Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Fantasy Golf: The BMW Championship Preview

The angry man's travel diary theme continues this week as I begin writing this preview after a typically harrowing drive to some godforsaken part of Long Island, a place I visit periodically when I feel my bitterness and sarcasm beginning to wane. Right off the bat, Waze can fuck all the way off for guiding me to an exit off the New Jersey Turnpike that was closed for construction and then rerouting me to the Cross Bronx Expressway which is basically 30 minutes of Grand Theft Auto come to life but you get no weapons unless you brought your own. Which I didn't.

I finally arrived to discover I had booked a room at the only chain hotel in America that will not be serving a free breakfast tomorrow. I was reminded, however, that there is a coffee maker ("cool . . . is there also a toilet?). Oh yeah, my room has a window with a view of the hallway* and the ceiling in the bathroom is only 6 feet high so you feel like you're on the set of Being John Malkovich. (Nice recommendation Rock). At least the pool is open and there are no bodies floating in it. Yet. 
 
TWEET OF THE WEEK

My god we're just going to keep digging the pit of stupidity deeper and deeper until we run out of new bottoms aren't we?



GOLF ANALYSIS THAT CAN CURE COVID AND DEWORM A GOAT

Bad news - good news last week in my ongoing pursuit of my first one and done fantasy golf title. The bad news was that I switched my pick from Cameron Smith to Adam Scott who opened with a 67 that put him in the top ten and then shot 75 on Friday as about sixty-five players passed him on his way to missing the cut. Then Smith shot 60 on Saturday. Suffice it to say, I couldn't watch. The good news was that the only successful pick of the week was by some guy named Larry who I'm crushing by $3M so no ground was lost. I know you are all quite relieved.  

On to this week. The feeling around these parts is that the pros are going to absolutely shred Caves Valley. At least that was the feeling shared with me by some clowns I ate lunch with a few weeks ago who were all wearing matching Caves Valley shirts at a father-son tournament that was not being held at Caves Valley. "Hey I have a question . . . do you guys belong to Caves Valley?"

I've played Caves a handful of times (oh who's the douche now?) and it's a really really nice golf course set on a lovely piece of property north of the Baltimore that most people know and love from The Wire and the movie version of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears where they decided to just blow the city the fuck up even though it's Denver that gets bombed in the book. Baltimore . . . the city you blow-up in a movie when you want the audience to go "eh." (Is he actually going to start writing about golf at some point?)  

This is the PGA Tour's first trip to Caves so we have no history on which to rely and you know what that means. Hunches. Let's get the easy one out of the way first. Cam Smith is the best player I have left (I think) so he's my pick over the likes of Sam Burns, Billy Horschel and Sugar Shane Lowry. As a consolation prize, however, I'm putting all of those guys in my top ten. They're welcome.

There is a lot of temptation to stay on the Jon Rahm train but it feels like Justin Thomas is due so I'm changing it up. Louis Oosthuizen should be well rested after his week off and he's arguably the second best player in the world right now. As for Scottie Scheffler, I'm just picking him from now until he wins.

The sleeper field is deep with the likes of Si Woo Kim, Mackenzie Hughes and Marc Leishman but I'm going with Branden Grace because he's the kind of guy you pick the week after he misses the cut the week following the week he finishes tied for 2nd. If that makes sense. 

One and Done Pick: Cameron Smith
There a few courses northeast
of the city where this look would
be just another face in the crowd.

Other Guy I'd Pick: Justin Thomas

Sleeper Pick: Branden Grace

DraftKings Top Ten Values


Justin Thomas

$10,600

Louis Oosthuizen

$9,600

Cameron Smith

$9,500

Scottie Scheffler

$8,900

Corey Conners

$8,600

Sam Burns

$8,300

Shane Lowry

$7,900

Billy Horschel

$7,400

Charley Hoffman

$7,000

Branden Grace

$6,800


Footnote

* I stared at that window to the hallway for a longtime before realizing that it used to be a window to the outside overlooking the pool until they just went and built an interior hallway over it. It's like how in Poltergeist . . .  "YOU SON OF A BITCH YOU LEFT THE BODIES AND YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!!!"

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com

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