FantasyLabs is a data company. With our free Trends tool and Player Models, you can leverage our advanced statistics and premium exclusive metrics to identify players to use in your daily fantasy sports lineups.
Each week, our Data Dive articles use 10 of these metrics to highlight notable players for the week’s PGA DFS slate.
For this special US Open week, we are going to put out three separate Data Dives, one for each salary tier. Today’s will focus on players $6,900 and lower (the “value plays”), Part 2 will be golfers priced between $7,000 and $8,900, and Part 3 on Wednesday will be golfers priced $9,000 and higher.
Long-Term Stats
Adjusted Round Score: 69.2, Kevin Na
Adjusted Round Score (Adj Rd Score) is our best all-in-one statistical proxy for a golfer’s talent. You can see this very easily by sorting in our Player Models by Long-Term Adj Rd Score: The top three golfers are Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth. Of golfers under $7,000, Na has the best score, which suggests that he is A) probably a little underpriced and/or B) a really nice value play to pair with the top golfers.
Greens in Regulation: 73.6%, Rafael Cabrera-Bello
Oakmont is a very difficult course and really favors ball-strikers and accurate players. That describes Cabrera-Bello perfectly. He not only has the best Long-Term GIR of any golfer under $7,000. He actually boasts the second-best GIR mark of the entire field, behind only $9,100 Henrik Stenson. If you’re a believer in GIR this week, Cabrera-Bello is a building block for your lineups.
Driving Distance: 315.5 yds, Kevin Tway
On the other hand, Driving Distance shows to be a negative for golfers at Oakmont. Lower-priced golfers tend to be either distance guys or ball-strikers — as opposed to the elite golfers who can be both — and distance has shown to be harmful this week, especially if there’s no accuracy with it. Tway is certainly long: He has the longest long-term distance mark of the field. Unfortunately, that won’t come in handy this week.
Adj Rd Score, GIR, Driving Distance, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
Birdies Per Tournament: 15.2, Patton Kizzire
Birdies statistics will likely be highly debated this week. On such a difficult course as Oakmont, where birdies are extremely hard to come by, what does that do to the importance of birdies? Does it diminish their importance or does it heighten the need for them? If you believe that birdies will be at a premium, then Kizzire will intrigue you at $6,600, as will Emiliano Grillo, who is priced at $6,900 and boasts a Birdies Per Tournament mark of 15.1.
Consistency: 85%, Scott Piercy
Piercy has missed only two cuts in his last 12 tournaments, an outstanding mark for a golfer priced below $7,000. He has also shown that he can deal with the pressure of a Major: He finished 29th at The Masters in April. Since then, Piercy has shot over par in only one Thursday/Friday round, which has led to a lot of weekend golf for him. In cash games, Piercy provides a lot of Consistency at a discount.
Recent Stats
Adjusted Round Score: 67.7, Retief Goosen
Goosen’s 67.7 Adj Rd Score mark is nearly three strokes better than his long-term mark, which means that A) he has been playing very well lately and B) regression will eventually come. The question obviously is when will that come? The veteran hasn’t missed a cut all year and is coming off three straight tournaments with a 15th-place finish or better. Can he keep the magic rolling at Oakmont?
Greens in Regulation: 75.0%, Jeff Maggert
Speaking of old veterans, Maggert is 52-years-old. His last event was the Senior PGA Championship last week, so although his GIR stats are elite for his price range, take them with a heaping tablespoon of salt. [Editor’s Note: Just not the epsom salt he uses for soaking his body after a long day of swinging clubs. He’ll need that.] His other stats, including a poor Adjusted Round Score of 72.0, confirm that he’s A) not good and B) old.
Driving Distance: 308.9, Tony Finau
Finau’s journey to the PGA Tour is a really cool one. Unfortunately for him, this course just really doesn’t suit him very well. As mentioned above, distance isn’t just unimportant at Oakmont: The data shows that it’s harmful. Finau does have the talent to rise above that problem, but he should be employed as only a contrarian tournament play, given the circumstances.
Birdies Per Tournament: 17.7, James Hahn
Hahn has been playing excellent lately. Just a month ago he won the Wells Fargo Championship. So while we have the same question here that we had in our Kizzire section — are birdies actually important or not this week? — Hahn’s good play of late should be noted. He has positive marks in almost every category, a rarity among low-priced golfers.
Consistency: 100%, Danny Lee
Since recent stats have a built-in small sample, there were a couple of golfers with 100-percent Consistency in the last month. However, Lee is perhaps the most intriguing of them, especially given his excellent Long-Term Adj Rd Score of 69.7. Lee hasn’t been below 69 DraftKings points in his last five tournaments, has a recent Plus/Minus of +15.88, and could be a great play if you go stars-and-scrubs this week.
Check out this week’s FantasyLabs Podcast in which Bryan and Peter Jennings (CSURAM88) discuss strategies for the DraftKings PGA DFS Millionaire Maker.
Bonus
Pro Trends: 11, Brendan Steele
Brendan Steele set up to be a great play last week but withdrew before the start of the St. Jude Classic. A lot of Steele’s Pro Trends point to one thing: He’s mispriced this week. He has three top-20 finishes in his last four rounds and is, for some reason, priced at $6,900. If you’re unsure about which statistics to focus on this week, just find players who are priced below their talent level.
