PGA Ownership Report: Arnold Palmer

by Sean O'Donnell (hokie2009) Last Updated 2016-03-18 02:16:48

Here’s the data for the $3 Birdie for this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational!

Full field ownerships (for the $3 and more) can be found here!

And we have a co-ownerships matrix that shows who the highest owned pairs of golfers were in this week’s $3 Birdie:

So, the first thing that jumps out at me this week is not a specific player or ownership, but a trend I’ve seen more and more this season. I guess the best way to sum it up is, I think 12 months ago there weren’t as many big gaps between cash game ownerships and GPP ownerships. I see two distinct things – 1) people are definitely consciously deliberately fading the consensus “popular” players coming in. I think this speaks to the explosion in PGA content available in that time frame – the player pool in general is just applying a lot more fundamental DFS strategies that aren’t even sport-specific. This isn’t earth shattering, but worth noting!

The other thing I’ve noticed is a reluctance for people to pay up for anyone besides Spieth in cash games … even a week like this week where an Adam Scott comes in highly touted and highly owned in GPPs, I suppose most people just didn’t want to pay the extra money when trying to build a cash game lineup? Even those who were convined he had a great shot at winning and rostered him in GPP even passed him over in cash? Again, not earth shattering, and I don’t have data to back it up, these are just anecdotes … but something to keep an eye on!

More specifically though, there were a handful of players whose ownership jumped out to me this week in the $3 Birdie and a few others who I was interested to see where they landed:

Matt Kuchar (22.4% in Double-Ups) – Kuchar was nearly 40% owned in the $5 contest LAST week, and pretty well did his job for all of those who rostered him. What I wanted to see here was how we would handle a guy who just delivered for everyone would hold up against this being his first time playing here. Granted, there are other dynamics that will affected ownership, but people definitely didn’t hop on board like they did last week! For me Kuchar definitely stood out but I couldn’t help reaching above him to Stenson/Day/Rose or below him to Casey … even though those players’ salaries aren’t directly comparable to Kuchar, for me, they affected my ability to roster him.

Smylie Kaufman (16% in GPP 17% in cash) – Oh, Smylie! Smylie played an absolutely superb tournament of golf last week, and if it weren’t for some missed putts on Thursday and Friday he could have very well been in contention on Sunday. He got a price upgrade but nothing crazy, but there were a lot of very desirable players at $7700 just above him so I was curious to see how much attention he got. It is significant, and I passed him over once again, so we’ll see! I feel like Smylie made some cuts on some dicey performances but last week he really drilled the ball tee to green all four rounds so … it’ll be great to see how his year ends up!

Brendan Steele (33% in cash and 10% in GPP) – This kind of surprised me. To me Brendan Steele is a GPP-kind-of-golfer who always gets a cash game price? If that makes any sense. And then I realized that I played Brendan Steele in my cash lineup and hardly at all in GPP, so it’s kind of silly that I’d be surprised, but I am! And thinking back it’s probably for a similar reason to many – I built a more even-keeled lineup in cash (although I didn’t particularly try to) and in GPP I often played two players that were $10k+ (again not exactly on purpose) … but I think this goes along with the trends of people using the really expensive golfers and really expensive pairs way more often in GPP, and when you do that, the mid-pack guys get squeezed out. Anyway! I think the lesson here is I’m not the only one who on Thursday night had a lot more Steele in cash than in GPP, and I’m not exactly sure why? :)

Matt Every (9% GPP 5% cash) – Once again, this felt like kind of a little test case for “what happens when a players current form is absolutely ZERO but their course history is OFF THE RICHTER” to pretty much the extreme in both directions. And, well, the answer is, 10% in GPP and 5% in cash :)

Will Wilcox (7.4% GPP, 22% cash) – Last but not least, everyone’s favorite. Will Wilcox has consistently updated us on his pre-tournament “vibes” and I find it interesting to see every week the reaction! I love it actually, it’s something that is totally unique to PGA DFS. Anyway, I find it really curious that he’s that much higher owned in cash than in GPP. He was a guy who I was on the fence about but when there was so much clamor about his tweet, it was enough for me to throw him in my 50/50s lineup just to ride the public because I didn’t have a CLEARLY better option going in and needed somebody at that price point to fill in with the five guys I absolutely wanted. So I guess at the end of the day I am a sheeple!

That’s all I’ve got for now! Let me know in the comments or in the threat what jumped out at you! Good luck everyone!