Just when you think we will have a week off from PGA DFS to get ready for the Masters, DraftKings decides to roll out some contests for the Puerto Rico Open 2016. That’s fine, though, because it offers everyone an additional week to familiarize themselves with the (currently FREE) PGA Trends and Models offered here at FantasyLabs before the big tournament.
The best golfers in the world are heading to Texas to play in the WGC Match Play Championship leaving us with a fairly weak and unknown field to work with. This tournament is held in Puerto Rico at the Coco Beach and Golf Country Club, formerly known as The Trump International. The course is a par 72 and can play over 7,500 yards. Keep an eye on the weather, as winds can make some of these holes play even longer than they are listed. Last year we saw high winds lead to some of the lowest scores of the past few years.
COURSE HISTORY
Here are the top-25 finishers from the past five years along with the number of strokes off the lead each golfer finished.
And here are the golfers in this week’s field who have at least three top-25 finishes over the past five years at the Puerto Rico Open.
Only a handful of the players in the field have even played here at least five times, so if there were ever a week to pay less attention to course history than you normally do this week might be it.
There is one way that I may look to take advantage of some of the better course history going into this tournament. Take a look at some of Boo Weekley’s Long Term and Recent Form statistics.
Boo Weekley, who may have the most impressive course history (with three top-10 finishes in the past four years), is coming into this week with a drop in key statistical categories when comparing his long-term form to his recent form. He has been slightly shorter and less accurate with his driver while hitting fewer greens in regulation. His scrambling percentage has also dropped significantly. Although he is ranked in the top 25 in Long Term Adjusted Round Score, he is currently in the bottom 30 in Recent Adjusted Round Score. He is the ninth-most expensive player this week at a price of $9,900 and would be receiving some fade consideration from me if I thought his ownership would be reflective of his solid course history.
Regardless of your personal thoughts on course history, this is one way that we can potentially leverage it to our advantage. I have not gotten around to my attempts at projecting ownership for this week, but if Weekley comes out high then it is unlikely that he finds his way into any of my lineups. Just in case I have tickled some curiosity out of you, here is the difference in Long Term and Recent Form for all five of the golfers mentioned above.
Let’s get to the statistical bargains.
Statistical Bargains
We discussed “statistical bargains” last week when we saw how much Vegas odds are priced into salaries by showing the difference in a player’s salary rank vs. his Vegas rank. I think I just made that term up, but whatever, we are running with it. Last week, we looked at a statistic that was less likely to be included in the pricing of a golfer by comparing Recent Adjusted Round Score rank with Salary Rank. That exercise helped me to land on Derek Fathauer, who had 0.70% ownership and finished T12. Watching him make triple bogey on the back nine after moving up to fifth place was not fun, but I am not one to dwell on the past . . . in public.
I thought I would do the same thing for a few statistics that I am looking at this weekend. Since I have no way of taking a screenshot of an entire spread sheet, I will show the top-15 players for each statistical rank vs. salary rank difference. These are the statistics that we will be looking at in relation to the salary. I have abbreviated a lot of the statistics below. Here is how each one will be listed.
- Vegas Odds to Win – “Odds”
- Recent Adjusted Round – “R Adj. Rd.”
- Recent Greens in Regulation – “R GIR”
- Recent Putts Per Round – “R PPR”
- Recent Driving Distance – “R Drive Dist”
- Recent Driving Accuracy – “R Drive Acc”
- Long-Term Field Percentage – “LR Field Diff”
As you can see, I am focusing on a lot of the Recent Form statistics. The only Long-Term statistic that I chose to look at was Field Percentage. This field is so weak that I think there is some value in being able to see how strong of a field each player has been playing in over the past year.
Vegas odds to win rank vs. salary rank:
(Note that these odds were collected early in the week and from a different source than I typically use. Sometimes the odds change, but in general this illustrates how small of a difference there is between the opening odds and the pricing.)
Recent Adjusted Round rank vs. salary rank:
Recent G.I.R rank vs. salary rank:
Recent Putts Per Round rank vs. salary rank:
Recent Driving Distance rank vs. salary rank:
Recent Driving Accuracy rank vs. salary rank:
Long-Term Field Percentage rank vs. salary rank:
All of these tables collectively paint a similar picture as last week’s, but with a broader brush. These statistics are hardly, if at all, factored into the pricing of golfers and can potentially lead to value. I do not suggest playing a golfer solely because he ranks highly in one of the tables, but perhaps his high ranking will lead you to dig a little deeper into someone whom you may have overlooked.
As expected, these tables highlight primarily the lower-priced golfers and you may wonder what to do with the golfers that are priced near the top. In the Models, we can glimpse what the high-priced players are offering this week.
The thing that jumped out to me was the lack of Pro Trends shared among this group of players. Only three of the eight players above $10,000 have at least five Pro Trends. Last week, every player priced above $10,000 had at least ten Pro Trends, all of which raises the question: How have high-priced players historically performed when notably lacking in Pro Trends?
We of course can find the answer to this question by using our Trends tool.
Trend: High priced players with less than five Pro Trends
For the sake of brevity, I’ll list the steps to create the trend here and then show you the result:
- Step 1: Player Filters > Salary > Set to “10,000 to 17,700”
- Step 2: Trends > Pro Trends > Set to “1 to 4”
And here’s the result:
Even with the low count, we have an answer to our question. Golfers priced over $10,000 with less than five Pro Trends have on average performed -2.25 points below their salary-based expectation. The high price tag brings their Average Expected Points up to 73.61, which may be a tall task for some of the following golfers this week:
This cohort is almost certainly a product of the field. Most of these golfers have seen their price jump almost $3,000 since their last tournament and are priced this high as a representation of how they are valued in relation to the other golfers in the field. This is a week where you could easily argue that price sensitivity should be ignored. I know that I will not be looking at pricing as any sort of correlation to expected performance in this tournament.
I have never watched this tournament, and the highlights I found on YouTube were underwhelming, so instead of leaving you with Jon Daly making a 90-foot putt, I will leave you with one of Tiger’s shots (turned into a Nike commercial). And what a shot it is.
Good luck this week!
