Memorial

The Memorial 

So I've been reading a great book recently, 'Berlin Diary,' by William Shirer. It has absolutely nothing to do with daily fantasy golf, but there's an important lesson I think we can takeaway. The book is an incredible first hand, day to day account of the lead up to WWII from the perspective of Shirer, an American who was one of the lead CBS radio reporters in Berlin. I'm an admitted WWII history junkie, and it's always fascinated and troubled me, how seemingly one man could galvanize an entire country into committing the terrible atrocities that Hitler very clearly laid out in Mien Kampf. One of many reasons I enjoy reading and studying about the event is I think it's important to learn and understand why and how these things happen, so we hopefully don't repeat the same mistakes in the future.A realization I came to while reading the book was that so often we look BACKWARDS at history & it seems so orderly, so predicable, when it's really anything but. 'Berlin Diary' is such a unique view of what Berlin (& Europe overall) looked like as history was happening, not as we view it now. Even as late as April 1940 the 'war' was anything but certain to take place (Britain & France had declared war some 7 months prior when Germany invaded Poland, but zero battles happened in those 7 months after). The Third Reich's desperation for commodities and materials being the main motivation for the invasions in Norway, and eventually Russia. When you read the day to day perspective of Shirer you see so many moments in 1938-1941 that could have completely changed the war, for both sides, if very small changes in plans/attacks/timing had happened, making any end result extremely difficult to predict. We face a very similar problem in projecting results in golf which already has a high level of variance. We generally know what works well, or what you need to do at certain courses to play well, but once the tournament starts random shit happens!  A nice example from the Players Championship: we all 'knew' that driving accuracy was extremely important, and the winner, Webb Simpson, lead the field in driving accuracy. BUT heading into the week, Webb was ranked 34th in the field in driving accuracy meaning he wasn't even in the top 20%! What clicked that week to allow him to hit 82% of his fairways? I don't know, Webb probably doesn't even know, but he did it. Knowing what to look for in player picks is the 'backwards' looking version of history, whats much harder is trying to figure out how/why someone will perform well or terrible in the 'day to day' current view of history. It's so difficult that in my opinion the game theory/ownership side of golf is & always will be the most important weapon we have against the masses. Other games like DFS football/baseball/basketball/hockey are all about having the right correlations, golf is completely different & that's exactly what makes it so damn fun. If you don't think golf is random as hell, take a ride down this youtube wormhole: Lucky Golf Shots

Finding Value & Information in Head to Head Matchups

Two weeks ago we introduced this new segment & had some great feedback, if you missed the last two weeks, this is something I've been incorporating more & more into my weekly analysis. Essentially we look at the head to head matchups posted on mybookie to see where the books disagree with the DFS world and where we can find value. Some weeks the DFS world & the books are in almost complete agreement, but most of the time there are clear differences of opinion that we can take advantage of. Last week we highlighted Justin Rose being a -140 favorite over Webb Simpson (who had elite course history & recent form). It ended up being a great clue as to where the sharp money was & what the books were expecting. So lets look at a couple that are standing out this week:

There really aren't a ton of interesting prices this week. Everyone 10k & up is pretty much a pick em' against anyone else with ever so slight leans. This one was the only mildly interesting line as this week Day is $1200 more expensive than Spieth, and Day is certainly in better form, but If Spieth could just steal Jason Day's putter for one tournament he'd probably win by 10 strokes. This is your weekly reminder that Spieth has now lost strokes putting 10 of his last 12 events & 6 straight, while Day is the exact opposite gaining strokes putting in 10 of his last 11 events. 

This is the most interesting line of the week to me. Tiger is always going to attract the eyes of the common bettor which generally gives you a worse price on him (his outright to win odds are better than Rickie, which makes this line even more interesting), & I guess you can throw in the fact that he's won this event more times than Rickie Fowler has total PGA wins! Yet here we are, Rickie is one of the bigger betting favorites of the week. I'm scratching my head on this one, as the only logical answer I can come up with is that Tiger hits slightly less fairways than Rickie, and Rickie did finish 2nd here last year (but had missed his last 3 cuts before that). Rickie is also a favorite over Stenson, perhaps the books know something we don't?

Here we have the course horse vs Mr. Recent Form. Kuch's history is about as good as it ever gets, while Grillo has 3 top 10's in his last 5 tries. I was still surprised to see that Grillo was the favorite though, as Kuch always has a high floor and at least here appears to have a high ceiling as well. Other noteable prices:Hideki vs Watson is a pickemAdam Scott -125 v Charl +105Hadwin -125 v Stanley +105X vs ZJ is a pickemIf any of these prices look good to you, check out our boys over at mybookie who have really upped their golf offerings thanks in large part to David & Pat. They now offer everything from first round leader bets, matchups, top 10's, futures, and of course outrights to win. Just click the button below and use promo code:'TOURJUNKIES' for a 50% deposit bonus!

THE Chalk Bomb

We're at another accuracy course this week, and while the past leader boards have had their share of big hitters, this course generally plays more favorably to the guys with the total packages. My chalk bomb choices are fairly limited this week as we have such a good field that the ownership should be pretty evenly spread out. Because every form of accuracy popped for me this week, I basically started my search with guys that both short & long term have had trouble hitting fairways. Of guys above 7k, our chalk bomb this week is 3rd to last in driving accuracy over the last 6 events, & 10th worse over the course of the last year. His recent form is ok, but certainly not great as a 10th place finish is his best in the last 6 events, and everything is kind of trending in the wrong direction as you can see from the average strokes gained summary from FNGC:At 20% ownership & plenty of other sub 8% guys all around him with better fits & recent form, I'll take a hard pass on this most recent fellow pod bro for the week. Tony Finau, your the chalk bomb! 

David will Strangle You if You Don't Heed These 10 Facts

1.  Bottom 10 (relative) Bentgrass putters in the field this week (in order of terribleness): 1. JJ Spaun, the brah just really should give up on bentgrass 2. Brian Gay 3. Chesson Hadley 4. Ollie Schniederjans 5. Billy Horschel 6. Ryan Moore 7. Grayson Murray 8. Chris Kirk 9. Patton Kizzire 10. Lucas Glover2. Top 10 (relative) Bentgrass putters in the field this week (in order of awesomeness): 1. Lingmerth (would have never guessed that) 2. Fowler (perhaps that's baked into the H2H price) 3. Danny Lee 4. Anirban Lahiri 5. Kevin Tway 6. Robert Streb 7. Russell Henley 8. KUCH 9. Speef (maybe this will be the week he proves to everyone that he's an elite putter 3 times a year) 10. Haas3. Top 10 T2G leaders from last years Memorial: 1. Duf 2. Phil 3. Summerhays 4. HV3 5. KUCH 6. Lovemark 7. Fowler 8. Perez 9. Speef 10. Kiz4. Jason Dufner, Hideki, & Tiger have all won this event while losing strokes putting for the week, absolutely incredible5. Strokes gained approach leaders from last week that are playing this week: 1. Rose 2. Na 3. Kodaira 4. Oosthuizen 5. Grillo 6. Knox 7. Sharma 8. Kirk 9. McGirt 10. Hadley6. Top 10 in driving accuracy the last 6 events: 1. Kenny Perry (obviously all on the Senior tour) 2. Gay 3. Stenson 4. Stuard 5. Zalatoris 6. Armour 7. Stanley 8. Horschel 9. Cejka 10. Hideki (another surprise)7. Bottom 10 in driving accuracy the last 6 events (guys you care about): 1. Cam Smith 2. Rory! 3. Finau 4. JT 5. Kokrak 6. Haas 7. Cantlay 8. Watney 9. Uihlein 10. Tway8. Last 3 events your strokes gained approach leaders are: 1. Moore 2. Na 3. Stenson 4. Niemann 5. Rose 6. Grillo 7. Bradley 8. Leishman 9. Kodaira 10. Tway9.  Guys that have hit the most fairways AT Muirfield (warning some guys will be very small sample, like 2 rounds!): 1. Armour 2. Stenson 3. Huh 4. Stuard 5. Moore 6. Henley 7. Lingmerth 8. Uihlein 9. ZJ 10.Streelman10. Guys that have hit the least fairways AT Muirfield (same warning): 1. Ollie 2. Vegas 3. Si Woo 4. JB Holmes 5. Murray 6. Hadley 7. Hoffman 8. CH3 9. List 10. Grace

WIN a FREE M2 DRIVER!

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 Drive the Green ($5), Birdie ($3), 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