Harbour Town

Saddest Masters of All Time

Well, thats really not true, it was an incredible tournament and one of the best weekend leader boards at a major that I can remember. A couple thoughts:

-After everyone went ahead & awarded the green jacket to Spieth on Thursday, he damn near proved them right after playing like shit Friday & most of Saturday.-Apparently the driver is still an issue for Tiger as he really put himself in some bad spots with his tee shots & dunked two into the drink on 12. Had he been in contention on Sunday it would have no doubt been the greatest Sunday leaderboard in Masters history.-I guess since everyone is required to give a Patrick Reed hot take, here's mine: I personally talked to a college teammate of Reed's for about half an hour while in Augusta, and he literally couldn't have spoken more poorly of him. I had no idea about his family stuff until it was on every front page of ESPN this past weekend. It sounds pretty shitty of him but perhaps he has his reasons...as we've seen in the past, parents can do crazy things when lots of money is involved. But to me, if your boys that were supposed to be your teammates universally talk poorly of you, well, thats all I need to know. The crowd had every reason to pull for Reed (UGA ties, Augusta ties, Ryder Cup Hero) and it still didn't....in this case, the groupthink is spot on. Side note....is this not the oddest mix of humans ever pictured below? Monogrammed Mrs. Reed, Champ, Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari, & just off picture rapper Two-Chains...so odd. 

THE Chalk Bomb

So we have a bit of a curveball being thrown to us right now as the guy that was projected to be the highest owned player in the field, Adam Hadwin, has withdrawn (you're welcome if you just found out). He was projected pretty universally to be 25-30%+ owned which is going to have a major impact on guys close to him in salary. This is great because the two guys I was eyeing anyways should absorb quite a bit of the ownership vacuum that has to go somewhere! So at some point we all just start to lose it....whether its age, health, to many extended dry spells, whatever. One of our favorite features of fantasynational.com is that it lets you truly visualize the data in an easy to comprehend way. As a trader I love looking at the slope of a players strokes gained total chart to visualize how his overall game is trending. Below is said chart of our chalk bomb this week: 

I tried to add some drawings on the chart to make it even easier to tell, but as you can see the strokes gained total line very clearly trends up until about the middle of 2016, flattens, then once we reach the white line you can see the strokes gained total line actually starts to trend down indicating that the player is consistently losing strokes event after event. Now to be fair, if your playing this guy, & I project that he will be 20%+, 1/5th of the field is playing him solely on course history, which it is no doubt elite. BUT, consider this:-His strokes gained approach at the RBC by year (cuz he sure as hell ain't gaining strokes off the tee):2013: 8.42014: 8.72015: 9.42016: 5.82017: 2.5   I spy a trend, just like his strokes gained total above.-At last years tournament, he gained 6.2 strokes around the green, his highest total in 5! years-Last year he also gained 6.4 strokes putting for the week, his 2nd highest total for the year. -Then we have this......his average strokes gained for the last 5, 10, & 20 events. He consistently gains strokes putting.....& thats about it. 

Look I'm a believer in course history, but when your 100% dependent on having the best chipping and putting rounds in the field to maintain that, your just not playing the odds at that point, especially when you can leverage this knowledge against 20% of the field. Not all course history is created equal! Luke Donald, you're the chalk bomb! 

10 Facts so You Don't Throw Yourself Off a Cliff on Sunday Like This Guy!

1. Top 10 strokes gained tee to green guys from last years RBC (the real course history imho) 1. Kokrak (lost 7 strokes putting in 2 rounds, MC'ed) 2. Poulter 3. Schniederjans 4. Palmer 5. Cauley 6. Bryan 7. Furyk (also putted poorly) 8. Sneds 9. Kuch 10. Molinari2. Top 10 strokes gained putting leaders from last year: 1. Blixt 2. DL3 3. Collins 4. Gay 5. Lee 6. Donald 7. Saunders 8. Harman 9. Cantlay 10. Kang3. Little bit of a repeat here but its a key distinction & a couple names that I like, 10 top guys that lost strokes putting but gained the most strokes T2G last year: 1. Kokrak 2. Poulter 3. Palmer 4. Cauley 5. Furyk 6. Sneds 7. Kuch 8. Molinari 9. Leishman 10. CH34. Top 5 'sneaky' course history guys (no Luke your not on this list): 1. McGirt 2. Hoffman 3. Webb 4. Sabbatini 5. Na5. This is a nice change of pace for course 'fit' this week. Strokes gained putting & strokes gained around the green actually do well here when most weeks its just noisy as all hell. 6. Last year the winner & 2nd place (Bryan & Donald) both lost strokes off the tee for the tournament. 7. The last 8 years the tournament has been played, only 6 players have lost strokes off the tee & finished in the top 5 (Luke did it twice)8. Top 10 guys strokes gained around the green last 24 rounds: 1. Baddeley 2. Na 3. Laird 4. Sabbatini 5. List 6. Leishman 7. Gay 8. Moore 9. Cauley 10. Schniederjans9. If you still love Luke Donald, give your boy Brian Gay a look. He's basically the same player except he has pretty consistently gained strokes approach as well as an elite short game & finished 6th last year that you can get at 1/10th the ownership. 10. Top 10 strokes gained putting on Bermuda the last 50 rounds: 1. Blixt 2. Gay 3. Kim 4. Chalmers 5. Donald 6. Kisner 7. Harman 8. Leishman 9. Senden 10. Malnati 

NEW CONTEST ALERT!

So we've got WAY to many listeners to not be seeing Goalby up at the top of the leaderboards every week in the DFS streets. If anyone finishes in the top 5 of the Birdie ($3), Drive the Green ($5), or Club Twirl ($44) on DraftKings, we'll send you a TJ hat, AND if you can take one down with the TJ logo at the top when it's all said & done, we'll send you a brand new TaylorMade driver on us! Literally all you have to do is change your avatar & screenshot us those green screens! Bome! Just use the link here to change your avatar: TourJunkies Avatar