The Masters Round One Recap

So after watching about ten hours of Masters coverage at "work," I found myself watching it again on Thursday night and thought, "don't just sit here, write something dickhead." So here we go with a spiffy little recap of Round 1. 

• Charley Hoffman basically lapped the field with his 65 which is cool because I picked him as one of my DraftKings value plays. You know what isn't cool. The fact that I then failed to insert him into any of my many line-ups. I blame the gummy bear I ate on Saturday that tasted like mosquito repellent.  

• The guy I actually did pick to win the whole thing, Jordan Spieth, hit five consecutive shots on the 15th hole, each one of which would've made me throw my club in the creek. If you're the one golf fan who didn't see it, he made a terrible decision to hit a high lofted wedge for his third shot, mis-hit and spun it back into the creek. Then for his fifth shot, he had 78 yards and announced that he was going to play an 88 yard shot due to the wind but then smoked a low bullet over the green. Then he hit a sad chip that almost went back into the creek. Then he hit an even sadder putt that bounced over a leaf and stopped eight feet from the hole. Then he lagged his triple bogey putt and made his second quad in the last twenty-two holes at Augusta.  

We're checking the archives
but this may be Ms. Massey's
Fantasy Golf Report debut.

• The British are coming. No that's not the name of Gemma Massey's next movie. It's a fact and one I almost nailed in the preview with Justin Rose, Paul Casey, Rory McIlroy, Tyrell Hatton and Lee Westwood in my top fifteen. Was it just a product of the Britishy conditions on Thursday or are these guys going to be in the mix on Sunday? I'm going with the latter and I'd look for Rose, Casey, McIlroy and either Matthew Fitzpatrick or Andy Sullivan to finish top ten with two of them contending.

• William McGirt is already one under through nine holes on Friday. This is important because when they write the Masters script, they generally only have one journeyman role available and right now that's McGirt or Charley Hoffman. Chuck better be ready to nail his Friday audition if he wants to stay in the show because Bill is going full Marlon Brando.

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

Fantasy Golf: The Masters Preview

Let's get one thing out of the way before we move on to the solemn business of previewing the preeminent tournament of the year. I just turned-down Orioles opening day tickets so I'd have the time to write this thing which in Baltimore is almost the equivalent of claiming that you ate a better crabcake somewhere else (almost). I did this for two reasons: (1) You. My readership of dozens. (You're welcome). And (2) because I'm blowing pretty much all of Tuesday playing golf and gambling on this tournament with a couple hundred clueless country club denizens rocking blue blazers and happy colored pants who "really like Phil's chances this year." (And I still won't win any damn money). 

(Editor's Note: This is the esteemed Masters preview so we're toning-down the jokes and the pictures. And we're going to avoid using the word "fuck." Fuck I just did it. Well then fuck it on toning down the pictures. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck).  

We're going to look at this from a couple different angles because the Masters is the one tournament that generates wagering interest beyond just picking one guy or trying to beat a bunch of computer models on DraftKings. So we're going to do both an overall ranking and a list of ten DraftKings value picks. But first, we actually did some RESEARCH!!! (I'm thrusting my index finger into the air as I say it) based on our hunch that Jordan Spieth has been fairly dominant at Augusta over the past few years. And as you might imagine, we were able to conjure-up and massage some data to support our hypothesis. (I really need to get into politics).

The following breakdown is fairly simple as it's just aggregate scoring over the past three seasons. There is one tweak, however, which is that, if a player missed the cut or did not play, we assigned him the score of a guy finishing around 40th so the data doesn't get distorted by what could have been one bad round.* The results are pretty convincing.

	2016	2015	2014	Total
Spieth	-2	-18	-5	-25
Rose	1	-14	1	-12
McIlroy	1	-12	E	-11
Matsuyama	E	-11	7	-4
Casey	-1	-9	7	-3
D. Johnson	-1	-9	7	-3
Westwood	-2	2	-1	-1
Day	1	-1	2	2
Oosthuizen	3	-4	3	2
Fowler	10	-6	-2	2
B. Watson	9	1	-8	2
Mickelson	10	-14	7	3
Hoffman	7	-8	7	6
Kuchar	6	2	-2	6
Holmes	-1	1	7	7

If my third grade level math is right, Spieth's scoring average over the last twelve rounds at Augusta is more than one shot lower than the next best guy and two shots lower than everyone but five other guys. Suffice it to say that arguably the world's best putter is pretty comfortable playing on and around arguably the world's best greens. So he's the mortal lock right? Not so fast my friends.

Dustin Johnson has won three tournaments in a row and, after nothing but middling performances at the Masters in his first five trips, he proved in 2015 (T6th) and 2016 (T4th) that he has started to figure-out Augusta in the same way that he seems to have figured-out every other damn golf course he's played since the middle of last summer. Then again, golf courses tend to get easier when you're leading the tour in driving distance and greens in regulation. The fact that he's ranked 29th in strokes gained putting is just silly business when you realize it puts him ten spots higher than Spieth. Sure seems like D.J. is a slam dunk pick this week.      

And despite all of the evidence pointing to this being D.J.'s year, we're still going with Spieth. We here at the Fantasy Golf Report have a long history of making compelling cases for players to win tournaments and then going in a different direction only to see the guy we made the case for get the win. Sooner or later that strategy is going to payoff and we plan to stick with it until it does. Besides, I just can't get past how dominant Spieth has been over the last three years and hey, I don't want to think I wasted fifteen minutes doing all of that research for nothing.   

In addition to Spieth and D.J., you also have my blessing to pick Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler or Phil Mickelson. Especially Rory who is going to win at least one green jacket in his career or Phil because the only thing that would make this Sunday more fun than Phil winning would be if you picked him to do it. I'd avoid Hideki Matsuyama (slumping), Jon Rahm (rookie), Paul Casey (choker) and Jason Day who we last saw in a rocky emotional state at the Match Play. Look for him to win one between 2018 and 2020. If you're up against it and need a defensible reach, go with Bubba. He has a tendency to play great when he's the forgotten man. (Though that's essentially what I said when I picked him last year and he finished tied for 37th). Anyway, here are fifteen guys we see finishing in and near the top ten.

I'm not sure this is helping my
press credential application.

The Masters Top Fifteen

1. Jordan Spieth
2. Dustin Johnson
3. Rory McIlroy
4. Justin Rose
5. Rickie Fowler
6. Paul Casey
7. Jon Rahm
8. Jason Day
9. Phil Mickelson
10. Bubba Watson
11. Matt Kuchar
12. Adam Scott
13. Louis Oosthuizen
14. Russell Henley
15. Tyrrell Hatton

Now for the interesting part. Let's go find us some values and for that, it's back to the aggregate scoring. A simple cross check against the DraftKings salaries reveals some bargains like Louis Oosthuizen ($8,100), Paul Casey ($7,800), Matt Kuchar ($7,400) and Lee Westwood ($7,200). I'm building rosters around guys like that along with the big guns (Spieth, D.J. and Rory) and then filling-in one of my two random foreign players that the guys in blue blazers and happy colored pants** have never heard of - Soren Kjeldsen and Hideto Tanihara. Listening to the haphazard pronunciation of those names after the seventh vodka tonic will surely be one of the highlights of the evening.

The DraftKings Fifteen 

Can I get that in a 44 regular?

Jordan Spieth: $11,500
Dustin Johnson: $11,300
Rory McIlroy: $10,600
Rickie Fowler: $9,300
Justin Rose: $9,200
Louis Oosthuizen: $8,100
Paul Casey; $7,800
Tyrrell Hatton: $7,600
Matt Kuchar: $7,400
Emiliano Grillo: $7,300
Lee Westwood: $7,200
Russell Henley: $7,200
Charley Hoffman: $7,100
Soren Kjeldsen: $6,500
Hideto Tanihara: $6,500

Footnote

* If I really wanted to take this seriously, I would've dug a little deeper into each player's last twelve rounds played but that seemed like a lot of work and remember, I'm just a caveman. 

** Just to be clear. I am one of those guys.

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

   

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. 

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.