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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.
Kapalua Plantation Course
7,596 Yards – Par 73 – Greens: Bermuda
To me, this is one of the most straightforward courses that we have on tour every season. There are pros and cons to that answer since I tend to like the ability to diversify my thought process from the masses, but 50-yard wide fairways highlight a venue where players are going to be able to do anything they want off the tee. Think of a birdie fest where the tour wants golfers to receive a start of the year present to reward their accomplishment from the season before.
It is worth noting that Kapalua is the only Par 73 that golfers play on tour each year. That, along with elevation, quiets the nearly 7,600-yard total that might appear jarring at first glance if you removed those two factors from the mix. I think distance is certainly weighable, but the fact that the top-six participants last year finished 25th, 17th, 7th, 31st, 12th and 32nd in distance off the tee during the event tells me that placing it into a model might do so more harm than good.
Instead, I would rather look at more course-specific stats since we get a unique layout. There are 11 par-fours. Eight are under 425 yards; the additional three play at least 520 yards. The four par-fives are the most accessible holes. Three of them yield a 48.7% birdie or better rate. The fifth hole is the most getable at 63.2%, and the grainy Bermuda surface can slow things down and provide some tricky lag putts when we consider that proximity is about 7-feet higher than players might expect. As always, you can listen to any of my podcasts to get a more in-depth breakdown, including the one I do weekly with Sia Nejad and Joel Schreck, where we handicap the entire show live at 5:00 pacific time on Tuesday – only at WinDaily Sports.
- Par-Five Birdie or Better (17.5%) & Birdie or Better (17.5%) – I realize 35% on scoring is a ton, but 34 of the 42 players last year were 11-under par or better. You will have to reach a minimum of 25-under to win this thing if winds don’t alter the event. In my opinion, we can’t afford to be underweight to either category when small margins are going to decide the winner.
- Pertinent Proximity Ranges (15%) – That gets us into 45.1% of approach shots when looking at the specific ranges from 0-100 and 200+. I don’t love leaving 50%+ of a quantifiable statistic on the table, but I found it to be a unique approach because it starts to hone in on where most of the scoring opportunities will present themselves. Sure, I might miss out on random chance between a yardage stretching between 100-125 yards, but proximity totals tend to be a faulty statistic when you aren’t building it out to mimic a course entirely. A golfer that can hit an iron from 99 yards doesn’t all of a sudden lose it when the distance goes to 101.
- Putting From 5-10 Feet (10%) – I prefer this route over three-putt percentage for two core reasons. And btw, I think you can use three-putt instead and be just fine, but 1. It separates my thought process marginally when most users will implement the alternative into their weights, but more importantly, these greens are wildly different from most stops where issues might arise. Often, problems come from speed issues where the ball rolls quickly past the hole, creating the break and speed being tough to figure out correctly coming back. We won’t have that situation here. Putting does seem to be easy from 5-10 feet for good putters, which shows why golfers that excel from that distance have found success in the past.
- Course Specific Par-Four (15%) – That incorporates 30% on scoring between 350-400 yards, 40% 400-450 and 30% 500+. Some notable top-seven golfers there were Reed, Xander, Leishman Spieth, Rahm and Thomas. That is every winner in this field since 2014 besides Harris English, who finished a respectable 14th in that category.
- Strokes Gained Total on Slow-to-Average Bermuda (12.5%) – View this as a secondary way to get putting into the mix.
- Strokes Gained Total on Easy to Hit Fairways at Average-To-Long Courses (12.5%) – I like this statistic because it doesn’t punish your wayward drivers like Jordan Spieth or Patrick Reed. If they can win here, I want to see who improves when the fairways open up, not who can hit it the longest or the straightest on a standard track.
DraftKings Players ($10,000+)
Jon Rahm ($11,000) – Jon Rahm has never finished worse than 10th in his four prior showings at Kapalua, and it is going to be impossible to run an adequate model that doesn’t at least show him to be one of the main threats to take home the title. This week, my biggest issue with him is that he typically turns into a better play when the course becomes more difficult. These birdie fests limit his upside, although we can work around that if the leverage situation remains where it is with him being only 20%.
Bryson DeChambeau ($10.200) – Bryson DeChambeau is in a bit of a different boat than we just talked about with Jon Rahm, even if their ownership percentages are within the same ballpark. The reason I mention that is because the American has a specific skill set that likely produces the most runaway type potential of anyone in this field, but there are red flags for a golfer that ranks last in this tournament between 0-100 yards in my model. We know he will be bombing drives off the tee and playing with a ton of short irons into the greens, and there are multiple ways the week could unfold for him. I am willing to place him into my core because the potential for victory exceeds any golfer in this field not named Justin Thomas, but the 50% discount in popularity is just too juicy to ignore when looking at a potential pivot.
Fade – Viktor Hovland ($10,000) – I don’t want to overanalyze the 31st place finish last year for Viktor Hovland, but there are concerns on my end with his ranking of 38 out of 38 players in this field around the green over his past 24 rounds. These are large surfaces that will amplify his struggles if he does happen to miss, and I’m not necessarily encouraged by his 35th place rank when looking at just slow Bermuda.
$9,000 Range
Patrick Cantlay ($9,700) – Sign me up if Patrick Cantlay goes off this week at 20% ownership. In a vacuum situation, the American would be the best play in the $9,000s, and it only amplifies that notion when he is 7-10% lower than his counterparts.
Other Targets: None. I won’t talk anyone out of Xander Schauffele ($9,500), but I prefer going Cantlay if adding from this range.
$8,000 Range
Jordan Spieth ($8,900) – Jordan Spieth is likely my favorite play on the entire board. The American ranks first in this field when it comes to par-four average, easy to hit fairways and strokes gained total on Bermuda and hasn’t finished outside of ninth place at this track in his four starts here since 2014.
Brooks Koepka ($8,500) – Brooks Koepka is a shot in the dark, but would it really shock anyone if he won the event at 5-10% ownership? He is GPP only, but the poor perception around him while playing non-majors does create a window of massive potential at only $8,500 and nine percent ownership.
Abraham Ancer ($8,100) – It has taken a few days for me to come around to Abraham Ancer, but there is a leverage window opening. I don’t think he is a better GPP target than the man beneath him in this article, but the fruitful $8,000 range provides a cornucopia of options to decide between, including placing multiple of these golfers into the same build.
Tony Finau ($8,000) – If not for Jordan Spieth, Tony Finau would be the poster child for the $8,000 range, but he adds to the extensive group of options that are in play. Finau has struggled some lately on par-fives, but the wide-open fairways should allow him to use his distance and not worry about some of the misses that have troubled him over the past few months.
Other Thoughts: Cameron Smith/Sungjae Im are high-owned choices that are worth considering.
$7,000 Range
Patrick Reed ($7,900), Harris English ($7,800), Jason Kokrak ($7,700), Marc Leishman ($7,500) – I listed the group together because there doesn’t seem to be a huge separation. You are going to have to sprinkle this collection into builds randomly, but I am not necessarily rushing to find myself overweight to any of them individually. English and Kokrak are projected to be the two that are lower-owned, so I’ll take them more than Reed and Leishman, who are projecting to be on the more popular side.
Additional Thoughts: The bottom drops off quickly
$6,000 Range
Phil Mickelson ($6,500) – Phil Mickelson is third in this field on slow Bermuda greens and also places at the same rank at longer courses that feature easy-to-hit fairways. We all know ‘Lefty’ is an absolute wizard with his short irons, and there is upside potential for him at a course that isn’t that different from a Champions Tour start. I like him at +200 to come top-20 on FanDuel, and it wouldn’t shock me to see him do better than that.
Additional Dart Throws To Consider: Garrick Higgo $6,400, Lucas Herbert $6,100
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