If you play MLB DFS then you may have read our Recent Form Report that looks into various statistics and tries to look “for justification on players who have been exceeding or falling short of expectations.” I enjoyed Bill Mohighetti’s article so much for MLB that I’m doing a spin-off for PGA! Every week, in the PGA Recent Form Report, we’ll take a quick glance at short-term performance and try to find inefficiencies in pricing.
Since Recent Form is so crucial every week, this column should serve as a nice tool for our users to incorporate recent performance into their own decision-making.
Valero Texas Open 2016
We’re on to the Valero Texas Open. It’s a bit of an odd week in terms of pricing.
Just 16 golfers are priced between $7,000 and $7,900 on DraftKings this week. One of those is Keegan Bradley and his points-vs.-expectation graph over his past ten events is just sad. But at least he made the cut in the wind at the Masters!
Kidding aside, this is a bit of a harder week. Not only is pricing tough overall, but also the field is pretty weak after you get past the mid-$8,000 range. So, with the help of our excellent tools here at FantasyLabs, we’ll look at Recent Form in order to find some value after the 20-most expensive golfers.
When I was scrolling through pricing this week, Chez Reavie ($7,700) stuck out:
Reavie enters the Texas Open tied for the sixth-lowest Recent Adjusted Scoring average (68.7) in the field and has made six straight cuts on Tour. During this six-week stretch, he has two top-10 finishes and only one finish outside of the top-35 (T60 at Arnold Palmer Invitational).
Jhonattan Vegas (though cheaper) seems a bit mispriced. TPC San Antonio runs just a shade over 7,400 yards, so extra Driving Distance could be an advantage over the field. Vegas smashes the ball (seventh-longest Recent Drive Distance in the field) and is tied for the ninth-lowest Recent Adjusted Scoring average (69.2). Using our Trends tool, one can see how “bombers” have fared at the Texas Open in years past:
Recent DD percentage is just the percentile the golfer is in. In this case, we’re looking at the 80th percentile or better in Drive Distance. Here are this week’s current matches for bombers:
Driving Distance is not the only statistic to look at this week, but since TPC San Antonio is a longer-than-average track it does give some of the golfers with more power an advantage, as noted by Bryan Mears.
Finally, we should take note of something that happened last year at the Texas Open. The wind gusts in Round 1 were blowing near 40 MPH. I can only imagine what it must have been like to attempt to play in those conditions. About halfway through Round 1, every golfer who returned to the clubhouse was over par.
Before you use Course History data from last year’s event, keep in mind that half of the field played in tropical storm-like winds during the morning wave, which dramatically skewed the scoring results.
