NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/3)
Alex Christenson
Taking on Bay Hill this week for Arnie’s Invite, this course and event in general has a lot of prestige. Tiger Woods won here eight times over the course of his career, showing that elite tee-to-green play gets rewarded here.
Tiger was known for being relatively conservative in his play style but efficient when he attacked. That is the recipe for success at Bay Hill. Chip away with pars for most of the day, playing conservatively to avoid big numbers then attack the par 5s.
On the DFS front, there is a small field of just 69 golfers and a volatile cutline that could bring anywhere from 50 to all 69 golfers along for the weekend. There is also one glaring mispriced golfer, so let’s hop in and talk about the slate.
The Texan is on his own planet still in terms of baseline consistency. He’s finished outside of the top 25 just twice since the start of last season. He has a win and two top 15s at Bay Hill. He’s gained strokes putting in seven of 12 rounds here, again proving that the heavily undulated speedy greens tend to be the only type of greens where he holds his own (Scottsdale, Augusta National for example). He’s going to continue to be a plug and play for me until the wheels fall off, or his rostership starts crossing the 40% marker.
I spoke about him in my FTN Bets preview. He ranks 17th in one-year baseline performance, is elite with long irons, and sports some of the best course history in the field (quantity wise). Bay Hill is a tricky tee-to-green course, but Bradley has gained in that regard in 78% of his 46 rounds played at the API. Pretty solid for a $7,400 option.
He’s the 1A to Scheffler this week, and if you heavily value long-term course history, then Rory just may be the guy for you. He’s gained 85 strokes over the years here at Bay Hill which is 34 strokes more than anyone else in the field. He had a costly triple last week at PGA National or else he could have been right in the hunt Sunday.
Here is the big mispricing I spoke about in the intro. Looking at weighted baseline, he sits next to names like Max Homa, Sam Burns, Justin Thomas and Sahith Theegala. Those four golfers have an average DK salary of $8m900. Meanwhile, Min Woo Lee sits at just $6,600 this week after being a late entry into the field. Many will consider this a free square but free square and DFS golf is an oxymoron. Even with his strong baseline stats, his top-10 odds are still only 15% or so. With his rostership being potentially double that number, and maybe triple that number in higher dollar, single-entry contest, in comes the merit of fading. If you’re still on the fence, then consider his course history here in two tries:
Sure, he’s improved his consistency a lot in the last year, but this course seems to trip him up in all facets of the game. So, after reviewing all of the evidence I would lean in the direction of fading MWL in most builds this week. The exceptions for me would be if you are playing 50/50 type contests where you just need to beat half the field or if you are building out an MME portfolio and want to dabble in some shares.
I don’t believe you ever need a true “pivot” when fading someone, but if you are taking a pass on Min Woo, then paying a little more for someone like Hojgaard instead makes a lot of sense. Looking at weighted baseline, he ranks 22nd in the field but 37th in DK salary. If Min Woo wasn’t so heavily mispriced, he’d likely be pushing double-digit rostership. He’s a monster in the distance department, so I’d expect him to score well on the par 5s this week which gives him the upside you want to see at Bay Hill.
He’s 12th in the field in top-40 worthy performances over the last year. Yet, he’s outside of the top 30 in pricing. You’re paying for consistency with the Aussie, but he also has three career wins in Florida, so he’s no stranger to success on a water-heavy layout.
He got derailed early last week to post one of the more shocking chalk displays we’ve seen in a while. Over the long haul he still ranks top 25 in this field in terms of top 10 and top 20 outputs. Yet, now he’s priced in the low $7ks. He’s 13th in proximity from outside of 200 yards over the last year. I like his chances of bouncing back this week.
Looking beyond finish positions, good-round to bad-round ratios often paint a better picture.
The good rounds (monsters) are top-25 percentile rounds while the bad rounds (duds) are lower 25th percentile rounds.
Here are the top performers in that regard at Bay Hill:
+10
Matt Fitzpatrick (11 Monsters, 1 Dud)
+8
Sungjae Im (9 Monsters, 1 Dud)
+7
Chris Kirk (7 Monsters, 0 Duds)
Max Homa (7 Monsters, 0 Duds)
Rory McIlroy (8 Monsters, 1 Dud)
+6
Scottie Scheffler (6 Monsters, 0 Duds)
+5
Jordan Spieth (5 Monsters, 0 Duds)
Christiaan Bezuidenhout (7 Monsters, 2 Duds)
Keegan Bradley (9 Monsters, 4 Duds)
Tommy Fleetwood (8 Monsters, 3 Duds)
Sungjae Im has looked lost in recent weeks, but Bay Hill could be the cure he’s looking for. In previous trips, he’s gained over the field in 16-of-20 rounds and lapped the field by at least three shots in six of those rounds.
It wasn’t love at first site for Matt Fitzpatrick and Bay Hill, but it’s been smooth sailing since his swing changes to add power which makes sense. You need to attack with long irons and attack the par 5s to contend at Bay Hill. Fitz has gained strokes in 16 of his last 20 rounds here and lapped the field by three shots in seven of those rounds, almost identical to Sungjae in the course horse department. I try not to ever overlook a golfer when they are sporting a double-digit course monster score.
Looking at lead-in form from the last 10 events, I create a floor and ceiling score, which basically removes the outliers from each side and provides their realistic range of outcomes.
This is great for finding names to build a player pool around and then you can sprinkle in some “riskier” options from outside of the list to complete your builds.
There are 18 golfers that check both boxes in terms of recent floor and recent ceiling. These would be my Tier 1 potential targets when building a single-entry lineup:
Scottie Scheffler
Rory McIlroy
Xander Schauffele
Viktor Hovland
Patrick Cantlay
Tommy Fleetwood
Collin Morikawa
Max Homa
Russell Henley
Sam Burns
Ludvig Aberg
Keegan Bradley
Adam Scott
Min Woo Lee
Eric Cole
Cam Young
Byeong Hun An
Matthieu Pavon
While these names check the consistency and upside boxes, what about extreme variance? In theory the wider the gap between floor and ceiling, the more potential for GPP winning upside when they crush.
Here are the names with at least a 10-stroke differential between their weekly floor and ceiling output: Sahith Theegala, Jason Day, Adam Hadwin, Justin Thomas, Wyndham Clark, Jordan Spieth, Nicolai Hojgaard, Hideki Matsuyama, Nick Taylor, Jake Knapp and Sepp Straka. Even though this method removes outliers, this list of 11 golfers includes four of the last five winners on Tour. So, sprinkling some of the huge-upside plays into your pool will give you some GPP winning upside.
