Anyone who played, or even thought about playing just a little bit of the Puerto Rico Open knows that this was a… lesser field. I’m being too kind. The field really stunk. It was filled with a few regulars on the PGA Tour (like Tony Finau!), a bunch of Web.com Tour golfers who haven’t won in their careers, guys from the Champions Tour who haven’t won on the PGA Tour since the 1990’s, and Dean Burmester who was from something called “The Sunshine Tour.”
Before we recap an interesting week in the Caribbean, I just wanted to give my token disclaimer for this article series: I’m here to learn and get better, and in turn, for others to get better. I’m not here to “show off” my lineups by any means. Reviewing the lineup-making process is the best way to get better on a weekly basis.
(Lineup Percentile Score: 78th)
What Went Right at the Puerto Rico Open
This past week was one of the more frustrating weeks I’ve ever had playing PGA DFS. It’s especially irritating, nay, just annoying, that this lineup could have been quite good if I didn’t take two missed cuts.
Now that my bitterness has subsided, I can firmly say that I was shocked to see Steve Marino at 1.5% owned. At a course like Coco Beach in Puerto Rico that plays at over 7,500 yards, I put an extra emphasis on Driving Distance and didn’t look much at Drive Accuracy. At courses that 1) play long and, 2) are incredibly windy (this course was on the beach) I think it’s a mistake to put too much weight on golfers that hit the fairway often. Because of the wind and how the course plays, everyone is going to miss the short grass — no matter how long you are off the tee.
Marino was basically free ($5,500) and was driving the ball a shade over 297 yards on average recently. For example, Graham DeLaet, the top-priced player on the Puerto Rican slate, was driving the ball just under 297 yards on average. Marino was also playing pretty well entering the event (Recent Adjusted Round Score: 70.5) and had made four of his last five cuts. He set up really well to just make the cut at his price given his length off the tee and solid recent form, let alone compete and almost win the tournament.
I was less surprised that Tony Finau was just over 17% owned in this particular contest. He was grossly mispriced for, frankly, a field that was severely lacking in talent. Finau absolutely smashes the ball off of the tee (313 yards on average) but entered the event hitting fairways at an abysmal 46.9% clip in his most recent events.
I’m also sure Finau was just $9,200 because he had missed four of his last five cuts, but he truly wasn’t playing that bad overall. Sure, he wasn’t playing on the weekend much recently, but he only had two “blow up rounds” (shooting over 75) in his last five events and entered the week with a Recent Adjusted Round Score of 71.1. That’s not great, but his form entering the event was not as bad as the missed cuts may have given off. I’ll write a little more about this below.
What Went Wrong at the Puerto Rico Open
Kyle Stanley missing the cut was a bit of a shock to me. He entered this event making seven of his last eight cuts, he had a Recent Adjusted Round Score of 69.4, and was driving the ball 287 yards on average. At $8,000 he lined up pretty perfectly for what I was looking for overall and finished third in my personal model’s rankings.
I don’t think rostering Stanley this past week was poor process, but just a big dose of variance. As Mr. Moosenomics of Project Roto noted on Twitter, 30 of the 37 players priced at $7,000 and above this week made the cut at the Puerto Rico Open, so missing on Stanley really hurt. The rest of the field had a ton of lineups get six golfers through the cut which didn’t leave much room for error if you missed on one or even two guys.
On the other hand, I have gone back-and-forth on whether or not rostering Rob Oppenheim was a mistake here. He travelled to Puerto Rico playing well (Recently Adjusted Round Score: 69.4), was driving it pretty far recently (292 yards) and he had made three straight cuts (two of which being T31 finishes or better).
This particular lineup left $700 on the table and I debated Oppenheim and Bronson Burgoon for my last roster spot. Burgoon, too, met some of the criteria I was looking for. His recent Driving Distance was 291 yards, but he had missed two of his last four cuts and his Recent Adjusted Round Score was a full stroke worse than Oppenheim’s. Of course I have the benefit of hindsight now, but these two plays were — and still are — incredibly close.
What Can We Learn From This Past Week?
Okay, I’m going over my target of 1,000 words for this article but I want to discuss something important I briefly touched on above. I’ve written about the importance of making the cut for low-cost players, but I think solely looking at missed cuts and not taking things like course fit, long-term form, and how close a player was to making the cut is a mistake.
Tony Finau is probably a perfect example of this at work. As mentioned, he had missed four of his last five cuts but I asserted that he was not playing as bad as those missed cuts suggested. Granted, he wasn’t lighting the world on fire, but his last six rounds entering the Puerto Rico Open weren’t terrible.
Finau missed the cut by one stroke at the Valspar Championship and followed up the next week making the cut and posting a five-under at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. If he had made one more birdie or one less bogey at the Valspar, how many people would have looked at his recent form and said, “Oh, he’s made two straight cuts! He’s back in form!”?
Herein lies the dilemma with just looking at missed cuts. It does a pretty good job of weeding out players that genuinely aren’t playing well recently, but it does not account for players that were unlucky and missed the cut by just one or two strokes.
Perhaps a better way to judge missed cuts is adjusting for the cut line by one or two to capture a full picture of a player’s recent form. You can do this in our PGA Models (which are still free while we’re in Beta!) by simply clicking on a player’s name and scrolling through his scorecards in recent tournaments.
Alright, the Tour is moving on from the Caribbean this coming week. We’re on to Texas for the Shell Houston Open!
You can read past PGA Process articles here: Arnold Palmer Invitational and Valspar Championship.
