I wanted to produce some content for this week's event since it is one of the better tournaments in the year (despite not being an actual golf major). I have some tools that will help paint a picture for plays that have potential to help win tournaments. Lets use them this week.
Odds vs Salary
This is my first pass through. Most likely I will filter these names down sometime late Wednesday night (time permitting). Some names floating high above the value trend line are Scottie, Cantlay, Day, and Mitchell. I dont expect any to go super low owned but there could be value in playing any or multiple of those names. Kuchar is also a name at the cheapest end who I could see myself playing.
Updated: 8:10 pm
I feel like this is the consolidated list in which I want to choose 4 plays from. They all have at least 1 top 10 here in the past. I am also thinking of making this more balanced.
History
One thing I noticed when browsing datagolf is that history has been predictive of success at this tournament and therefore we will want to see players who have done well in the past. I created this view recently in power bi to understand a few things.
Top left corner, I pulled all the results over the past few years to see how the course played. Then I compared them results on the left to the top 20 finishes on the right to see what skill sets were used to get to the top part of the leaderboard. Eventually I will add one more box to show the average of all courses and paint a stronger picture, but for now, I know that approach play stands out a bit.
Scrolling to the bottom left table, I have sorted this course history by the total strokes gained at this course, and Keegan Bradley stands out as someone who plays this course well, with 4 top 20 finishes here. Justin Thomas is right there with him.
On the right side, we can see what those players look like from the current season's stats.
Leverage
These names change over time as ownership updates, but from the looks of it, we want to score around the 600 pt range this week and here are some names that may help do it.
Actual wins vs expected wins
Some golfers run hot (Rahm) and win tournaments. Some run hot and don't. Ideally this will help highlight some golfers who have an expectation higher than reality as they are considered to be due in my opinion. From the top down, Scottie seems to be the one getting closer to a 2nd win from this list than most. Nick Taylor and Pat Cantlay are right behind him. Rory has won twice but was only expected to win once, so I will actually begin fading him soon if not this week.
Leverage vs Core
Based on how these guys have played here and recent form, these guys have some leverage as well per site. Xander is a bit interesting as a top play. He has had a top 10, has made some cuts and lower owned for the top plays on the slate.
Datagolf Honorable Mentions
This course has favored accuracy and approach play more than the normal course. Bombers are not very important here. Even more interesting, this course has been one of the most difficult for approach shots under 150 yards. So better approach play is what I will certainly look at. Per their tools these are the names that are expected to face the most shots > 150 yards:
When looking at performance this year, we may pair those guys to this list and see who sticks out:
Morikawa, Tom Kim, and Si Woo all appear to be in intruiging shape.
Hopefully you find this helpful for your last few plays. I am feeling a combo of Xander, Thomas, Kim (which one? both :p) and possibly Bradley (or leverage) for the final piece and see what happens from there. Good luck!
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