The PGA Breakdown offers data-driven analysis for each week’s slate, using the FantasyLabs Tools and metrics to highlight notable golfers.
The fourth and final major of the year, the PGA Championship, is next week in Charlotte, North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean the stars are resting up in preparation. No, the field is loaded this week at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio. Let’s jump in.
The Course
The WGC-Bridgestone Invitational is played at Firestone Country Club’s South Course; our own Kelly McCann broke it down in depth, but I’ll briefly touch on the major items before moving onto the players. Firestone plays long: It is a Par 70 course distanced at 7,400 yards. That said, it also has tight holes, so you can’t just load up on bombers. The course is designed to highlight the best players in the world, and it has: Per Kelly’s course breakdown, “Shane Lowry (who won in 2015) and Hunter Mahan (who won in 2010) are the only two players who have won at Firestone in the past 22 years without also having won a major.” Dustin Johnson is the reigning champion at 274 strokes.
I built a Firestone-specific model this week and detailed the importance of each metric within Models in a piece earlier today. None of the major player-type metrics — Long-Term Driving Distance, LT Driving Accuracy, and LT GIR, for example — stood out historically. In fact, all three of those metrics backtested negatively compared to the baseline golfer. Recent form and the ability to score — I discussed the oddity and importance of eagles within DFS in the piece — are more important than usual, but honestly, it is a hard week to predict golf. The field is loaded but smaller than usual and there is no cut on Friday.
The Studs
Again, DJ is the reigning champion here and still the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer, but it is actually last week’s British Open winner, Jordan Spieth, who has the highest DraftKings salary at $12,000 and odds to win at 11.8 percent currently. Spieth has won the last two events he has played and essentially laps the field with his impressive 66.3 Recent Adjusted Round score. He’s increased his LT Birdie percentage up to 16.1, and he has good history here at Firestone, placing in the top-10 each of the last two years, including a third-place finish in 2016. For all those reasons, he should be very chalky: He’s currently projected for 17-20 percent ownership on DraftKings.
On that note, we may not have any player exceed 30-plus percent ownership this week. In a loaded field, and especially one without a cut, ownership will likely get distributed. Johnson is the player with the highest projected range at 26-30 percent currently, and it is unlikely we see someone with around 40 percent ownership like we did with Rickie Fowler in the British Open. It will still be important to factor in ownership among the studs this week, but there’s no big edge; no golfer above $9,000 will likely be in single-digit ownership.
That said, there will be some in the lower double-digits, and two guys that stand out in that regard are Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka. The former has disappointed this season and currently owns a high 70.0 Recent Adjusted Round score, but he showed signs of life at the British, posting a Sunday round of 68 to get up to fourth. He averaged an impressive 26 Putts Per Round (PPR) in that tournament, although he will have to adjust to a new caddie this week after nine years with J.P. Fitzgerald. That’s likely a negative factor for Rory, but it’s also a highly-publicized one; he will likely carry lower ownership than other high-priced studs. Brooks is also projected in the lower 13-16 percent ownership range, and he’s on a tear of amazing golf, averaging a +14.34 Plus/Minus on 70 percent Consistency over his last 10 events:
He has a nice 67.6 Recent Adjusted Round score and is coming off a sixth-place finish at the British and his first major win at the U.S. Open. He came in sixth in his only visit here in 2015, and he’s shown the pedigree to compete with the big boys of late. He owns a high 14.7 LT Adjusted Birdies mark and has one of the highest Adjusted Round differential percentages (LT Adj Rd minus Recent Adj Rd) of the week at 23 percent, which highlights his excellent current form. Again, no one in this tier is going to be incredibly low-owned, but Rory and Brooks should be reasonable and always have a shot of winning.
Pro Subscribers can review ownership trends via our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after lineups lock.
The Value Plays
It’s a loaded field, which means that Adam Scott ($8,800) and Paul Casey ($9,000) are underpriced and likely to be incredibly chalky. Scott has two top-10 finishes over his last three trips here; his 68.4 Course Adj Rd score is the third-best mark among golfers with more than one visit. What Scott has going for him is that he’s solid in just about every metric: He leads the entire field with 13 DraftKings Pro Trends, and most of those are because of above-average marks in important, predictive metrics like LT Adj Rd, LT Birdies, and Recent Scrambling. He doesn’t have the best metric in any single category, but he has one of the best overall profiles and thus rates as one of the best golfers in most of our Pro Models.
Casey has been arguably the most valuable PGA DFS asset this season: He’s hit salary-based expectations 94 percent of the time over the past year, and he’s averaged a ridiculous +13.85 Plus/Minus on 100 percent Consistency over his last 10 tournaments.
In the PGA Flex podcast, we discussed the importance of scrambling this week, and Casey might be the best in the world in that regard: His LT Scrambling percentage of 62.9 is tops in this loaded field. He’s been even better in the short term with a Recent Scrambling percentage of 65.8, and he’s posted an impressive 67.8 Recent Adj Rd score over his last two events. He’s yet to break into the top-15 here at Firestone, but he has gotten progressively better in each of his last four trips, culminating in an Adj Rd score of 68.4 last year. He’s definitely mispriced, even given his long-term marks: He has a superior LT Adj Rd score (68.4) than even Rickie Fowler (68.5), who is priced up at $10,600 on DraftKings. As usual, Casey should be the chalky mid-tier option of the week.
Charley Hoffman lost last week in a playoff with Jhonattan Vegas but still had an impressive weekend, going 68 or lower in all four rounds at the RBC Canadian Open. He’s averaging a +20.43 Plus/Minus on 80 percent Consistency over his last 10 contests, and he’s somehow priced down at just $7,400 this week. Last week, for reference, he was the third-highest salaried golfer at $10,300; a guy like Gary Woodland was $7,900. This week, Woodland is actually the higher-priced option at $7,500 despite finishing worse last week and having inferior course history to Hoffman. Charley is playing great golf right now, as evidenced by his 68.0 Recent Adj Rd score and 18.5 Recent Birdies average. He has a Recent Scrambling percentage of 69.2, which could come in handy at Firestone. Again, I would be surprised if any golfer exceeds 30 percent ownership — even DJ or Spieth — but Hoffman will likely be the chalkiest value golfer of the week.
The Bump and Run
Choke up and take a narrow stance.
Xander Schauffele: The 23-year-old is coming off a 20th-place finish at the British Open and win at the Greenbrier Classic. He has a 70.2 LT Adj Rd score, but that should go down as he keeps putting up good scores. He has a 68.2 Recent Adj Rd score and has averaged a +13.26 Plus/Minus on 80 percent Consistency over his last 10 events. Given his pricing at $7,300 and proximity to Hoffman, he should see single-digit ownership.
Daniel Berger: He hasn’t played Firestone before, but he’s in good recent form, posting two top-five finishes over his last three events. His 68.0 Recent Adj Rd score is the fifth-best mark in the field, and his 16.3 Recent Birdies average is top-10. He’s at an odd price point as well at $8,300 on DraftKings and could be a key figure in a contrarian roster construction strategy.
Andy Sullivan: If you want to dip a little deeper into the bargain bin, it’s hard to discount this production . . .
Of course, that was on the Euro Tour, but his 69.7 Recent Adj Rd score is impressive nonetheless. But most importantly, he’s projected for just two to four percent ownership on DraftKings. It will be difficult to find leverage plays this weekend, and Sullivan could certainly surprise.
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Good luck this week!
