At first glance, this is a bit of an odd week. No one particular stat pops and ‘Wesley Bryan’ is $9,000 for the 2016 St. Jude Classic. I imagine this will be a data-heavy week in which we will rely mostly on Recent and Long-Term Adjusted Round Scores to carry our individual models.
In any event, let’s identify some golfers in excellent recent form.
The Recent Form Report is intended to highlight golfers on the PGA Tour who are in excellent recent form. Since recent performance is such a substantial part of the DFS golf equation, we’ll be highlighting golfers using some of the dynamic statistics and tools we have to offer.
The High-Priced Tier
Agnostic to price (and Dustin Johnson), Gary Woodland might be in the best form in the entire St. Jude field. His Recent Adjusted Round Score is third-best in the field and he’s on a streak of fantastic finishes in his last six events (T33, T20, T24, T28, T12 and T4).
Here are the Recent Adjusted Round Scores for the six golfers priced above $10,000 for the week:
Pricing is always sensitive to field strength, but Woodland has been swinging right along with the big three in this field (Johnson, Phil Mickelson, and Brooks Koepka). In the past month, Woodland has smashed his salary-based expectations with a preposterous +19.94 Plus/Minus:
During Woodland’s hot streak, his salary hasn’t risen above $8,500 because he has been playing in stronger fields, but his Hulk-ian player card still illuminates the fact that he’s peaking coming into TPC Southwind.
Stars and Scrubs In a Weak Field?
In theory, roster construction lends itself to a “stars and scrubs” strategy when field strength is considerably below average. Instead of taking shaky golfers in the mid-priced tiers, we can gain an advantage by dropping way down in a couple of roster slots to secure Upside in the upper salary range.
Each week, I use a trend that screens for golfers A) priced below $6,500 and B) possessing Recent Adjusted Round Scores no higher than 70:
Golfer skill is inherently baked into price every week, so, at times, it can be difficult to sift through some relatively ugly data among the lower-priced golfers.
With that being said, Johnson Wagner pops out here. Before missing the cut by one stroke at the Memorial, Wagner made six of his previous seven cuts and added four T39 finishes during that stretch. Additionally, Wagner has hit 71.1 percent of Greens in Regulation in recent events, eighth most in the St. Jude field.
It’s really ugly this week once you get past the $7,500 range, so regardless of our roster construction strategies, we’ll need to dig deep to find value.
How Do We Research Noisy Events?
There isn’t one main statistic to focus on for the St. Jude Classic, especially for Recent Form.
There may be some noise in this data, but Recent Adj Rd Score really does not shake out well regardless of price at TPC Southwind:
Here is the same Recent Adj Rd Score trend on every course in our database:
This week, we have a weak field in a fairly noisy event, so it may make some sense to experiment in our models a bit more than usual.
