With the increased DraftKings PGA contest availability and big guaranteed prize pools, looking for contrarian value plays will be more important this week than any previous. The typical PGA DFS player weighs a mix of stats, recent performance, and course history to build lineups. More so than any other Golf Major tournament, The Masters has the most course history data available, thanks to it being hosted at the same course every year. This can play both ways: It provides a lot of data for how certain players perform, and it can cause certain players to be underowned due to lack of such data, thus creating an opportunity.
The last rookie winner of The Masters? Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. The only other two rookie winners were in the first two Masters events ever held. While first-time players do not win at Augusta, that doesn’t exclude them from providing solid value for DFS purposes. Their lack of documented course history might even help to keep their ownership percentage down, as some people weigh experience heavily.
A quick look at the PGA Trends tool shows us that first-time Masters players have a Plus/Minus of -3.23, which on its face, is pretty bad. But let’s take a closer look.
How First-Time Players Have Performed at The Masters
In 2015, 13 professionals made their Masters debut – 8 of 13 (61%) made the cut, and the ones who did averaged a 37th-place finish.
2015 Masters Rookie Player Performance
| Player | Finish | Shots Off Lead |
| Bernd Wiesberger | T22 | 16 |
| Morgan Hoffmann | T28 | 17 |
| Brooks Koepka | T33 | 18 |
| Danny Willett | T38 | 19 |
| Seung-yul Noh | T38 | 19 |
| Cameron Tringale | T38 | 19 |
| Anirban Lahiri | T49 | 22 |
| Erik Compton | 51 | 23 |
| Shane Lowry | CUT | |
| James Hahn | CUT | |
| Brian Harman | CUT | |
| Brendon Todd | CUT | |
| Robert Streb | CUT |
In 2014, 18 professionals made their Masters debut – 10 of 18 (55%) made the cut, and the ones who did averaged a 20th-place finish.
2014 Masters Rookie Player Performance
| Player | Finish | Shots Off Lead |
| Jonas Blixt | T2 | 3 |
| Jordan Spieth | T2 | 3 |
| Jimmy Walker | T8 | 8 |
| Kevin Stadler | T8 | 8 |
| Chris Kirk | T20 | 10 |
| Joost Luiten | T26 | 12 |
| Steven Bowditch | T26 | 12 |
| Stephen Gallacher | T34 | 14 |
| Brendon de Jonge | T37 | 15 |
| Billy Horschel | T37 | 15 |
| Victor Dubuisson | CUT | |
| Harris English | CUT | |
| Matt Jones | CUT | |
| Graham DeLaet | CUT | |
| Derek Ernst | CUT | |
| Patrick Reed | CUT | |
| Roberto Castro | CUT | |
| Matt Every | CUT |
When you break down the round scoring to perhaps look for any effect of unfamiliarity with the course, the results are a little surprising:
Masters Round Scoring (2014 to 2015)
| Rookies | Rest of Field | |
| Round 1 | 73.8 | 74.0 |
| Round 2 | 73.5 | 73.4 |
| Round 3 | 73.4 | 72.9 |
| Round 4 | 71.7 | 71.9 |
For the most part, the rookies tend to score as well as the course veterans. For both groups, the score improves with each round.
The 2016 Masters Rookie Class
There are 14 first-time professional players competing this week in The Masters. With an average salary of just over $6,500, it’s possible that some of these Augusta rookies could be strong value plays.
Bryan Mears posted an article analyzing the trends in Plus/Minus for players in different salary brackets. The only positive indicator for the salary brackets that fits first-time players would be Recent GIR (with a Plus/Minus of +3.17). Below is a look at the Recent GIR scores for first-time players in the $7k-$8.9k bracket.
| Player | Salary | Recent GIR Score |
| Kevin Kisner | $7,800 | 63.4% |
| Justin Thomas | $7,600 | 59.7% |
| Rafa Cabrera-Bello | $7,400 | 63.9% |
| David Lingmerth | $7,000 | 63.9% |
Recent GIR for players in the $6.9k or less bracket are below, despite it being a negative indicator (with a Plus/Minus of -1.96).
| Player | Salary | Recent GIR Score |
| Emiliano Grillo | $6,700 | 63.0% |
| Russell Knox | $6,600 | 63.4% |
| Andy Sullivan | $6,600 | 63.9% |
| Cameron Smith | $6,300 | 57.6% |
| Daniel Berger | $6,200 | 60.2% |
| Kiradech Aphibarnrat | $6,100 | 56.0% |
| Jim Herman | $6,000 | 54.6% |
| Smylie Kaufman | $6,000 | 61.1% |
| Fabian Gomez | $5,900 | 60.2% |
| Troy Merritt | $5,600 | 54.9% |
The takeaway here is that while first-time players typically (rarely, never) win The Masters, they do perform similarly to course veterans. Their lack of course history could help to make them contrarian plays – but their other course key performance indicators, like Recent GIR, should be factored more heavily to find the right plays.
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