Abraham Ancer Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

Ancer has quietly made 15 straight cuts on the PGA Tour, which is the third longest streak behind Patrick Cantlay (19) and Rory McIlroy (16). He’s always had the ability to get red-hot with his ball striking, but his consistency has really improved this season. In this field, he’s 17th in strokes gained off the tee and 27th in strokes gained on approach. He’s a good putter on bentgrass (32nd in this field) and he clearly rates out well in my hole yardage statistic. In his first and only appearance at TPC Boston, he finished in a tie for seventh. Good form, good course fit, good course history, and a cheap price point. He should be popular this week, but we can look to differentiate our lineups elsewhere.

Ancer has been one of the more unheralded success stories of 2020, as he has come seemingly out of nowhere to become a consistent force on the PGA Tour. His approach play has been dialed in, and he has also been playing well off the tee. Following a disastrous second round in Memphis, Ancer shot 65-66 on the weekend to climb from the back of the pack all the way up to 15th place. He has four top 15 finishes in five starts since the Tour started back up, and he’s a fantastic mid-range option this week.

Ancer is a good ball striker, although I think he gets a little too much credit in this regard. In fact, he’s only gained more than four strokes ball striking in four of his last 24 events on tour. I’m not sure why I’m saying something negative when I like him as a play this week, but I did find those numbers a tad surprising. Anyway, Ancer lives in Texas and played in one of the events Scheffler played in during the break. He was in solid form before the break and has made the cut here each of the last two years.

The San Antonio resident has slowed his pace recently but there is still plenty of pop in the bat. Ancer did just fine in his course debut last year (T42) but it was just one bad round that prevented him from collecting a top 25. Driving stats tend to lead to more cuts made, Ancer ranks 6th in this field in total strokes gained off-the-tee over the last 3 months. That has been the staple of his game since his surge up the world rankings begain in 2018. A little Texas home cooking should help him bounce back into contention and I don’t think his ownership will be all that high. A great sub-10% option with top-10 upside this week.

I will keep going back to this quote from him last year at TPC Potomac, “I love bent greens and these ones are really good and they roll real true, so just sticking to the process.” We have bentgrass greens on hand this week which gives Ancer a slight bump. Looking at his long-term performance, his Bentgrass performance is more than half a shot better per round compared to his baseline. I will continue to toss some shares on him on bentgrass, until that split corrects itself. There is no way he remains THAT much better on bentgrass as the sample increases, but it’s obvious that he prefers the surface.