Matt’s Musings | PGA Data Study, April 1

It’s very difficult to predict golf. I’m not breaking any news here. You all are likely familiar with trying to predict the PGA Tour if you’re reading this. It is a sport filled with randomness and with a lot of moving parts that lead to an ever-increasing amount of variance.

I think the most important thing in life is understanding the game you’re trying to play. It seems silly, but understanding how games (or markets) work is vital for success in most areas, and PGA DFS is no exception. When you’re deciding how to attack a DFS sport, it’s important to understand how the market works (salaries) and how people value different assets in that market (rostership). 

Are we any good at picking “stud” golfers?

We’ll define “stud” as $10,000-plus. In older iterations of these game theory pieces I’ve done, I’ve gone back and forth between making this expensive group and including the $9,500 and up golfers. To be totally honest, I can make cases for both sides, but I’m sticking to $10,000 because I think it signals a particular roster construction, moreso than including a golfer at $9,500. When you’re picking golfers up here, you’re likely going with a more stars-and-scrubs approach, whereas if you start off with a $9,500 golfer you can build a slightly more balanced lineup. In order for us to decide which chalk to eat and where to take chances, I broke down this range into five groups. 

The extremes obviously have the smallest sample size. It’s exceedingly rare to get a golfer up at these prices under 5%. But, as you can see, if that’s the case, it’s usually warranted that that particular golfer has no rostership. Golfers on the other end of the spectrum, those who see 25% rostership and above, have historically done very well. They’ve finished in the top 10 nearly 60% of the time and averaged nearly 90 DK points. 

The 8%-12% group actually performed the worst of the group, but the two other groups are where we need to spend more of our focus. The 12%-18% and 18%-25% groups have essentially performed the same. So the question is, why would you roster a golfer at 23% when the 14% rostered golfer has a similar range of outcomes? 

Key Takeaways

In previous iterations of this study, I had found that we aren’t good at deciding who to roster in this range. Ownership is getting more efficient, at least when it comes to the extremes. The main things to remember when deciding whether or not to roster a golfer over $10,000:

• If a golfer is projected under 5%, avoid them.
• If a golfer is projected over 25%, you should target them (while keeping in mind that you’ll need to differentiate elsewhere). 
• If they’re somewhere in the 10% to 25% range, you should lean toward the lower-rostered golfer for leverage knowing you likely aren’t sacrificing anything in terms of range of outcome.