RADIO
Scottie Scheffler once again sits inside the top-10 of a PGA Tour event despite only 5 other players who also made the cut losing more strokes putting than the ball striking savant. One of the guys losing more strokes than Scottie on the greens is Justin Rose, who leads the field in strokes gained approach, driving anybody with outright tickets on the Englishman utterly crazy (I may or may not be one of them). Harry Hall continues to make every putt under the sun, leading the field at -12 having gained just shy of 7 strokes putting.
This article is going to take a look at showdown slates after each completed round. You can find me on Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me. My DFS style is very ownership-centric. More often than not, this can make you feel like an unsuccessful DFS player. Every now and then when a sneaky, low-owned golfer comes through for you, it is all worth it. In this article, we are going to break down the previous round's top performers and duds and use that information to derive a player pool full of upside and leverage.
The general logic to showdown has been to target golfers who played well the day before and particularly those who hit their irons well. This makes sense as you want to roster players who are playing good golf right now. These players will be higher-owned and chalkier than golfers in the same price range who had an off day, particularly with their irons. These are the golfers I am gravitating towards, as they could very easily bounce the following day at half the ownership.
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Round 2 Analysis
The AM wave averaged -.73 strokes less than PM in R1 and -.87 in R2. There is roughly a shot difference by getting an early tee time.
Best Scores
The top three scores were from the AM wave with 13 of the 23 best scores being from the early wave.
Ownership
I wonder if the public stacked their lineups with AM guys?
Going into Round 2, these are the color codes we will be using to identify who we want to target. Think of it as a traffic light with four colors. Stop at mega chalk and go when we see leverage that makes sense.
By taking a look at yesterday's ownership, we can get an idea of where people will be willing to go in Round 2 (DK points include finishing position).
- Mega chalk: A popular player who played well yesterday.
- Chalk: a) A popular player who played okay yesterday, b) A less popular player who played well yesterday.
- Pivots: a) A popular player who played poorly yesterday, b) A less popular player who played okay yesterday.
- Leverage: A less popular player who played poorly yesterday.
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Round 3 Strategy
With a small AM wave edge and with everybody going off the first tee in pairs, there will a potential scoring and ownership edge by targeting a few guys in that wave of tee times.
Showdown Model
Below are the power rankings of the golfers who we have our eye on for Round 3. The full-field model is available to premium subscribers HERE. It includes pre-event rankings, round-specific scoring averages, birdie percentages, weighted approach ratings, and ownership projections for tomorrow's showdown slate.
***Full disclosure: The ownership numbers are based on the PGA TOUR SHOWDOWN $4K CADDIE [SINGLE ENTRY], which is important to note as ownership in showdown can vary from contest to contest depending on field size and entry fee. However, it should provide you with a guide to who will be the most owned and how those around them shake out.
$10,000+
Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa have roughly the same projected points as what Max Homa has for R3. They are all similar in price, but our two guys sit T39 and T51 respectively and shouldn't get much more than 20% ownership, with Collin unlikely to even make it out of the low teens. Scottie Scheffler is a scary to fade but he may be owned by half the field and his last two Saturday rounds on tour have been dubs by his standards, so we are going to hopefully take advantage of another average round from the $11,800 best golfer in the field.
$9,000+
We are going to swallow the Justin Rose chalk along with the rest of the 40% of the field that will be eagerly anticipating one of the best Bentgrass putters in the field to actually gain substantially more than the -2.5 strokes he has lost with the flat stick so far. Oh, he is also BLITZING the field on the ball striking front, with his +8.5 strokes gained over the first two rounds a full shot ahead of the next best ball striker in the field. He has great course history here, so these greens should pose no problem to him and if the ball striking master class continues, we are in store for a LOW round. Rickie Fowler hasn't really got out of 2nd gear yet and should come in relatively low owned.
$8,000+
Si Woo Kim is playing stellar golf, gaining just shy of 4 strokes ball striking so far and the putter hasn't really got a chance to gain him a lot of strokes in a single round yet. Tom Hoge shot 4 over par in R2 erasing his -4 round to open the event and as one of the best iron players entering the week, he has the 4th best R3 strokes gained average which could set him up for a bounce back round at low ownership.
$7,000+
Brendon Todd is due for bit of a spike round on the greens, having lost over a stroke putting so far despite being one of the best Bentgrass putters in the field and also on all surfaces in general. Christiaan Bezuidenhout is doing what he has seemingly done since the Players Championship after leaving his long time coach, and gaining over a stroke per round on approach. Just like Todd, Bezzy is one of the best putters on Bentgrass, yet hasn't gained more than +0.7 in either of his two rounds so far. Match that approach play with his putting upside, we are now cooking with gas.
Andrew Putnam ranks inside the top-10 in spike putting rounds and is also typically played well on Saturdays and sitting in T12 he will be looking to keep the ball rolling. If Ryan Fox can just avoid throwing away a total of -2.5 strokes around the greens, he could easily improve on his T28 heading into tomorrow. Alex Smalley, Ben Martin and Mark Hubbard all grade out well heading into the weekend with three of them T28 or worse. Alex Noren will be a little higher up the leaderboard but he seems to be playing to his potential again, making @TeeOffSports proud.
$6,000+
Joel Dahmen, Aaron Baddeley, Justin Lower and Luke Donald will be our $6k selections with three of them having made the cut on the number and getting an early tee time.
Featured Group Matchup Bets
If you are a golf nerd like me and land up watching a lot of the featured group coverage on ESPN+, this new segment of the article is going to consist of Maniac Magic by making a bet on each of the featured groups just to have a little sweat while watching the morning coverage. If you are looking for much more strategic and reliable matchups, check out @TeeOffSports R3 matchups here. This part of the article is straight-up degenerate as we are forcing pocket money plays simply to enhance our golf viewing experience.
This is going to be a bit of a boring way betting these matchups but DraftKings doesn't have the Rickie vs Kitayama group on their site. The other 3 matchups are all studs vs duds with Justin Rose vs Peter Malnati being the shortest odds at -210. So we are going to parlay all 3 of them, adding Max Homa over Peter Malnati -265 and Collin Morikawa over Luke Donald -350. This should get us to +161 and trying to predict which one of these three studs is going to bust our parlay is tricky, but we are going bet like Sponge Bob and slide on our square pants hoping for nothing bizarre to happen.
Showdown Optimizer
The optimizer works nicely with the projected ownership from the model. If you are unsure how to work it, at the top of the "PGA Lineup Optimizer" page, there is a video on how to get my projected ownership or points into your optimizer.
Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.
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