HSBC Chalk Bomb 💣💣💣

WGC HSBC

I don't know why but this picture really made me laugh. Lets talk strategy for a moment since this time of year we don't have much else to discuss. If I've made one major mistake repeatedly in DFS golf it's trying to 'over fit' course fit, especially on limited playing data. To use last week as the prime example, Nine Bridges played extremely difficult in 2017, and pretty easy last week. We should have seen this coming since the course didn't even play at 7200 yards (very short for PGA tour players) AND it was a par 72. A lot of other PGA tour courses that play at this distance are generally par 70's and turn the two shortest par 5's into hard par 4's (should really be a 4 shot difference if you think about it). Once the wind let down over the weekend we saw a boat load of low 60's being fired and if it would have been calm on Thursday and Friday morning we probably would have seen someone get close to 25 under. So what did we really learn? After crunching a bunch of numbers, the only thing I can definitely say is that Nine Bridges is a distance course (funny how several of the short courses on tour play like that). Of the top 20 finishers, 75% average over 296 yards per drive over the last calendar year which puts you in the top 50% on tour, and a lot of the short knockers like me & Pat finished in the bottom half of the field. Again the big takeaway is that if you over fit your course analysis your putting a ton of pressure on yourself to 'get it exactly right.' The CJ Cup was a great example of what can happen....Brooks, who 'only' plays well on hard courses dominates this easy course, Woodland, who only plays well on easy courses and definitely not hard short game courses dominates, Jason Day obviously should have played well if short game prowess was important, but Scott Piercy/Adam Scott are on the exact opposite end of that spectrum and they also played well. JJ Spaun who is basically the worst bentgrass putter on tour, played great at this all bentgrass course this week. So what do all these guys have in common though? Yep, distance. If that was literally the only thing you weighted in a model last week you probably crushed it. #DistanceAlwaysMattersLots of non-PGA Tour guys playing this week, so strokes gained data is fairly useless this event especially considering we don't get any historical course strokes gained data. Take Thomas Pieters for example this week....if you look at his last 4 strokes gained events he ranks #4 in the field for strokes gained approach, ok. But if you look closely you'll realize that you have to go all the way back to the HONDA....in February! just to get his last 12 rounds of strokes gained data. If you look at a traditional metric, like GIR, you'll realize that the strokes gained data is very misleading and he's actually one of the worst guys in the field for approach shots, so be careful out there. 

Head to Head Matchups & Information

Comparing H2H matchups is absolutely critical when trying to understand value between players. Essentially, we look at the H2H matchups posted on MyBookie to see where the books disagree with the DFS pricing in order to find value. Most of the time there are clear differences of opinion that we can take advantage of when it comes to pricing and value. It usually ends up being a great clue as to where the sharp money is landing & what the books are expecting. Let's dig in!

I was surprised to see that Poulter was only a -120 favorite over X considering Poulter has pretty good history here (6th & 30th) and X has been mediocre at best his last two starts finishing 25th & 48th in very limited field events as well as finishing 46th here last year. 

Really clear value this week with Cantlay as he's $200 cheaper than Noren but has implied odds to finish higher almost 20% of the time. Cantlay also played well here last year with a 15th in his first try. Both of these guys will be under-owed this week with 7 of the top 9 priced golfers being very popular.

Really juicy matchup here with two of the hotter golfers on the planet. Let me share these two guys recent form with you, Tony Finau has finished top 10 in 7 of his last 11 events, Tommy Fleetwood has finished top 11 in his last 4 starts. Both will be extremely popular, and I think the books have it right giving Finau the slight edge. Everyone knows Tony as a bomber, but I don't think enough people really appreciate how many greens he hits week in & week out. I spent some extra time this week creating a model that weighed both greens in reg and the level of competition for the last year (weighted GIR 66% & field strength 33%). Both of these guys are in the top 6 in the entire field, Fleetwood is actually #1, Tony has the much better short game with both the putter & around the green.

Both of these guys have been ripping up the Euro tour for you pompous Americans that haven't been paying attention. Lucas has played in 6 events since the end of August, and in 5 of those he has finished in the top 9! Eddie, not to be outdone, has played in 9 events since the Scottish Open and finished top 9 in six of those! Lucas is the better driver of the ball and hits slightly more greens because of it, but Eddie is a much, much better putter that helps him to make up for being the shortest player priced above $6900. 

2018 was a mostly lost year for Matthew Fitzpatrick, but over the last month and a half he seems to have found something again as he won the European Masters for the second year in a row. Cam Smith has also being playing some of his best golf recently as he has 3 top 7 finishes in his last 6 events. Fitz is definitely the better ball striker and outside of the event that he's won back to back years this is the event that he has the best course history at. 

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THE Chalk Bomb

So using what we learned (again) from last week and keeping the course fit simple (approach/GIR/2nd shot course) lets see who has done poorly in those categories:-In his only attempt at Sheshan he hit 54.2% of his greens, 3rd lowest in the field for guys that have played the course #notgood-he happened to putt well his only time here and still only managed a 64th place finish-over the last calendar year this guy is also 3rd worst in the entire field for GIR's hit total! -over the sample of his entire career (85 strokes gained events), he loses strokes to the field in approach shots-on bentgrass greens he's 52nd in total strokes gained over his last 50 rounds...(outside of Tong Li) you'd have to go down to $6600 dollars to find someone that has done worse-on par 72 courses only 1 player above him in salary has gained less strokes than he has-he's a head to head underdog in his matchupOur friends over at Fansharesports.com have this guy projected at 12.4%, not very chalky I know, but I'm expecting him to come in higher than this (around 18-19%):

10 Bome Facts

1.  Top 10 for the custom model I created that weights both GIR & field strength: 1. Fleetwood 2. Cantlay 3. Rose 4. Adam Scott 5. Molinari 6. Finau 7. DJ 8. Casey 9. Stanley 10. Hideki2. Bottom 10 (relevant guys): 1. Cam Smith 2. Matt Wallace 3. Chris Wood 4. Bjork 5. Pepperell 6. Suri 7. Reed 8. Pieters 9. Na 10. Olesen3. Your top 10 in GIR hit here at Sheshan: 1. Rory 2. Poulter 3. Knox 4. Sullivan 5. Stanley 6. Harman 7. Casey 8. Fitzpatrick 9. Grillo 10. Rose4. Top 10 in the course history model: 1.DJ 2. Rose 3. Fitz 4. Hatton 5. Casey 6. Fleetwood 7. Rafa 8. Brooks 9. Grace 10. Stanley5. Since we're at a par 72, your top par 5 scorers the last year are: 1. Finau 2. Rose 3. DJ 4. Fleetwood 5. Cantlay 6. Suri 7. Sullivan 8. Casey 9. Campillo 10. Koepka6. Most birdies per event at Sheshan: 1. Knox 2. DJ 3. Rory 4. Rose 5. Stanley 6. Olesen 7. Fox 8. Barn Rat 9. Pieters 10. Cantlay7. Top 10 guys in my model this week sub 8k: 1. John Catlin 2. Chez 3. Billy Ho 4. Snedeker 5. Scott Vincent 6. Stanley 7. Eddie Pepp 8. Suri 9. Pavan 10. Bjerregaard8. 4 guys (Koepka, DJ, Rose, Rory) are all plus moneylines to finish top 10 this week, then theirs a huge drop off to Day at +150 which is interesting to note9. Top 10 strokes gained putting on bentgrass last 50 rounds *(small sample size warning plus issues we discussed earlier) 1. Olesen 2. Grillo 3. Day 4. Billy Ho 5. Noren 6. Sullivan 7. Snedeker 8. Harman 9. RCB 10. X10. Remember that almost 50% of players are going to use the full salary cap, with a limited field I always like to leave at minimum $100 on the table to make sure that my lineups are at least different from half the field. 

Win a FREE M4 Driver!

The Problem: Not enough Tour Junkies Avatars on the DFS StreetsThe Solution: DB & Pat cough up $$$ for a Brand New, Custom M4 Driver from TaylorMade How do I win the Driver? Step 1 - Click Here to download the Avatar of your choice.Step 2 - Change your DraftKings AvatarStep 3 - Win either the "Tee to Green" ($6), "Albatross" ($12), or "Club Twirl" ($44) with the TJ Avatar.Step 4 - Screenshot your win and share with the Tour Junkies! #Bome*If you finish Top 5 in the same DK contests, share it and we'll send you a TJ Hat from the Shop.