Matt’s Musings | PGA Data Study, April 4

It’s very difficult to predict golf. I’m not breaking any news here. You’re 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 golfers in the $7,000 range?

How many times have you seen a screenshot of a winning GPP lineup with a contrarian golfer in this range that went off? Probably, I don’t know…like every screenshot ever? There’s a lot to be said for playing it safe in this range. You want 6/6, after all. But, let’s see what these so-called “safe” golfers actually do on the course.

The tippy-top of the “safe” golfers, the ones who reach mega-chalk status, are actually safe. They score about 14 more points on average than the typical golfer in this price range, which is a few standard deviations above expectation. That’s excellent. Once again, if ownership gets out of control on a golfer down here, you should feel confident rostering him. The important part is that you differentiate elsewhere. 

When you’re going through and making other decisions in your lineup from this range, you should be targeting golfers in this 5% – 10% sweet spot. There’s enough confidence from the community to get them close to double-digits. To top it off, they only are outperformed by the 10% – 20% group by about four points. You’ll gladly sacrifice 4 points in mean projection in order to gain leverage on the field in a large GPP.

Key takeaways

It may seem a bit repetitive, because a lot of the takeaways are the same. But, this is what the current state of the market is. Golfers that the community agree on and get behind typically perform really well. Golfers that the community agree shouldn’t be in anyone’s lineup typically perform very poorly. Everyone else is close enough that you aren’t gaining much, if anything, by going with the trendy golfer that’s going to be 18% owned.