Matt’s Musings | PGA Data Study, March 30

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). 

Performance by Salary Group

The first question we have to ask when evaluating this is whether the salaries DraftKings assigns to these golfers are efficient or not. If they are, then we can move on to roster percentage. If they aren’t, then we need to find the inefficiencies in the way the golfers are priced.

Scoring, broken down by salary, is at least directionally correct. Is it a given that every golfer who is more expensive than every cheaper golfer will always outperform them? Of course not. But, on average, the salaries are reasonably efficient. If we can trust the pricing, then we need to figure out if we’re any good — as a community — at how we view these golfers. If we’re good at this, then we should expect the golfers with the highest roster percentages to average the most DraftKings points. 

Performance by Rostership Group

Ignoring salaries, we can see that the community is pretty good at deciding who turns into chalk in a given week. The golfers in the 20% range are more likely to score more points than golfers in the lesser rostered groups. The floor is basically irrelevant because we know that a golfer can just eject and score little to no points in a week. The max DK points, however, illuminate a larger point. While rostership and salaries are directionally correct, the max number of points is relatively flat. As we head through the rest of this series, we’ll break down each salary range individually and see which type of chalk is worth eating and which type we’re better off avoiding.