Milly Maker. Golf is a high-variance sport; even DJ and Rahm missed the cut in the same week a couple tournaments ago — at high ownership (per our DFS Ownership Dashboard):
It’s arguable that any golfer likely to exceed 30 percent ownership in GPPs should be faded, and Scott could cross that threshold this week.
Majors typically have softer pricing than lesser events, and because of the loaded field it’s natural that some good golfers have low salaries. Take Francesco Molinari: On last week’s Flex pod, Colin brought the #hottaek fire and proclaimed that Molinari is currently a top-five golfer in the world. If that’s true — and his data and play suggest he’s really good — he’s grossly mispriced this week at just $7,000 on DraftKings. There are other examples of underpriced golfers I could cover — be sure to research for yourself with the FantasyLabs Tools! — but instead of going on and on I want to finish with a couple of players I think will have relatively low ownership rates.
There are some talented golfers in the high $6,000s and low $7,000s like Molinari and Byeong-Hun An who will likely be chalky. Since it’s tough to be contrarian near the top of the salary scale, one potential strategy for large-field GPPs is to pivot away from the value chalk, whether that’s An or even Scott in the $8,000 range. Take a look at someone like Bernd Wiesberger, who is $7,100 on DraftKings and projected for five to eight percent ownership. He’s been solid of late . . .
. . . and seems to fit Erin Hills well. His LT DD is fine at 291.4 yards, and he’s improved upon it over his last three tournaments with a Recent (Rec) DD of 302.8 yards. Additionally, his 74.2 Rec DA is one of the best in the field. He doesn’t fit into the Venn diagram from a long-term perspective, but he might in the short term. He can attack fairways, and he should be good at avoiding the penalizing fescue. Over the last year, Wiesberger has averaged 78.4 DraftKings points per tournament — more than Rory, Day, and DJ have:
Or perhaps look at Pat Perez, who ranks second in the field (behind Alexander Levy) with a past-year DraftKings Plus/Minus of +21.9. He is criminally underpriced at $6,600, and he’s currently projected for a minuscule two to four percent ownership.
Conclusion
This breakdown is less about who and more about how to play. It’s hard to differentiate lineups at the top. Instead, you’ll likely have to take a stand on the high-priced studs and then find contrarian players with lower salaries. I’ve identified a couple here, but you should dive into the Player Models for yourself and search for those valuable sleepers with GPP-winning upside.
And, of course, please join us at 8 pm ET for the FREE PGA live show on our Premium Content Portal, where I’ll be joined by Peter Jennings (CSURAM88), Colin, and Sean Valukis to talk about weather, line movement, and the players popping in the Player Models. We’ll also answer your questions live. See you then, and good luck in the U.S. Open!
