If you’ve ever read “Antifragile” by Taleb, then you’re familiar with how certain things gain from disorder in life. This notion certainly applies to DFS.
If there is one thing to take advantage of in PGA DFS (and DFS in general), it’s people’s overconfidence in their ability to predict what’s going to happen in the future.
Granted, you still need a lot to go your way in DFS. Even if you successfully fade highly-rostered players who end up failing, you still need to get your pivots correct to take full advantage.
The goal of this article is to help identify a few golfers we should consider using to help leverage our lineups against the field by using our brand new feature in our PGA Player Models.
If you missed it, we added two new metrics in our models — Perfect% and SimLeverage. You can find an explainer on those metrics here.
The cliff notes version is that you can use SimLeverage to quickly find leverage plays in tournaments, while Perfect% is great for finding the best price-considered plays for cash games.
And don’t forget about the tools that FantasyLabs has to offer, like our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 150 lineups, or use our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.
This analysis may reference Strokes Gained, a set of proprietary metrics generated by the PGA TOUR using millions of data points to calculate how many shots on average it takes a player to get the ball in the hole from every distance and situation.
Strokes Gained is available in the FantasyLabs PGA Models.
When deciding on pivots to make, I keep things very simple.
I’ll look at ownership projections, discrepancies in betting odds, projected points, and I stick to more catch-all golf metrics like Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, Total Strokes Gained, and Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score) instead of getting very granular.
I’m always interested in a minimal approach in an industry that tries to overcomplicate things.
Let’s dive in.
Note: Data Golf’s True Strokes Gained data is over the last 50 rounds unless otherwise specified.
Patrick Cantlay ($9,500 DraftKings)
While Cantlay’s current ownership projection (14%) isn’t incredibly low, it’s reasonably low for a smaller field like this. Additionally, he’s popping in our models with the third-best SimLeverage Score since he’s showing up in just under 20% of perfect lineups when we run our sims.
Cantlay is priced as the No. 11 golfer this week, but he has the third-best LT Adj Rd Score — a metric that is course and field adjusted. His LT Adj Rd Score trails only Jon Rahm and Cam Smith and is tied with Justin Thomas.
His irons haven’t been as sharp of late, ranking 32nd in True Strokes Gained: Approach, but he’s been solid everywhere else, ranking fourth in True Total Strokes Gained.
Cantlay’s $9,500 salary will still allow you to roster anyone in the $10,000+ range, or you can continue on with a balanced build.
Sungjae Im ($8,400 DraftKings)
Sungjae is in a weird price range that may go overlooked a bit. And if DFS players are looking around here, they may just go to Adam Scott or Joaquin Niemann instead.
Sungjae currently has the ninth-best SimLeverage Score as he’s showing up in around 10.5% of our perfect lineups, but he has an ownership projection of just 6.5% as of Wednesday morning.
His irons aren’t as strong as some of the other golfers here, but he has the ability to turn in strong approach performances. Additionally, Sungjae has a pretty balanced game, ranking inside the top 25 in all the main Strokes Gained categories (47th in True Strokes Gained: Approach).
I don’t mind mixing in Sungjae as he’s priced as the No. 22 golfer on DraftKings, but he ranks 14th in True Total Strokes Gained.
Note: You can create aggregate ownership projections in our PGA Models using our projections and other services such as FanShare Sports (available in our marketplace).
Now, let’s get to the golfer who is No. 1 in our SimLeverage Scores for this week’s tournament.
Sam Burns ($8,600 DraftKings)
I am actually rather excited about this play. I’m a firm believer that Sam Burns has the ability to nuke any course he plays.
The main knock on Burns is he’s never played at The Masters before. While course history matters at this venue, good golfers can still have strong outings here in their first attempt.
We saw it with Will Zalatoris last year — and Abraham Ancer and Sungjae two years ago.
Burns ranks eighth in True Total Strokes Gained, and his 15.7 birdies per tournament ranks 14th in this loaded field. He comes into this tournament in great form as he won at Valspar and has gained strokes on approach in four of his last five tournaments.
Contrarian Quick Hits
Tommy Fleetwood ($7,700 DraftKings)
Fleetwood is the same price as Matthew Fitzpatrick and is $100 more expensive than Corey Conners. Both of those players figure to soak up a lot of ownership.
Meanwhile, Fleetwood is projected for just 7%. Fleetwood ranks 22nd in True Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and has made four cuts in a row at The Masters.
He’s certainly a viable pivot in this range.
Webb Simpson ($7,600 DraftKings)
There are a few pivots away from Corey Conners, Matthew Fitzpatrick, and Russell Henley in this price range.
One of them is Webb Simpson, who has the seventh-best SimLeverage Score in our models. He was dealing with a neck injury earlier in the season, but he was able to play at the Match Play, Valspar, and The Players.
A play on Webb is a bet on his long-term form as he ranks 57th in True Total Strokes Gained over his last 20 rounds, but he ranks 33rd over the last 12 months.
Tom Hoge ($6,700 DraftKings)
Hoge has a slightly positive SimLeverage Score and could provide solid salary relief if you need the extra cash. It’s his first trip here, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that he ranks eighth in True Strokes Gained: Approach and seventh in True Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.
