This week’s CJ CUP @ SUMMIT is being hosted by a new course. One that we’ve never seen in competition.
Without any course history to lean on, how do we find any standout value plays for DFS? I think the two most obvious routes is to look at some course-fit stats or look through a closer lens and dive into the recent stats. See who is playing well over the last few months.
Let’s start with that recent performance and then we will take a peak at some course-fit data by looking at past performance on bentgrass greens.
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Tee-to-Green Momentum
Heading to a new course this week, it’s hard to know the specifics of which stats will be most predictive. That’s a hard enough task to decipher when you have decades of data.
However, strokes gained tee-to-green is always one of the most useful stats to target. Let’s focus on recent play in our query and look at the top tee-to-green performers over the last two months.
Using the NBC Sports Edge Driver tool we can find who is gaining the most strokes tee-to-green, over the last two months:
Aaron Wise
Sungjae Im
Sam Burns
Justin Thomas
Max Homa
Viktor Hovland
Shane Lowry
Talor Gooch
Si Woo Kim
Harold Varner III
Louis Oosthuizen
Tony Finau
Cameron Smith
Kevin Na
K.H. Lee
Aaron Wise ($20): The youngster arrives with the best tee-to-green stats over the last two months but he sits at the bottom of the salary board this week on Yahoo. This looks like an easy plug-and-play option unless you want to get contrarian.
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Bentgrass Putting
From listening to the early-week pressers, it seems that golfers are expecting a shootout this week. When you get a low-scoring affair, the ability to catch fire with the flat stick becomes very important.
“I think there’s going to be quite a few birdies out here, but there’s nothing wrong with that and hopefully we can make a few more than everyone else.” -Collin Morikawa
“You know, at least from what I remember it’s all pretty right in front of you and it’s not too much tricked up or hidden and I would think the scores would be pretty low this week.” -Justin Thomas
Let’s look at the last two seasons of data and see what golfers lead the field when it comes to strokes gained putting on bentgrass greens:
Dustin Johnson
Justin Rose
Alex Noren
Ian Poulter
Harris English
Cameron Smith
Cameron Tringale
Kevin Na
Jason Kokrak
Charl Schwartzel
Cam Davis
Xander Schauffele
Adam Scott
Brian Harman
Abraham Ancer
Alex Noren ($21): He is priced one dollar above the minimum salary this week on Yahoo. As affordable as that sounds, he may actually get overlooked because there are a lot of viable options at the minimum ($20). For Noren, he arrives with five straight top 30s, worldwide. While some are trying to shake off the rust from the short offseason, Noren has stayed active by playing two events over on the European Tour. His ability to catch fire with the putter makes him a prime candidate to fire off a day-low round or at least flirt with the low round of the day at some point this week.
Hopefully, these stats will give you some names to dive into when it comes to researching your final selections this week over at Yahoo!