Welcome back to the weekly PGA Recent Form Report.
With the U.S. Open set at Oakmont, this week presents a tough challenge not only for golfers but for DFS players as well. We don’t have much meaningful data on the course besides the blazing fast greens and the players’ admission that the course is difficult.
The great thing about FantasyLabs — and our FREE Trends tool — is that our statistics are completely devoid of gaps on a course-to-course basis. In a tough week, I’ll be putting a heavy emphasis on Recent and Long-Term Adjusted Round Scores to exploit mispricings.
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.
Dustin Johnson and the Major Championship Void
All that’s missing from Johnson’s mantle is a Major Championship trophy. Heading into Oakmont, Johnson is in the best form of his career. Over his past six events, Johnson has four top-five or better finishes and is tied for fifth in the U.S. Open field in Recent Adj Rd Score (67.5).
I’m taking the low-hanging fruit in an extremely deep field, but Johnson’s form must be highlighted. He has exceed his salary-based expectations in all but one of his last ten events and his Plus/Minus is a monstrous +16.18 during that span:
I fully expect Johnson to be rostered in at least 20 percent of lineups this week, but his recent form, Consistency (second-best among golfers with four or more season long events) and Upside (fourth-best) make his popularity warranted.
Plus/Minus, Consistency, Upside, and other premium exclusive metric are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
Danny Lee and Finding Upside in Consistent Golfers
I realize that the U.S. Open field is stuffed with fantastic golfers across pricing tiers and that salaries are directly related to field strength. Still, Lee’s salary ($6,800) is a mystery to me.
Lee’s Recent Adj Rd Score (68.4) is tied for the 10th-best in the field and his 17.4 birdies per recent tournament are ninth-best. To put his 86th-percentile Birdie Score in perspective, I queried our free Trends tool to display golfers priced between $6,000-$7,000 with 85th-percentile or better Recent Birdie Scores:
Lee is known for his Consistency — he has made seven of his last eight cuts — but he also has sneaky Upside. Remember that Consistency and Upside are not mutually exclusive. Over his past 28 events on Tour, Lee has hit his salary-based Upside 50 percent of the time, the sixth-best rate in the U.S. Open field. Outside of a few golfers, ownership should be relatively flat beyond the $7,000 pricing range in tournaments. Don’t overlook Lee this week.
Exploiting Salaries and Employing Stars and Scrubs
The U.S. Open cut line is a bit different than the cut line is for typical tournaments in that only the top-60 golfers and ties after 36 holes make the cut. In theory, this should make it harder to get all six golfers through to the weekend.
In fields that are filled with studs and a tougher cut line in place, roster construction may lend itself to a stars-and-scrubs strategy, especially in guaranteed prize pools.
Because of the dynamic nature of the field, there are plenty of scrubs to choose from this week. Here is a Trend that features golfers priced between $5,500-$6,500 with a 70th-percentile or better Recent Adj Rd Score:
What’s most interesting here isn’t the high Consistency but the fact that this trend isn’t negatively impacted by sample size. In fact, the data gets stronger as the sample gets larger:
Here is this Trend’s output for the U.S. Open:
Because of loss-aversion bias, golfers priced below $6,500 are rarely popular plays. Going stars-and-scrubs in PGA DFS is not only a great way to obtain upside in higher priced tiers but it’s also an easy way to create unique lineups in large-field tournaments.
