brucegray19722@gmail.com 
Hello everybody, and welcome back to ‘Tee 2 Green,’ a new article that I will be producing for Win Daily Sports weekly to give some extra insight into the DFS world of golf. My focus will be to discuss, decipher and dissect some of my preferred targets throughout the various price ranges, and I will always provide my opinion with a data-intensive outlook that you can see first-hand if you use the weekly model that I provide free of charge. You can find that here.
Course – Port Royal Golf Course
6,828 Yards – Par 71 – Greens: Bermuda
Welcome to what will be one of the weakest fields of the year! One-hundred and thirty-two players are set to tee it up at the Bermuda Championship, and even if you added in a superstar like Jason Day to the mix, the field would still be considered flawed.
Port Royal Golf Course is positioned right on the Atlantic Ocean coastline. We can get into what that means from a strategy standpoint shortly, but this is the second shortest venue on the PGA Tour – behind only Pebble Beach. It should go without saying that the track plays as straightforward as the yardage might indicate, but it gets even more emphasized when you look at the construction of the property. Most of the yardage we see on the surface is baked into three of the four par-threes, with those three holes ranking as your most difficult. Each will feature between a 26.1 and 32.5% bogey or worse rate, and the yardage stretches between 213 to 235 yards. When we look at the top-10 finishers over the past two seasons, strokes gained on par threes have been the most impactful. That does flip when looking at just cut-makers, but to me, that shows earning shots on the par-fours and fives will be most crucial in making the cut, while being able to separate from the pack on par threes will give golfers the push they need to compete for the title.
The last part of the equation is the weather that I talked about to open this discussion, but I am not going to get overly concerned with pinpointing a specific tee time. Sure, it might end up coming into play marginally, but we aren’t talking about a more volatile location where winds will come and go. I’ll instead weigh wind in a model as a whole and go in with the mindset that you will always have to deal with steady breezes on a coastal course.
- Strokes Gained Total In Moderate to Severe Wind (12.5%) – Maybe there is an AM/PM split advantage, but I generally hate diving that deep into things. We are looking at 20+ MPH during all starting times, so it is not as if a group will have nothing to worry about. If anything, it could present a flip in my exposure the other way if the masses start flooding towards a given perceived advantage.
- Strokes Gained Total On Courses Under 7,200 Yards (12.5%) – I wanted to get a strong correlation of strokes gained data with information pertinent to this week’s venue, and I love how easily quantifable this metric is when building a model
- Weighted Slow Bermuda (10%) – That incorporates a mixture of stats on how golfers have performed during their career when given greens that mimic these. That doesn’t include just putting to derive a value, although the flat stick was heavily included for 40% of the aggregate.
- Weighted Par-Three (10%) – I looked at par-three average, bogey avoidance and various iron proximity numbers – mostly those of over 200 yards.
- Weighted Par-Four (17.5%) – That is a combination of holes from 350-400, 400-450 and overall par-four totals.
- Par-Five Birdie or Better (10%) – I do think you could raise that metric slightly, but these are rather simple and short. It wouldn’t shock me if someone caught fire on them that normally doesn’t play par-fives well.
- Total Driving + GIR (15%) – The total driving was put together from a heavy split in favor of accuracy over distance and then I took that number and did a very even distribution between GIR and total driving.
- Proximity From 0-150 Yards (12.5%) – Most of the varying distances outside of that group are on the par-threes and fives, which already has been looked into marginally in other areas.
High-Priced DraftKings Players ($10,000+)
Matthew Fitzpatrick (11,000) – I’m way lower on the $9,000 range this week than most, which means I will find myself in various builds where I have exposure to a ton of the $10,000+ options. There is nothing wrong with getting unique if you are playing a large-field MME, but I believe the five players in this zone for the Bermuda Championship are a step above the rest. Matthew Fitzpatrick ranks seventh overall in my model and has a slew of impressive statistics worth mentioning, including grading fourth in this field on slow Bermuda greens and inside the top-five when it comes to short courses and windy conditions over his past 50 rounds.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout ($10,700) – Christiaan Bezuidenhout is priced where he should be, according to my model. I know that sounds weird to say, but he ranks inside the top-16 in five of the eight categories I ran, which includes not finishing outside of 59th anywhere. He has been a little worse on slow Bermuda if we are looking at just his putting splits, but it is a marginal drop-off for someone that plays his best golf in windy conditions.
Patrick Reed ($10,400) – Patrick Reed is looking like the contrarian pivot of the group. My early projections have him just above 10%. The current form has not been good since returning from his battle with pneumonia that placed him in the hospital, which is why he is GPP-only, but I wouldn’t put it past him getting himself into contention. The field is weak. He is the only American inside of the top-100 playing this tournament. And I am willing to take a shot on his upside if it means I am getting him as the odd man out.
Seamus Power ($10,200) – There is a lot to like about Seamus Power. I’ve been saying it even before he went on this run a few months ago that I believe he is a borderline elite golfer from a statistical perspective, and this is the perfect course for him to continue his hot run.
How I rank the group – It is extremely close, so I don’t want to make it sound as if someone is exponentially better than the other, but when considering ownership and price tag for GPPs, I would rank them : 1. Patrick Reed, 2. Christiaan Bezuidenhout, 3. Seamus Power, 4. Matthew Fitzpatrick and 5. Mito Periera.
$9,000 Range
Chad Ramey ($9,500) – Chad Ramey checks a ton of boxes. He ranks second in his young career when it comes to strokes gained approach and is an excellent driver of the ball that can score with the best of them on par-fives. If you want to get super contrarian, I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibilities to start a build with him or someone in the $8,000s, but that is more of an MME-type roster over what you would do in a single-entry or three-max. Ramey belongs in this range and works as the first or second man into your lineup.
Favorite Pivot: Matthias Schwab ($9,700) – If you want to use the argument that Matthias Schwab is overpriced, I am in agreement, but I don’t think he is any more so than whatever name you want to mention in this group. The only difference is that he is going to come at a fraction of the popularity. The mindset behind him is purely large-field GPPs, but I don’t mind throwing him into lineups with a ton of entries because of the leverage he creates if he stays sub-five percent
$8,000 Range
Sahith Theegala ($8,800) – Sahith Theegala looks like a nice bargain across the board after burning the industry at the Shriners. I love his ability to scramble and avoid making bogey. We see those two strengths in my model with his first-place grade in bogey avoidance and 2nd-place number in scrambling. That is a good combination to possess if the wind turns violent, and he continues to be a name to monitor because of what I said on my ‘Be The Number’ podcast about finally being over a wrist injury that derailed his career for a bit.
Guido Migliozzi ($8,700) – I have been happy to see Guido Migliozzi’s ownership projection steadily going in decline since yesterday. On Monday, there was a period when he was the second-most popular choice on the board, but that seems to be behind us now with an ownership rank that places him as a fringe top-10 choice. Migliozzi ranks third in my weighted par-four category, ninth in windy conditions and eighth at courses under 7,200 yards.
Stephan Jaeger ($8,400) – GPP-only, but Stephan Jaeger was the top point scorer on the Korn Ferry Tour last year. Yes, you read that correctly. Not everyone’s darling Mito Periera! Some of my math is lower on him because of the three tournaments I have in my system this year, but this is the perfect venue for him to provide a big result because of his bogey avoidance and short iron proximity numbers.
Ryan Armour ($8,100) – Back-to-back eighth-place showings at Port Royal Golf Course during the two years the event has been held at the venue, and while I do worry slightly about the form he is bringing into the week, the stats are where I would want them to be if I was going to ignore the fact that he has posted no top-50s in his last four starts. Armour earned his 13th-place rank in my model from how he stacked up statistically.
Other Thoughts: David Lipsky ($8,000) and Scott Stallings ($8,600) both carry GPP appeal.
$7,000 Range
Stacked With Talent – I did this breakdown on the ‘Live Show’ with Sia Nejad and Joel Schreck, but I want to pinpoint the golfers again that fit three sets of criteria. In 10 of the past 13 tournaments, my model was higher than DraftKings on the golfer that won the event. In all 13 of those, it was higher in some iteration when it came to rank versus ownership. And in 12 of the 13, the player was ranked somewhere between first to 18th. I will stretch this out towards the top-30 for the sake of this post, but these are the names that fit all three marks as of Tuesday night: Nick Hardy ($7,900), Alex Smalley ($7,600), Nick Taylor ($7,400), Matthew NeSmith ($7,300, I have some hesitation), Lee Hodges ($7,300), Aaron Rai ($7,300), Harry Hall ($7,200), Brian Stuard ($7,100), Bo Hoag ($7,000), Kramer Hickok ($7,000).
Additional Thoughts: Here is a list of other $7,000 golfers that missed the mark versus ownership but still graded as a value versus DraftKIngs: Mark Hubbard ($7,900), Russell Knox ($7,700), Hank Lebioda ($7,500), Austin Eckroat ($7,500), Jason Dufner ($7,200), David Hearn ($7,100), Anirban Lahiri ($7,100), Beau Hossler ($7,000), Vincent Whaley ($7,000). As you can tell, the group is stacked with potential plays.
$6,000 Range
Cameron Percy ($6,900) – Cameron Percy is priced too cheaply. I don’t love his upside, but I think we can get a top-30 or 40 out of him. Maybe that makes him a better cash play than anything else, but there are playable options if you do find yourself down in the $6,000s, starting with Percy who could be a $7,000+ choice just as easily.
Additional Dart Throws To Consider: Camilo Villegas ($6,800), Kurt Kitayama ($6,800), Chase Seiffert ($6,600), Austin Smotherman ($6,600), Sean O’Hair ($6,600), Dylan Wu ($6,500), Jon Pak ($6,500) and David Lingmerth ($6,200)
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