By Andy Lack

The biggest thing I have realized from the fact that all of my content either comes out so early in the week is that I haven’t found a way to be able to share or synthesize my final DFS thoughts. Often on my Sunday show, I will discuss a player that I love from a handicapping perspective, and yet I will have zero percent of him in my lineups come Wednesday night. For example, the combination of last week’s weather madness and ownership took me off multiple players that I was high on from a handicapping standpoint. In my opinion, there’s a huge difference between a sensible outright wager, and a good DFS play, and I see far too many people simply plug the players they bet into their DraftKings lineups. Betting and DFS are two completely different games, and I go about my process for each completely differently. This is how Rick and I conceived of this Wednesday article, “Andy’s Final DFS Thoughts: Weather, Core, Ownership.” I wanted a platform where I could wait until the end of the week, and synthesize all the information at my disposal: price, ownership, and weather.

 

With the rest of my content all being recorded by Tuesday morning, I did not feel like I was able to give adequate DFS advice. For example, there’s no real point in talking about the weather in a podcast recorded on the previous Sunday or Monday. I can make guesses on what the weather will look like, but it often changes various times over the course of the next three days. Also, weather MATTERS. In four tournaments last year, the WM Phoenix Open, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the U.S. Open, and the Open Championship, one side of the draw saw at least a one stroke advantage. More dramatically at the PLAYERS Championship, Scottish Open, the PGA Championship, and the Rocket Mortgage, one side of the draw saw at over a two stroke advantage. Already this season, the Houston Open featured a 2.5 stroke wave advantage! As soon as we flipped the calendar to January, weather played a massive role in the Sony Open as well. This may not sound like much, but it’s finding small edges like this over time that will make you a winning DFS player.

 

Before we dive in, I should also mention: the most important part of DFS is figuring out how you like to play and sticking to it (for at least a large enough of a sample size before you change up your process.) I am not a 150 lineup guy, or even a 50 lineup guy. I play 15-30 lineups every week, and stick to a player pool between 15-20 players. I play in the same contests every single week, and I largely stick to the 20-Max and all of the Single Entries. I will throw a few listener leagues in too to support my friends.

 

I play pretty aggressively in the sense that I do not play a lot of chalk (sometimes as much I should). A lineup that I enter into a contest will never combine to have over a 75% ownership threshold based on my ownership projections. I mention all of this to say, this has just been what has worked for me. There are a ton of different ways to succeed at this, but I think it’s important to have context for how I play. As always, hit me up in the slack channel with any questions. I am always happy to talk shop. Alright, without further ado, let’s dive in.

Weather

While wind cannot often affect this tournament greatly, I’m not seeing much of an overwhelming advantage in either direction. I would definitely suggest checking back later on Wednesday evening to see if anything flips, but as it stands on Wednesday morning, weather will not play any role in my decision making process.

Core 4: The four players that I will be most over-weight on relative to the field in DraftKings

• Shane Lowry, $10,400 (Projected ownership: 23.2%): I simply do not believe the gap between Shane Lowry and Sungjae Im’s ownership should be this wide, and I actually believe that you are getting a fairly justifiable price on the 2019 Open Championship winner. Lowry is coming off a rock-solid 14th-place finish at the Genesis where he gained 2.5 strokes off the tee, 2.3 strokes on approach, and 2.4 strokes around the green, the exact sort of well-balanced skill-set that I am looking for this week at PGA National. Now he returns to a course where he arguably should have won at last year. In five appearances at the Fazio design, Lowry has never missed a cut. He gained a whopping 11.2 strokes ball-striking last year, one of the best performances of his entire career. In fact, he’s never lost strokes ball-striking here, and he gained four strokes putting here as well. I expect him to continue his positive momentum in Palm Beach Gardens and find himself firmly in the mix come Sunday afternoon.

• Billy Horschel, $9,700 (Projected ownership: 11.0%): A very reasonable argument could be made that Billy Horschel is the third best player in this field, and he is certainly the third most accomplished. He already boasts four top-20 finishes in 10 appearances at PGA National, and he’s coming off a T16 last year where he gained 9.3 strokes ball-striking. Ball-striking is not even Horschel’s strength, and yet he’s had three performances at this course where he’s gained over eight strokes ball-striking. Something about PGA National clearly seems to fit his eye, and I have no reason to believe that he won’t continue his solid play on the Fazio track. Ultimately, this is an ownership play as well, as I am entirely confused as to how he is the one seemingly getting squeezed in the $9K range, when I wouldn’t have blinked if he was north of $10K.

• Cameron Davis, $8,100 (Projected ownership: 6.3%): I know, I know, I know, but I caught some of Cameron Davis’ Friday round at Riviera and I was thoroughly impressed by what I saw. I followed him into the clubhouse after and overheard a conversation between him and his agent, where they both seemed in extremely high spirits about the road ahead. This is quite simply such an obvious buy low spot on a player that appears to be completely forgotten in the $8K range. At the end of the day, he’s still the number two driver of the ball in this field on short courses, one of the best middle iron players in the field, and has a proven track record of success on water intensive courses such as TPC Twin Cities and TPC Southwind. I’ll take my chances once again on the extremely frustrating Australian.

• Webb Simpson, $7,200 (Projected ownership: 3.9%): There hasn’t been a lot of positives we can say about Webb Simpson over the last couple months, and I’ve certainly given up on him in prior weeks. I still feel however this is a perfect spot to roll him back out at extremely low ownership and a palatable price. The seven-time PGA Tour winner is still coming off a performance at the WM Phoenix Open where he gained 4.2 strokes on approach, and he’s actually gained over a stroke on approach in four of his last five starts. His iron game has quietly remained steady, and he is a decent putting away from finding himself back towards the first page of the leaderboard.

Chalk Report: DraftKings Ownership Projections for every range

• $10K: There are only two players above $10K this week, which odds boards agree are the two best players in the field. I have Sungjae Im coming in significantly higher than Shane Lowry at around 35%, while Lowry should fall between 22% and 24%.

• $9K: With the Alex Noren withdrawal, there are certainly some players that are garnering far more attention than they deserve this week. I have Aaron Wise leading the pack at 19.8%, with Min Woo Lee (17.9%), Matt Kuchar (16.8%), Denny McCarthy (16.9%), and Thomas Detry (17.8%) all not significantly far behind. Chris Kirk should fall closer to 14% or 15%, and the real leverage comes with Billy Horschel at 11.0%.

• $8K: There are certainly some nice leverage opportunities in the $8K range, but let’s start with the chalk. I would expect Jhonattan Vegas to lead the charge at 16.5%. After Vegas, this is a fairly large group of players that I expect to fall between 10 and 15%, including Taylor Pendrith, J.T. Poston, Adam Svensson, and Adrian Meronk. Harris English might crack double digits as well, but I currently have him in the 9% range. The real leverage in the $8K range comes in the form of Sepp Straka, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Cameron Davis, and Garrick Higgo. I expect all four of those players to be 8% and certainly viable options.

• $7K: Once again, I am not expecting any completely irresponsible chalk in this range, but Ben Griffin certainly comes close at around 16%. After Griffin, I have Robby Shelton, Stephan Jaeger, Aaron Rai, Lee Hodges, Beong Hun An, Hayden Buckley, Joseph Bramlett, Will Gordon, and potentially S.H. Kim all coming in between 10 and 15%. It seems like fantasy players are fairly split between a bevy of these options in the high to mid $7K range, but that lineup construction seems to always include someone in this range. The low $7K range on the other hand, is a bit dead, and Mark Hubbard at $7K is the only player that I could see sniffing double digits.

• $6K: As always, choose your own adventure down here. I do not see any significant ownership building around any one player in this range, but here are the guys that should garner slightly more attention than their peers: Ben Martin, Eric Cole, Erik Barnes, Satoshi Kodaira, and Brent Grant.