Northern Trust Chalk Bomb 💣💣💣

The Northern Trust

Welcome into the home stretch and our last (mostly full) field event of the 2017-2018 season. This almost feels like a major with basically 90ish of the top 100 golfers in the world playing this week on a course that we have very limited data on. Trying to figure out exactly how to build a course fit model is super tricky because we only have 3 events of data, nothing in the last 3 years, and the course has both been remodeled since 2014 AND they are using a different routing (it's a 27 hole course) then they used in the previous tournaments. BUT, a couple things that we can take away from the data of 2010/2014 are that putting really, really matters here...which is both interesting and troubling. It's interesting because while it always accounts for a large hunk of scoring, it was even more extreme in both 10' & 14'. If you look at the results from 14' you'll see that every single guy that finished in the top 14 gained AT LEAST 2.4 strokes putting for the event, every single one. Then let's look at strokes gained off the tee....12 of the top 15 guys gained less than 1.32 total strokes off the tee. For many of the elite guys it's pretty routine for them to gain a full stroke per round off the tee! So now the troubling part is that predicting good putting performances are prettay, prettay, prettay tough.

We'll try our best in the 10 facts section, but I think the following graphic from FNGC kind of says it all: (ball striking is strokes gained OTT+APP, short game is strokes gained ARG + Putting)

Head to Head Matchups & Information

This is something I've been incorporating more & more into my weekly analysis, & is absolutely critical when trying to value one guy against another. 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. It almost always ends up being a great clue as to where the sharp money is & what the books were expecting. Not a ton of interesting lines this week but a couple are standing out (& I disagree w/ several....the two we highlighted last week were both easy wins):For whatever reason the books are fairly low on Molinari this week as he's a decent dog to Rahm and a pickem again Spieth. I'm a Rahm apologist but it's hard to see this course really setting up well for him when the driver is the least important club in the bag this week. Rahm does have better bent/poa splits than Molinari but it's hard to not take a +125 moneyline on a guy that *only* has 4 top 6 finishes his last 5 tries.Triple line analysis! So Day & Rose are both -130 against Tiger, but Day is -130 against Rose. There's a couple ways to look at this: 1. If your bullish on Day, then the -130 line against Tiger is your best value. Day will be extremely popular this week, and probably rightfully so...he's the best putter in the world and the only thing that has really held him back is his approach game which he's now gained strokes in 4 straight. The knock on Tiger is that he does most of his best putting on bermuda, though he still gains strokes on poa. Rose is having the best putting year of his career and the only thing that held him back at the PGA was his approach game which is generally his strength. I do like the value of Tiger at +110 against Rose this week with the off the tee game being limited.I think a lot of people may be surprised by this line but if you've been paying attention this year you shouldn't be. Webb has transformed himself from one of the worst putters on tour to one of the best. He ranks near the top of every putting category as well short game and approach. Any course that gives Webb the option to not have to hit driver he's played really well at this year (Honda (5th), Valspar (8th), Players (1st), US Open (10th), British (12th), Wyndham (2nd)). Tommy on the other hand is top 10 in almost every driving stat and is an average at best putter. Webb also happens to be 200 cheaper on DK.A couple good value lines, Adam Scott is $300 more expensive than Cantlay on DK, yet Cantlay is the -130 head to head fav. Adam has played well here in the past with a 9th & 15th place finish but as you probably already know, he's a really bad putter coming off his best putting performance since the 2017 Players. Cantlay isn't the best putter either, but he at least has a slightly positive baseline and gained strokes across the board at the PGA.Another value line according to the books, but one that certainly surprised me. Hideki's ball striking is certainly back as he hit 83% of his greens last week and shot in the 60's all 4 rounds. BUT, on Friday while I was at the tournament I watched him on the practice green for like an hour after his round grinding on his putting and experimenting with left hand low...certainly not encouraging for a course where you need to putt well (BTW he lost half a stroke per round putting last week). All Snedeker did was shoot 59 and gain strokes in every category for the week. It's been an up & down year for the vet but he very quietly has 4 top 8 finishes in his last 8 tries. And he is obviously one of the best putters on tour year in and year out.I'm guessing that Casey is getting the course history bump as neither player has finished higher than 28th the last two months. By all accounts this will be the lowest Casey has been owned in quite some time and he certainly boast one of the best long term scoring averages in the field.Ole Lou cut me deep at the PGA, as he had been playing great leading up to the event then WD'ed literally 5 min before his tee time, I'm not bitter though. I do think there's some value on Xander this week as he has some of the best putting splits in the field while Louis has a slightly negative split. Not to mention if the back is still bothering Lou it could obviously affect his play. 

THE Chalk Bomb

In what might be the most straight forward chalk bomb of the year, I'm simply looking for someone that both depends on a lot of their scoring from the driver, and has a poor short game/putter. There are actually several choices but the highest projected owned one has the following stats:He is #2 in the field in strokes gained off the tee, yet is 104th in strokes gained around the greens and 82nd in strokes gained putting his last 24 rounds. His strokes gained trends from FNGC says it all:If you want to break it down another way, he's 10th worst in the field as far as average putts per round the last 6 weeks, and is dead fucking last in the field in average putts per round for the last calendar year....even worse than Adam Scott and Scott Piercy! Our friends over at Fansharesports.com have this guy projected as the 9th most heavily owned guy:Gary, your the chalk bomb! (not sure if this pic counts as hitting out of the native area)

10 Facts So You Don't Have to Draw David Like One Of Your French Girls

(Gonna try to slice and dice the putting as many ways as possible)

1. Last 50 rounds your strokes gained putting leaders on both FAST, POA greens are: 1. Walker 2. Stallings 3. Day 4. Hadwin 5. Phil 6. CT Pan 7. Kim 8. Spieth 9. Harman 10. Hoff 11. X 12. DJ2. So technically speaking the greens are a slight mix of (mostly) Poa and bent, so when we combine results for last 50 rounds of fast poa +bent: 1. Spieth 2. ZJ 3. Day 4. Reed 5. X 6. Harman 7. Harry English 8. Kuch 9. DJ 10. Putnam 11. Chez 12. Kisner 13. Rahm 14. Hadwin3. Top 10 guys that have the biggest positive putting splits on Poa/bent vs other surfaces: 1. Duncan 2. Dahmen 3. Stallings 4. Kim 5. Finau 6. Lahiri 7. Harkins 8. Koepka 9. Tway 10. Hatton4. Top 10 guys on ALL fast greens: 1. Kuch 2. Webb 3. Koepka 4. X 5. Noren 6. Oost 7. Hossler 8. Snedeker 9. Putnam 10. Chez5. Bottom 10 guys for strokes gained putting on fast bent/poa last 50 rounds: 1. List 2. Dufner 3. Palmer 4. Steele 5. Molinari 6. Benny An 7. Kokrak 8. HV3 9. Dahmen 10. Burgoon6. Top 10 guys in putts per round the last 6 weeks: 1. Kim 2. Kiz 3. Gay 4. Lovemark 5. Dahmen 6. Cam Smith 7. Palmer 8. Schwartzel 9. JB Holmes 10. Molinari7. Top 10 guys in putts per round the last calendar year: 1. Day 2. Gay 3. Hay 4. JK 3. Walker 4. Koepka 5. JT 6. Na 7. Phil 8. Tiger 9. Cam Smith 10. Webb8. Top 10 guys in strokes gained putting for the 2018 PGA season: 1. Day 2. Phil 3. Noren 4. Rose 5. Hossler 6. Grillo 7. Kiz 8. Webb 9. Harman 10. DJ9. Your strokes gained tee to green leaders in 2014: 1. Hideki 2. Rose 3. Scott 4. Kuch 5. Webb (he lost 3.57 strokes putting in 14') 6. Reed 7. Schwartzel 8. ZJ 9. Bubba 10. Cink10. Top 10 in my model sub 8k: 1. Cink 2. Na 3. Dahmen 4. Tway 5. CT Pan 6. Hoffman 7. Poulter 8. Cook 9. RBC 10. Streelman

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), Albatross ($12), or Up-and-Down ($55) 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