As the DFS wins continue to pour in for me — and for the entire FTN Discord — our trust and belief in the GPP Scores grow. Their mission is simple — identify who is under-rostered (positive GPP Score) and who is over-rostered (negative GPP Score) by the field. From there, we simply play the under-rostered guys and fade the over-rostered guys.
Why does this work so well? Because PGA DFS is not like other DFS sports — the range of outcomes for most players is heavily skewed toward what we’d consider failure (like a missed cut) instead of what we’d consider a smashing success (like a top-five finish). Fading popular players who project well feels uncomfortable and unnecessarily risky at times, but as long as they’re more likely to fail than succeed, it’s typically the better choice. This is especially true because our ability to take down tournaments depends not only on our players doing well, but everyone else’s players doing poorly. In other words, we want to embrace the discomfort and leverage those in the industry who are trying to “play it safe” in a sport that offers no such thing.
Enter: Hot takes. Each hot take can be thought of as a potential path to GPP glory.
Course Fit: The 2024 RBC Heritage
Famous for its tight, winding fairways, this gorgeous golf course comes with a predictably strong CF Model. Accuracy is king, but short games and putting are also more predictive than usual. As is typically the case, the increased emphasis on accuracy off the tee means iron play is less predictive than usual (you can’t take advantage of strong iron play if you’re in the trees instead of the fairway).
Despite their slightly negative weights, both distance and iron play are both still plenty predictive this week, so don’t treat them like you can ignore weaknesses in those areas.
Hot Takes for the 2024 RBC Heritage
1. Sahith Theegala is the best play on the slate
You know the deal by now — Theegala’s days of inaccurate driving are behind him. A year ago, this would have been a poor fit. Now, it’s an excellent one. He’s accurate off the tee and we know how good he is on and around the greens. Theegala is fth in our:
Win odds
Top-five odds
Top-10 odds
That’s a steal under $9k if I’ve ever seen one and he’s fairly contrarian.
2. Byeong Hun An is the best play under $8k
There’s a trio of players surrounding $8k that all project extremely well. Russell Henley, Si Woo Kim and Byeong Hun An all have great projections across the board, but only one of them is contrarian. Heck, only one of them isn’t super chalky — An. If we’re splitting hairs, Si Woo projects the best of the three, but look how close these distributions are to one another:
One rule I will set in our optimizer is that if I’m using Si Woo (or Henley), I want to also be using Benny An. This combats the popularity of Si Woo and Henley a bit by making sure I have at least one extremely unique combination of players involving the chalk in this range. This can be accomplished like so:
3. Keegan Bradley is a GPP Winner
On Pro v Pro, I mentioned one instance where our model maybe falls a touch short — when great players go through a slump of sorts, then show us a sign that they’re back. This is the case for Keegan this week. His iron play has been below Keegan’s standard all season, but he just had his best approach performance since his Travelers Championship victory last June.
Now, this isn’t to say that I’m guaranteeing he will play well by any stretch. But remember, we love Keegan’s volatility. He is nearly twice as likely to win as the more popular Sungjae Im, despite Sungjae projecting ever-so-slightly better by expected strokes gained.
If The Masters was a sign of things to come for Keegan, he won’t be this cheap and contrarian much longer.
4. Rory McIlroy is the best spend-up
In truth, I’m pretty torn on what to do at the top of the board. Scottie is miles ahead of everyone else in projection and therefore has the highest GPP Score despite his price tag. That said, you can’t comfortably fit Scottie if you also want Theegala and Benny An. At sub-10%, Rory is quite close to Scottie’s GPP Score, so that’s my current lean.
There are a few things working in Rory’s favor — The Masters is behind him. Last year, his game really caught stride once the pressure of the career Grand Slam was behind him, and this season could be the same story. Second, he’s a better fit for the course than people will give him credit for because in addition to his gargantuan length off the tee, he’s also one of the most accurate.
Most of all though, this is a no-cut event, which means a player’s floor and ceiling combination is even more dependent on his ability to make birdies and eagles than usual — both of which Rory excels at. For example, if he finishes tenth, there’s a good chance he’ll be in the top five in DraftKings points.
All of which is to say… Rory should not be under 10% rostered. He just shouldn’t — ever.
Final Thoughts
At the Houston Open, Scottie was $13k, but then there was an enormous dropoff in both talent and price. This time around, there isn’t as big of a dropoff in talent and the no-cut aspect of the event means he doesn’t have the additional edge of being far more likely than anyone else to make the cut. Based on the overall strength of lineups with and without him, I think I will be fading him. However, I also think most people will agree with this approach, which means he could end up much lower in rostership than we currently expect (similar to how we nailed his rostership projection in Round 4):
Pretty cool ownership results for Round 4 @FTNDaily
r^2 for the $25 Final Round Finale: 95.8% (!!!) r^2 for the $200 Driver (SE): 91.0%
