With the NFL season in the rear view mirror for now, I usually spend my spring genuinely pretty bored. The football offseason clock ticks year round, but one can only write about Free Agency and what potential impacts it has until you feel like your brain is beat with the same tweet or article over and over again.
So, my background before last year was only NFL fantasy football. Until I got the PGA bug. I have not found an edge playing NBA DFS and despite playing baseball competitively growing up, I have never been much interested in MLB DFS.
Now, to be clear, I am not as near as well-versed in PGA as I am with NFL. I’m certainly not a jack of all trades with all DFS sports and I am definitely not a PGA master.
So, for someone that is still relatively new to PGA DFS like myself and for DFSers that have always wanted to try PGA and haven’t, I decided to start a weekly article series where I write about and review my main PGA GPP lineup building process after every tournament.
I’m doing this for two overarching reasons: First, reviewing our process as DFS players each week is extremely important, and second, with all of the variance and randomness in PGA, results can vary wildly week to week. The only way to stay sane while playing PGA is to remind ourselves to improve our process each week and not drastically change too much when one golfer misses the cut by just one stroke.
Okay, enough of the introduction to the series. Let’s review the Valspar Championship.
(GPP lineup percentile score: 57th)
With the difficult Florida swing of courses still ongoing, the past few weeks have been just fair for me. Thanks to Graeme McDowell’s last minute missed cut (the cut was +4 and then switched back to +3 when the last few golfers were finishing up), my main GPP lineup was dead in the water unless one or two of my four remaining golfers finished top five in the tournament.
Herein lies the variance I mentioned at the top. Thanks to Sam Saunders par-ing the final four holes to remain 3-over, Graeme McDowell and a whole slew of golfers at 4-over were cooked. Just one stroke is the difference between playing on the weekend and accruing fantasy points. See what I mean? It’s hard to stay sane.
What Went Right at Valspar
In a field with average field strength, I really did not have many plays I was falling all over myself to make this past week. John Huh and Graeme McDowell formed the core around my lineups this week and in hindsight, I really shouldn’t sweat the McDowell play too much. McDowell entered the week ranked 53rd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, but was 33rd in Birdie or Better percentage, 10th in Scrambling percentage, and 3rd in Bogey Avoidance. He fared very well in three of the six key statistics I was looking at and missed the cut thanks to a late cut swap from +4 to +3.
On the flipside of my McDowell tilt, John Huh was a must for me at the Valspar. He did not enter the week superior at any one statistic, but was ranked 48th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and no less than 76th in any key statistics. He also entered the week with four top-24 finishes or better in his last five tournaments and at a course like Innisbrook and in an average field strength event, we had to find golfers with higher floors to make the cut.
What Went Wrong at Valspar
Kevin Streelman.
Whew. He opened up the tournament with a birdie-free 79 and had one of those nuclear waste rounds we all dread in the first round of tournaments.
In hindsight, of course, I would have loved to not have Streelman in every lineup. His course history at the Valspar (40th, 38th, 1st, 10th) made me overlook the fact he entered the week completely dreadful in Strokes Gained: Putting (158th) and Scrambling percentage (176th).
What Can We Learn From This Week?
I had always wondered about this theory in the back of my head since I started playing PGA and once our new PGA director brought it up on this podcast, I’m determined to do more research on the topic. Colin Davey briefly discussed an interesting subject: does course history at an event even matter? I’m sure it does in some theoretical percentage, but how much? The masses absolutely love to use course history at an event to make their DFS decisions, but if a golfer isn’t in good recent form, shouldn’t course history matter dramatically less?
Kevin Streelman actually was in pretty decent form (three top-20’s in his last four events), but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by his history at the Valspar Championship. He was a fine play, but I certainly got bit by the course history snake and should not have gone dramatically overweight (100%) on him.
On to the Arnold Palmer Invitational this week!
