Since this is a BIG MONEY week, we’ll have new research and notes every day this week with updated info and links, so….
SEASON LONG CONTEST vs MAYO
If you want a change of pace for Fantasy Golf I HAVE A SOLUTION!!!!! Fan Team has a season-long contest starting at THE PLAYERS with €5K to first and €25K in the prize pool. You draft a team of 10 for the season and play six players per week from now through the Wyndham Championship. You can make a few add/drops throughout the season and can completely blow it up and redraft once during the year. I suggest you read all the rules however. It’s a really cool format and it allows you to take me one week after week for only $25 with over $5K going to first place.
It’s available to Euros, Canadians, and Americans in like half of the states. Plus, if use code “MMN” at deposit, you’ll get a FREE ENTRY into their €10K PLAYERS DFS contest too. So, deposit $25 using code “MMN” and take a shot at a free roll for THE PLAYERS. You can even use Fantasy National to make your Fan Team DFS picks now too. It’s really a no brainer.
PLAY AT FAN TEAM USING CODE “MMN” IN USA
PLAY AT FAN TEAM USING CODE “MMN” REST OF WORLD
I’m going to recuirt some of the show regualrs to play in the season long contest with me, and you can see who you beat. I won’t reveal my entrie squad but here’s who I’m rolling out at Sawgrass along with my Captian and Underdog player. (You select your captian, and your underdog is your lowest priced player. They both score 1.25x). Scoring is almost the same as DK scoring if you were wondering.
Remember, you’re drafting a team for the rest of the year so you need to take a handful of players who are going to play in the jabroni events.
If, for whatever reason, your FREE DFS ticket doesn’t show up right away, feel free to harass Fan Team Golf on Twitter and they’ll make sure it’s there.
PLAYERS EARLY LEANS
Morikawa — It’s the same simple formula for Morikawa: Don’t putt yourself out of the tournament and become the favourite to win. That’s essentially what happened last year in his PLAYERS debut. Morikawa gained +6.8 strokes ball striking in 2021 while losing -4.3 between chipping and putting. The classic “Morikawa doesn’t win” formula. But we’ve seen him figure it out enough times over rtes past two years to believe he can do it again this week. We just saw this at Riviera. In 2021, Morikawa lost an outrageous -7.6 SG:PUTT and gained +6.8 this season. In the event following the -7.6 last year, he traveled to The Concession and gained +4.0 SG: PUTT on his way to winning a WGC event. The biggest difference between Morikawa and the rest of the $10K+ range on DraftKings is his driving. While he smacks it shorter than the rest of the group, his accuracy is significantly better which will allow him to hit driver whenever he likes without having to club down to gain accuracy. Nothing about this game needs to change this week while others will have to adapt to a new game plan. At a course where one errant drive will have you catching an early flight out of Jacksonville, Morikawa will hold a massive advantage with the big stick. Since the beginning of 2021, he’s gained on the field in driving accuracy in 19 of 20 events.
Watch: DraftKings Milly Maker Picks w/ Rasa + Tambo
Brooks — The rumors of Brooks’ awful play are fairly overblown. He’s missed the cut at higher profile events so far this year, yet holds a T3 and T16 in two of his past three starts. Cleaning up in ball striking in both starts. Additionally, both his missed cuts in 2022 have come at Riviera and Torrey Pines, two long courses that have almost nothing in common with Sawgrass. Expect Brooks to come in with much lower ownership than many of the names around him win the $8,000 range, yet possess the winning upside you need in your lineup. He’d made each of his past four cuts at Sawgrass, never lost strokes putting in any of his five career starts, and has an immaculate track record at the superstar corollary course TPC Southwind. He’d never missed at cut at the now defunct St. Jude Classic with T2 and T3 finishes, and has a win and a runner up since the course started to be used as a WGC event.
CASH GIVEAWAYS
Per usual during big weeks, I’m offering up cash giveaways in exchange for some audio ratings and reviews. Discoverability is nearly impossible on Apple and Spotify but the more ratings and reviews we can get the more people will find the show, which in turn means more shows!
Leave a 5-star rating and review for the Pat Mayo Experience audio podcast (Sub to it too btw), and leave your twitter handle or email in the review so I can contact you if you win. Even if you’ve done this before, update your old one or leave a new one to get in draw. I’m giving three lucky people $100. We’ll announce the winners on Wednesdays LIVE show.
PME on APPLE PODCASTS
PME on SPOTIFY
I’ll also be giving away almost $2K in tickets and such on Twitter this week too. I’ll make sure to embed them in the daily newsletter in case you carte not to follow but want some free shit.
Crossover Courses
On the Southwind front from the Brooks section, since it became a WGC it’s really the only water logged course on TOUR where all the top players actually play.
Here are the averages from the WGC years.
For the lower priced guys, I threw together a bunch is similar events that rarely feature any of the top end players. I’ve added a longer list to start to show some over the sleeper type options to consider.
The events included are: Sony Open, AMEX (Stadium Course), Heritage, Wyndham, and RSM (Seaside Course)
I’ll have all these together with other course speicifc stats later this week when I run a Mixed Condition Model. In the meantime, you can fuck around on Fantasy National and customize the stats anyway you like.
TOOLS: 20% Off Fantasy National Tools & Stats
2022 PLAYERS Quick Notes
Field
Field: 144 Players
Cut: Top 65 and Ties after 36 Holes
First Tee: Thursday, March. 10
Defending Champion: Justin Thomas
Tiger Woods, Harris English, Phil Mickelson, and Steve Stricker are all eligible to play but will not be in the field.
Jason Day is listed in the field despite last second withdrawal at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Day’s mother passed earlier in the week but he is expected to play.
UPDATE
: Bryson DeChambeau is expect to return for competitive golf for the first time since injuring himself at the Saudi Invitational in early February. Bryson said he was around 90% last week yet wanted to inch closer to full health for this event. Who knows how true that is?BRYSON WD!!!!!Then there’s the biggest mystery of the week, Webb Simpson. The 2018 PLAYERS champion has only played once in 2022, a T61 at the Sony Open in early January. Webb was entered into the WM Phoenix Open Super Bowl week, but pulled out before the event started… and hasn’t been seen since. Webb dealt with a neck issue for most of the 2021 season, yet, because the PGA Tour (again, legacy ALL CAPS) isn’t the NFL, no one actually has to disclose their injury status. I’ve dug in, and by that I mean I’ve sent some DMs, and all I could gather was Webb was seriously injured before Phoenix and was going to miss significant time. It’s been over a month, and he’s set to return this week, so presumably he feels better.
Key Stats
Strokes Gained: Approach
Par 4s Gained
Bogey Avoidance
Fairways GainedCourse
Course: TPC Sawgrass
Yardage: 7,189
Par: 72
Greens: TifEagle bermudagrass overseeded with Poa Trivialis/velvet bentgrassPast Winners
2021: Justin Thomas -14
2019: Rory McIlroy -16
2018: Webb Simpson -18
2017: Si Woo Kim -10
2016: Jason Day -15
2015: Rickie Fowler -12
2014: Martin Kaymer -13
2013: Tiger Woods -13
PLAYERS PME CONTENT HUB + SCHEDULE
RELEASED: Reasearch, Course Notes, and Stats
RELEASED: DraftKings Milly Maker Picks w/ Rasa + Tambo
RELEASED: Play the Best Plays Lineup w/ Rasa + Tambo
MONDAY: Bets and ONe & Done w/ Fienberg
TUESDAY: Play the Best Play Update w/ Rick
TUESDAY: Player By Player Breakdown w/ Rick
WEDNESDAY: Live Chat & Final Picks at 12pm ET w/ Tambo
THURSDAY: SHOWDOWN PICKS
FRIDAY: SHOWDOWN PICKS
FRIDAY: CUT SWEATS (Maybe)
All are available on the Audio Podcast feeds too, if that’s more your jam.
Oh, the DraftKings Listener’s league link is in the descripotion of all the shows as well, but since you’re all good people, and I want it to fill quickluy so they give us $100K guaranteed of RAKE FREE money at The Masters, I’ll just put it here.
PLAY: PME DK LISTENER’S LEAGUE
DRAFTKINGS STRATEGY
(From a guy who regularly sees a -100% ROI at this tournament)
There’s a lot of money up for grabs this week on DraftKings. The most we’ve seen all year. And the most we’re going to see until Augusta in a month. Since you’ll be partaking in the mayhem it’s always smart to reinforce some of the rules THE PLAYERS has taught us since moving to March from May in 2019.
It’s apt this tournament is held just outside of Jacksonville, as these leaderboards scream FLORIDA MAN. They’re insane. With the 17 water hazards and 88 bunkers scattered across the course, there’s a higher degree of variance at TPC Sawgrass than almost anywhere. PGA National is really its only rival.
And that’s not even factoring in the wind gusts or the lack of defined skill sets required to content. A lot of course are so long, a lack of distance off the tee ups the difficulty level for shorter smackers. Not at TPC Sawgrass. Yes, distance will be an advantage on the Par 5s and the longer Par 4s… if you’re not in the water. Even then, a we witnessed the game’s most prolific bomber, Bryson DeChambeau nickel and dime his way off the tee in 2021, taking a course management method with irons off the tee to ensure to found the short grass. Since distance plays less of a factor at Sawgrass than most PGA TOUR courses, the entire field actually has an opportunity to compete.
In 2019, of the top-six DraftKings scorers, four were priced $7,100 and below: Jim Furyk ($7,100 in 2019), Jhonattan Vegas ($6,100 in 2019), Brandt Snedeker ($6,900 in 2019) and Eddie Pepperell ($6,800 in 2019). In 2018, each of the top-seven DraftKings scorers were priced at $7,300 and below. It normalized a tad a year ago with only six of the Top nine DK scores coming in at $7,500 or below. Jon Rahm was the highest scoring player priced above $10,000 and he was 19th in DraftKings points for the week.
Watch: DraftKings Milly Maker Picks w/ Rasa + Tambo
Point being, don’t fear discomfort in your DraftKings lineups this week.
Since picking a winner is more random than most weeks at The PLAYERS, lean on the one thing that is predictable for DraftKings lineups: Ownership Projections. See who the masses are gravitating toward and just find a soft spot or two in the projections around those players and throw them in your lineups. It certainly won’t guarantee success, but it’s a way to give yourself a path to victory in a large DraftKings tournament.
Here were the scoring leaders and their ownership in 2021 in the $20 DraftKings Millionaire Maker…
$9,900 Justin Thomas 17.0%
$7,200 Lee Westwood 3.3%
$9,700 Bryson DeChambeau 13.3%
$8,400 Paul Casey 10.4%
$6,900 Brian Harman 4.5%
$7,500 Sergio Garcia 6.8%
$7,000 Talor Gooch 0.8%
$7,400 Corey Conners 13.2%
$6,800 Charley Hoffman 2.7%
$8,200 Matthew Fitzpatrick 9.4%
Here are the results of the highest owned players…
$9,100 Tony Finau 24.1% (Missed Cut)
$9,500 Webb Simpson 22.2% (Missed Cut)
$9,200 Patrick Cantlay 21.8% (Missed Cut)
$7,700 Joaquin Niemann 19.8% (T29)
$9,400 Collin Morikawa 19.5% (T41)
$7,600 Will Zalatoris 19.3% (T21)
$7,900 Tommy Fleetwood 17.6% (Missed Cut)
Obviously, going into the week, everyone, myself included thought these were excellent plays. It shouldn’t surprise you massive group think doesn’t revolve around players no likes. If you knew who was definitely going to win and finish at the top of the leaderboard, you wouldn’t be reading this and I wouldn’t be writing this. We’d own private islands with all our winnings. Stacked fields like this and Major championships require you embrace game theory over your instincts because there’s such little difference between the players in each range. We can debate who is better between Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa (it’s Morkiawa btw) all we want, but it’s probably smarter to admit they have about the same probability to actually win this week. Just look at the entire $9,000 range from the 2021 PLAYERS Championship on DraftKings.
$9,900 Justin Thomas 17.0%
$9,700 Bryson DeChambeau 13.3%
$9,500 Webb Simpson 22.2%
$9,400 Collin Morikawa 19.5%
$9,300 Viktor Hovland 16.6%
$9,200 Patrick Cantlay 21.8%
$9,100 Tony Finau 24.1%
$9,000 Patrick Reed 6.4%
When you can identify the most popular plays, which we pretty close last year, it allows you to understand how others are building their rosters and what you need to do be different when most of the options are so similar. It would be different at a weaker field tournament when the ranges of golfers are mixed and matched with long term talent and the flavor du jour. That’s not the case at these type of events. And, you can see, using this one isolated example, that it wasn’t necessary to blindly use Patrick Reed just because he was by far the lowest owned — although, it didn’t hurt to do that as he was the third highest scoring player on this list; it was to notice Webb and Finau were standouts in terms of ownership, meaning, they were very likely to be paired together in a lot of lineups (along with either Cantlay or Morikawa as a trio) which left far fewer teams building around Bryson and Thomas. It’s not like they were unowned. That’s usually the misconception about discussing ownership. You’re not looking for six players with zero ownership, what you want in giant field DraftKings tournaments, is a more unique path to the top where you have to duke it out with far fewer people.
If you had some combination Webb/Morikawa/Cantlay/Finau, along with the majority of other entries, even if those guys did well, you’re still battling with half of the other 118,000 lineups and you need to have the perfect other four players on your roster. With a more unique build, you severely reduce your path to the top if you’re correct, and it will give you more leeway with your other four players since you’re competing with fewer lineups for the top prize.
BOGEY AVOIDANCE
15 qualified players cashed at least a share of a Top 10 paycheck at THE PLAYERS last season (Victor Perez finish T-9, but played mainly in Europe for the season): 7 of them were Top 20 in bogey avoidance for the season (Thomas, Rahm, Bryson, Berger, Casey, Conners, Lowry)
Some notable players that are Top 20 in bogey avoidance over their past 50 rounds (entering API):
3. Mito Pereira (trailing only Rahm and Cantlay, odds: +150000 … 10 straight measured tournaments where he produced strong SG:APP or SG:P numbers)
11. Seamus Power (ahead of JT and Xander, odds: +5000 … gained off the tee and was a net positive in SG:APP in his past two tournaments despite missing both cuts, finished top-15 in his five events prior)
19. Sergio Garcia (just ahead of DJ and Hovland, odds: +50000 … Has gained off the tee in 5 straight, finished T-9 at THE PLAYERS last season despite his worst showing off the tee in 3 years)
These numbers are pre-API, which may throw Power and Seamus down the list after their play at Bay Hill
Here’s a full rolling report for Bogey Avoidance
7 of the remaining 8 had a top-12 finish on their resume in the two months leading into THE PLAYERS (Chucky 3 sticks was the lone exception: he flashed some form at API the week prior, but had otherwise been miserable … that’s an outlier to every rule)
Some notable players that have a recent top-12 finish (stats prior to API)
Keith Mitchell (T-9 at Honda and T-12 at Pebble, THE PLAYERS odds: +12000)
— Hasn’t lost off the tee since June
Max Homa (T-10 at Genesis, THE PLAYERS odds: +8000)
— Over 3 strokes gained with the putter in 3 of his past 4 (after bleeding over a stroke in 8 of 9 prior … maybe he’s figured it out?)
Alex Noren (T-6 at Phoenix, THE PLAYERS odds: +12000)
— Top 20 here in 2017 and 2018
— SG:APP (in order) over his past 5: +0.1, +1.2, +1.3, +3.5, +5.4
Joel Dahmen (T-6 at Pebble, THE PLAYERS odds: +12000)
— In his 6 career rounds at THE PLAYERS, he’s picked up 8 strokes on the field in approach
COURSE
The research show is already out. I switched it up and invited John Rathouz on to talk about the course. John caddied for Seamus Power a few years back at The PLAYERS so he knows the grounds very well. Well, much better than me.
WATCH: PLAYERS RESEARCH SHOW
He did pose this question about the lack of greens books. I don’t know how to quantfy it to even use it to predict anything, but I think he’s on to something with it.
ANDERCURSED
So you know before anyone else…
See ya tomorrow
— PM