Every day, people on Twitter ask us some variation of this question: “Who are your top plays?” When people ask that question, from now on we will refer them to our Plays of the Day article, which we will publish every Wednesday for PGA and every weekday for MLB.
In every PGA Plays of the Day post, several FantasyLabs writers will use our Trends and Player Models tools to highlight each one golfer to roster heavily in cash games and/or tournaments.
Here are today’s plays of the day.
Bryan Mears: Daniel Berger
For a guy who was just $6,200 a couple of weeks ago at the Masters, Berger doesn’t seem as if he should have a $10,100 salary on DraftKings this week at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. However, if you look a bit further back to the Houston Open — the week before the Masters — he was $8,100 and finished in fifth place with 102 DK points. What I’m trying to say is this: DK salaries are so tied to Vegas odds that a player’s salary can wildly fluctuate. In a field with Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, and so on, Berger has low odds to win the tournament. However, in a field with Jason Day — and then everyone else — Berger can be expensive and still priced appropriately.
The thing that makes Berger interesting is that his stats are trending in the right direction in both the long and short term and especially in two specific stats that are important this week: Adjusted Round Score and Driving Distance. Berger ranks excellently in these categories, posting elite Adj Rd Scores and a very usable DD of 300.7 yards long term. We mentioned on the PGA Daily Fantasy Flex podcast that roster construction will be key this week, as there’s a lot of value in the low $7,000 range that can let you pay for Jason Day or Justin Rose. Perhaps eschewing that strategy and going for guys in the Berger range is a nice contrarian tournament strategy this week.
Check out Bryan’s recent article in which he finds the most valuable PGA DFS stats for the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
Sean Valukis: Charles Howell III
For cash games, there is no player more automatic than CH3. He has missed only one cut in his last 15 events. ONE! For tournaments, his recent form is undervalued (two top-10 finishes in his last four events), and his course fit is above average. He has the distance to take advantage of the longer Par 4s, and his Recent Par 5 scoring is better than the course average for the previous three years. Vegas has him at 50/1 odds — the same as Marc Leishman, who is priced at $9,100.
For the course history people out there, Howell’s two missed cuts in the last three years looks less than ideal on the surface. But before that he made four consecutive cuts at this event, including a T2 finish in 2009.
Check out Sean’s course breakdown of the Zurich Class of New Orleans.
Kelly McCann: Luke List
I love our Trends tool. You can do whatever you want with it. You can make trends as immense or as small, as concentrated or as comprehensive, as you choose. In my research this week, I isolated some trends that have demonstrated a real predictive value of Consistency and profitability. Feeling wild, I took the upper echelon of results from Recent Driving Distance, Recent Scrambling, Long-Term Green-in-Regulation Score and Recent Par 5 Form specific to rounds played at TPC Louisiana and then squeezed them all together into one beautiful (but admittedly narrow) super-trend that produced a count of only nine past results. Seven of the nine past results scored at least 91 DraftKings points, and four of the nine scored more than 104. With those results, I’ll hazard on the small sample size being somewhat predictive of future success and roll with one of the current matches.
This all brings me to Luke List. First of all, my man drops bombs like the Bible drops psalms (credit: Everlast and House of Pain). Not only does his 312.6 Long-Term Driving Distance top the field, he is one of only nine golfers this week with a Recent Driving Distance over 300 yards, setting him up well to score on the reachable Par 5s. He comes into this tournament in tremendous form with a Recent Adjusted Round Score of 69, tied for 12th in the field. His -0.5 Recent Par 4 Form is sixth in the field and he sits 20th in Recent Par 5 Form.
List, who finished 31st in his only start in Louisiana in 2013, has a Course Adjusted Round Score of 69.2, eighth in the field. He has made four straight cuts and six of his last seven, during which time he has averaged 62.71 DK points. And, according to the super-trend, he has a 77 percent chance of scoring at least 91 points this weekend.
Keep an eye out for Kelly’s Finding Frankenstein piece, coming soon.
Jonathan Cabezas: Justin Rose
Who has hit 72 percent of his greens in regulation over the past 12 months and also won the Zurich Classic last year? You guessed it! — Justin Rose. (It was written above, so I really hope you got it right.)
There is nothing sneaky about Justin Rose this week. His course history is stellar, with four consecutive top-25 finishes since missing the cut in 2011. Rose hasn’t played since The Masters, where he managed to finish 10th in incredibly challenging conditions. Prior to that he had made four straight cuts, in which he finished at least 17th in all four tournaments.
Rose is shaping up to be a fairly chalky tournament play, specifically at the lower stakes. His 11.1 percent odds to win trail only those of Jason Day, and his 12 Pro Trends are the highest in this weekend’s slate. Golfers who have had at least 12 Pro Trends have a strong +4.02 Plus/Minus and have met their salary-based expectations 56.3 percent of the time. His win last year is sure to boost his ownership, which is something to keep in mind, but it also gestures toward his Upside.
There is always an argument to fade a highly-owned player in PGA DFS, but I will be giving Rose plenty of action in my tournament lineups.
Keep an eye out for Cabay’s Course History and Player Breakdown, coming soon.
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The Plays of the Day series is our answer to the question, “Who do you guys like today?” We publish a Plays of the Day article every Wednesday for PGA and every weekday for MLB.
