Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Fantasy Golf: Shell Houston Open Preview

I love it when good things happen to good people especially when the latter is me. After changing my pick for the Match Play at the last minute from Rory McIlroy to Thomas Pieters, I slogged through the weekend buoyed solely by the fact that I had at least not wasted Rory in a week when he essentially missed the cut. My "happiness" was, however, tempered by the fact that I had picked Jon Rahm in every side bet I made and Dustin Johnson in some of them and they spent the whole tournament on a collision course for the final while I lived in the past and lamented the fact that Pieters didn't make it out of the group stage. This led to the following Sunday morning tirade where I channeled the warden from The Shawshank Redemption:

"NO I DON'T WANT FUCKING WAFFLES FOR BREAKFAST!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I PICKED A BELGIAN GUY IN FANTASY GOLF THIS WEEK AND HE FAILED ME AND WAFFLES ARE JUST A CRUEL REMINDER OF THAT?!? WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY AROUND HERE GET ME?!?" (Not really but that was certainly going on inside my head along with a lot of imaginary and highly satisfying property damage).


"I've been researching this pick
for like forty-five minutes and
three cups of coffee."
Then I went to work on Monday and, as part of my morning ritual designed to postpone the accomplishment of anything productive, I logged onto my one and done league to make my pick which I always do first thing (before changing my mind a dozen times) and lo and behold, there was Jon Rahm's name next to mine along with his $1,045,000 in Match Play winnings. THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES!!! I'M A GODDAMN GENIUS!!! It turns-out I switched from McIlroy to Pieters to Rahm which is awesome except that I have absolutely no recollection of doing it which is not awesome considering I was sober at the time.      

Screw it. However it happened, I moved up from 24th to 9th and I'm now just over $1M out of the lead as apparently everyone else has also sucked this year. Not to mention, I still have seven of the top eight players in the world on my bench including D.J. so I have perfectly repositioned myself to fuck this season up all over again. 

And that effort starts this week in Houston where perennial top ten machine and winningaphobic Charles Howell, III appears to be the prudent play. I don't want to gamble on a marquee guy because the last one to win here was Phil Mickelson in 2011 and before that it was Adam Scott in 2007. Howell is coming off a solid showing in Austin and his last two finishes in Houston are T7th and T5th. If I do decide to make a last minute switcheroo (which is likely), it would be to either Rafa Cabrera Bello or Russell Henley. 

If you want to make a big splash, I'd save Rahm and go with Henrik Stenson or Rickie Fowler. That was a ton of golf for Rahm last week and he looked a tad beleaguered against D.J. The last thing you want to be doing now is starting Rahm under potential missed cut circumstances. That's a cocktail fork to the eye situation that needs to be avoided at all costs.

Dropped the ball on the Texas
theme last week. Not making
that mistake again.
The One and Done Pick: Charles Howell, III

The DraftKings Top Ten

Jordan Spieth: $12,000
Henrik Stenson: $10,400
Rickie Fowler: $10,000
Russell Henley: $8,700
Charles Howell, III: $8,500
Rafa Cabrera Bello: $7,900
Patrick Reed: $7,700
Cameron Tringale: $7,400
Chris Stroud: $6,900
Johnson Wagner: $6,500  

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com and follow us on Twitter @FantasyGolfRep

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Fantasy Golf: The WGC Dell Match Play Preview

One thing I have learned from my own match play experience is that, while you can be successful as the scrappy scrambler who gets up and down from everywhere, it is mentally exhausting playing that role against a guy who can bomb it past you off the tee. What you learn in a hurry is that it ain't the drive that kills you (though that gets pretty fucking demoralizing), it's the huge advantage on the second shot. 

Let's say you hit it 270 yards off the tee (#failingdriver #sad) and you're playing a guy who hits it 300. So on a 450 yard par 4 you've got 180 yards in for your second shot while he's only got 150. That sucks but it's not even the worst of it. For you, that's probably a two club difference - maybe your 5-iron to your 7-iron but remember that the guy you're playing kills it so from 150 yards he's only hitting a 9-iron. Now keep doing that over and over again for four hours and see how your psyche holds-up. By the 15th hole, you're thinking "I've got to do something big here . . . holy fucking shit I just shanked it into the face of the fairway bunker." (Of course that's just a hypothetical).    


As with all theories I pitch on the Fantasy Golf Report, I've already done three minutes worth of research to prove that this one applies to golf at the highest level. Five of your last six WGC Match Play finalists have been mashers. Jason Day won in 2014 and 2016 with Rory McIlroy taking the 2015 title. The last two runner-up were Louis Oosthuizen and Gary Woodland which means that we haven't had a true grinder make it to the final since Victor Dubuisson in 2014 and he had to get up and down from everywhere (and I mean everywhere) to pull that off. 


You can't fully appreciate the tight turning radius
of the new Escalade until you're trying to go 90
degrees off the side of the road into a tree. 
So prodigious length will be one of our guiding principles this week along with the other well known fact about match play which is that Americans suck at it. Forget the most recent Ryder Cup as that was only the third time we've won the damn thing in the last eleven tries despite having arguably the greatest player of all-time and getting to pick and set-up the course half the time. The results in this event have been similarly bad with only four out of the last sixteen finalists coming from the U.S. since you know who tried to film the worst Escalade commercial ever.* 

So that's how we're playing it. Heavy on the Euros along with a couple of American long ball hitters and a couple others with Ryder Cup pedigree like Snedeker and Zach Johnson. If anything, the new group play format which they stole from soccer (more Euro bullshit - why not just make them play with their feet and give them the king? Just give them the king!!!) only benefits the long hitters even more because it reduces the chances of them getting blitzed out of the first round by a hot putting slap hitter like Russell Knox. 

Rory's our pick as of right now but oh golly does he have a tough road with Gary Woodland and Emiliano Grillo in his group and then potential match-ups that could include Brandt Snedeker in the Round of 16 and Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton or Rafa Cabrera Bello in the quarterfinals.** Compare that to Group 11 with Danny Willett, Knox, Bill Haas and K.T. Kim who are about as intimidating as four dudes rolling into an Applebee's parking lot with Tupac blasting out of their Kia Soul. (With those two cracks, I've absolutely guaranteed Knox's place in the final four). 

For some inexplicable reason, DraftKings didn't produce a game for the Match Play so, as far as I can tell, we're just left with PGATour.com's lame bracket challenge (#failingPGATour.com #sad) and whatever you can generate out of that with your own crew (ugh so much work . . . thanks DraftKings. A-holes). Anyway, to the extent you're looking for some guidance, here's what I have to offer:  

The One and Done Pick: Rory McIlroy
A search for "Hot Euro" led
us to Michelle Lewin who
is of course Venezuelan. 


The Group Winners

1. Dustin Johnson
2. Rory McIlroy
3. Jason Day
4. Ross Fisher
5. Jordan Spieth
6. Chris Wood
7. Jon Rahm
8. Francesco Molinari
9. Kevin Kisner
10. Rafa Cabrera Bello
11. Bill Haas
12. Paul Casey
13. Thomas Pieters
14. J.B. Holmes
15. Brandt Snedeker
16. Zach Johnson

From there, here's how I see it shaking-out (my apologies for the shoddy graphics but I'm just a caveman).


Round of 16
Quarters
Semis
Final
Winner





D. Johnson





D. Johnson



Z. Johnson






Molinari


Kisner





Molinari



Molinari







Pieters

Spieth





Casey



Casey






Pieters


Pieters





Pieters



Fisher








McIlroy
McIlroy





McIlroy



Snedeker






McIlroy


Cabrera Bello





Rahm



Rahm







McIlroy

C. Wood





Wood



Haas






Holmes


Holmes





Holmes



Day






Footnotes

And two of those finalists were Hunter Mahan in 2012 and 2013 when they used to treat this event like an infomercial for The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain by playing that stupid resort course that only he, Luke Donald and Paul Casey liked (enough said). 

** That Rory pick is probably going to change. Not just due to the tough road he has but more so because my picks have been awful this year and I need a dark horse winner to help me catch-up to the field (#failingFGR #sad).  

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com and follow us on Twitter @FantasyGolfRep