Daily Fantasy Golf Early Thoughts- RBC Canadian Open
The OPEN Championship(the OPEN, the British OPEN), whatever you call it, wrapped up early yesterday afternoon with Jordan Spieth hoisting the Claret Jug. Not only was it his 11th career win and third Major Championship but Spieth, before the age of 24, has already completed the third leg of the career Grand Slam. He will have a shot to become the youngest and only the sixth player in history to complete the Grand Slam in two weeks at the PGA Championship.
Before we see the top players in the world battle it out for the seasons fourth major we travel to Canada for the annual RBC Canadian Open. This year the event will be held at Glen Abbey Golf Club where it was also held the last two years. It was also held here in 2013, 2008, 2005 and 2000. On the cheatsheet this week I will only be looking at the results from 2016, 2015 and 2013.
When looking at the field, it is a bit on the weak side but headlined by the #1 player in the world in Dustin Johnson. He is coming off a very disappointing 77 in the final round of the OPEN last week but comes back to Glen Abbey with some tremendous course history finishing runner-up in his last two trips here. After DJ, the field thins out quite a bit(to be expected the week after a major across the pond) as only six of the Top 50 players in the world are traveling to the home of the Great One(Wayne Gretzky) and of course snow shoes. Matt Kuchar, coming off his runner-up finish to Jordan Spieth at the OPEN, is also in the field and has had a ton of success in Canada. He has made seven cuts in 10 Canadian Opens including a T9, T7, and T2 in his last three trips to Glen Abbey.
The Course
Glen Abbey is a Par 72 setup that stretches 7,253 yards and is one of the easier setups the players will see this season. The last three winning scores here have been -12, -17, and -16. It is a standard setup with four Par 3's, four Par 5's and 11 Par 4's. There isn't really anything that stands out with the Par 3's as they all fall between 156 and 202 yards. The Par 4's are also pretty average with distances ranging from 414 to 485 yards. The Par 5's are where golfers can really make up some good scores as they all fall between 524 and 558 yards and should all be reachable by almost the entire field. Looking at the cheatsheet and the hole by hole stats tab, we see that Par 5 scoring does in fact correlate highly as there have been 49.6%, 45.4% and 45.5% of the entire tournaments birdies scored on Par 5's over the last three trips to Glen Abbey. You might even see some Canadian Geese this week!
Key Stats
The fairways here at Glen Abbey are narrow and hard to hit and combined with the doglegs that make it imperative to hit the right spots, I will be leaning on Strokes Gained: Off the Tee with emphasis on Driving Accuracy. I will also be weighing Par 5 Scoring and Par 5 Birdie or Better % quite high in my model as a large majority of the scoring comes from these four holes. Golfers will want to be at least two under per day on the Par 5's to have a chance to contending on Sunday. After golfers get in the right position off the tee it will also be very important to nail down the approach shots to have a shot at birdie. The greens here are smaller than average which not only makes GIR important but also Proximity. As a whole stat, i will be looking closely at Strokes Gained: Approach.
Contests
The big tournament on DraftKings this week is the $33 Dogleg with its $100K guaranteed payout to first place. As compared to the Milli maker, the payout structure is much flatter as 2nd still takes home a cool $50K while everyone inside the Top 10 will walk home with at least $3K. The other big Max Entry contest this week is the $8 Best Ball that pays out $25K to first, $15K to 2nd and $10K to 3rd place. My favorite contest and the one I play religiously is the 20-max $4 Fore. I am not a person with anywhere near the time to enter 150 lineups so I absolutely love the 20 max which is right in my wheelhouse. For a max 480 investment, it pays out $10K to 1st, $7,500 to 2nd, and $5K to 3rd and rounding out the Top 10 it pays at least $1.5K. I don't play a ton of cash games(I probably should) but when I do I like playing the single entry contests and my favorite cash strategy is playing Head to Head contests.
On FanDuel, I enjoy playing their 100 player contests(3 entry max), Head to Head contests and for tournaments I like the $4 Eagle, $1 Flop Shot(5 entry max) and a mix of single entry contests at different price levels.
If you have any questions please contact me anytime through Twitter(@Jager_Bombs9) or join me in the DFSR chatroom daily. You can also check out my weekly article over at DFSR which is released on Tuesday. And stay tuned for my DraftKings Weekend PGA picks which I post here on blog on Friday afternoon as the cut approaches.
LINK TO THE DFS PGA CHEATSHEET FOR THE RBC CANADIAN OPEN
