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    Golf Daily Fantasy Expert Advice

    03/22/2021
    Chris Durell

    Daily Fantasy PGA Picks and Betting Guide for DraftKings & FanDuel – WGC Dell Technologies Match Play

    Chris will be bringing you weekly PGA picks, analysis, and breakdowns to help you cash on DraftKings and FanDuel. As every week in DFS PGA changes with the course setup, field of players and weather, Chris will be providing a range of different picks for cash games as well as upside plays for tournaments. Want more? He also provides a cheatsheet with stats, course history, current form, player write-ups for cash and GPP, a customizable model, and much more.

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    This week presents us a ton of options as we get two events with the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play and alternate Corales Championship. In this article, I will be focusing on the Match Play event which is one of my favorite events of the season, both from a fantasy and viewership perspective.

    Before we get into the picks, I wanted to spend some time going over the structure of the event because if you don't understand it, you will get left in the dust.

    • The field of 64 players will be split into 16 groups of four players in a bracket-style setup
    • Each golfer plays each of the other three golfers in their group over the first three days
    • The winner of each group then moves to the Round of 16 which will be played on Saturday morning followed by the Quarterfinals in the afternoon
    • On Sunday, we get two semifinal matches in the morning followed by the third-place match and final in the afternoon

    I have also added an additional bracket tab to the sheet for an easy view during lineup builds. It may be harder to see in the pic below but is clear on the sheet.

    Now let's take a look at the DraftKings scoring for this match play style of event:

    • Hole won → 3 points
    • Hole halved → .75 points
    • Hole lost → -.75 points
    • Hole not played → 1.6 points
    • Match won → 5 points
    • Match halved → 2 points
    • Streak of 3+ birdies → 5 points
    • No holes lost bonus → 7.5 points

    When it comes to lineup construction this week, the most important thing is to not roster multiple players from one group as only one is moving on after the group stage.

    What I do is narrow each group down to one golfer who is my favorite and then draw out the bracket how I think it will play out. When I start building, I want to build every single lineup so that there is a chance for all six golfers to get through to the quarter-finals. I compare this point of the event to the cut in a regular event. If you can get that 6/6 through in almost any contest, you are at least going home with a profit on that lineup. You can go even further by narrowing down your player pool to just two golfers from each quadrant, one from the top half and one from the bottom. If multi-entering, I will be using multiple cores with this strategy. I will first try and narrow down as many groups as possible to one golfer who I am confident will move on to Round of 16.

    For my model on the sheet and in my custom models on Fantasy National, I am keeping it quite simple this week and looking at short-term and long-term form in SG: Ball Striking, specifically Strokes Gained: Approach and taking it further, long iron Proximity ranges. For course history, I am looking at the last four years of this event which were all played here at Austin Country Club, a Par 71 Pete Dye setup that comes in just over 7100 yards on the scorecard.

    The Course

    Austin Country Club
    Par 71 - 7,108 Yards
    Greens - Bermuda

    **Click the image above to see a hole by hole breakdown from PGATour.com**

    Previous Four Winners

    • 2019 - Kevin Kisner over Matt Kuchar
    • 2018 - Bubba Watson over Kevin Kisner
    • 2017 - Dustin Johnson over Jon Rahm
    • 2016 - Jason Day over Louis Oosthuizen

    Left Bracket Targets

    Paul Casey
    World Golf Ranking (#18)
    Vegas Odds (26/1)
    Draftkings ($8,900)

    I absolutely love Casey here in Group 9 at these prices and I get why as he is grouped with Webb Simpson. Looking at current form alone, he has the edge with four straight Top 10 finishes, gaining 4.6 or more strokes tee to green in each of those. He now returns to the match play event at Austin Country Club where he has made it out of his group in two of the last three years. That is by far the best record here out the four in his group as Webb is 0/3 here and Gooch and Huges will be making their debuts in the event. I see Casey's biggest hurdle in getting to the final four being Dustin Johnson coming out of group and quadrant #1.

    Viktor Hovland
    World Golf Ranking (#14)
    Vegas Odds (29/1)
    Draftkings ($9,400)

    It's only March but Viktor Hovland has already moved up 15 spots in the Official World Golf Rankings since the start of the season and will now be making his debut at the WGC Match Play. While he doesn't have PGA Tour experience in match play, he did win the 2018 US Amateur in dominating fashion(7&6, 3&2, 6&5 in playoffs) at Pebble Beach. While he has stumbled a bit over his last two events, he is still 6th in ball striking in this field over the last 24 rounds. Another thing that I like to see comes from a quote from Rory McIlroy back in 2018 where he said if you were looking at one stat that could help you figure out who is going to do well in match play it would be bounce-back. Hovland is #2 on tour this season.

    If going balanced, which I am really liking at this point of the week, Hovland/Casey are my favorite two plays in Quadrant 1 & 2, and would love to see them meet in the semi-finals.

    Next up in my play pool: Dustin Johnson, Si Woo Kim(GPP only), Sergio Garcia, Jason Kokrak

    Right Bracket Targets

    Patrick Reed
    World Golf Ranking (#7)
    Vegas Odds (26/1)
    Draftkings ($9,600)

    This is, by far, the hardest quadrant to pinpoint one or even two golfers to make it through to the quarter-finals. I don't even wanna touch the group of death(#2) as I could see any of those four come out and then I really think the lower half of the quadrant will be Cantlay vs. Reed which I will have exposure to both but prefer Reed slightly more due to his match play experience and success. He has also made it out of his group going 3-0-0 twice in his four trips to Austin CC for this event while Cantlay has not made it out either time he has played here. I also think Reed will be at least 3rd highest owned in this quadrant which gives us some leverage for our GPP builds. I also like Reed as an outright bet this week.

    Ian Poulter
    World Golf Ranking (#66)
    Vegas Odds (101/1)
    Draftkings ($6,700)

    For DFS, we are going to have to take some shots with some value guys to get out of their group if we aren't going totally balanced this week. This is a tough one as he is going to have to beat Rory to advance but he returns to Austin Country Club with a 5-1 group stage record over the past two years and is 14-6-2 in Ryder Cups which is the best winning percentage(72.2%) of any golfer with at least 15 matches. I will definitely be taking some swings with Poulter in hopes of winning his stage and anything more is a bonus.

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