DraftKings Picks Honda, Joburg

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

My DraftKings picks for the week

Our new Golfstats fantasy game of the week on DraftKings

 

First of all, I think that all of you reading this plays DraftKings. So what we are going to do is have a GolfStats game every week from now through the Shell Houston Open. We will start it slowly, this week we are looking for 20 players that will pay $5 to get into our game that pays the top-five players, starting at $27 for the winner down to $9 for 5th place. The game is public, but I can’t seem to find it so you can find it by hitting this link If you still can’t find it send me an email at Golfersal@aol.com and I will send an invite.
What we want to see is if we can get 200 players a week to do the game. If we feel that this is popular, we will start a GOLFstats league that will have weekly contests from the Masters through the Tour Championship. We will have prizes for the players that accumulate the most points for the time period the game runs. We hope this will be fun, to see who in our circle does the best for the year. Hope you all will enjoy this and give us your feedback on if $5 is too much or should we increase this to $10. The Original thought was to do $5 thinking that you can have multiple entires, but that isn’t the case you can only do one team. Again, send your feedback either belowe or to me at Sal@Golfstats.com

(Update – All 20 spots in the DraftKings game sold Wednesday night.  Very happy with the interest, we will open the game to more people, probably 50 for next week’s WGC-Mexico tournament.)

Hope your all utilizing our new chart on making the cut. What this chart will do is give you a point of reference on how your pick has done in making cuts over the last two seasons (since the start of the 2015 season) and also how they stand in the parbreaker category for 2017. These two items are important, first for getting six players into the weekend and the parbreaker list so that you can see who makes the most birdies and eagles, which is an important element in earning points.
You can find this list at “Making most cuts, Honda” with this link and it’s the field for those playing in the Honda Classic.
Give me feedback on your thoughts and we will be looking to make it better looking and able to sort in the future.

 

So how did last week go?

For the fourth week in a row I picked the winner (Had Dustin Johnson at $11,400) and with only one player missing the cut, (Francesco Molinari at $7,800) I was able to cash in on five of my eleven games. What frustrated me was the fact that of the games that I didn’t win at, I was only between a half a point to ten points away from winning a lot more. I won just $87.17 so for the week was a $1.83 loser, but my frustration was in several different areas. First Dustin Johnson played his last ten holes in 3 over, that cost me a lot specially the five points for all rounds in the 60s. My other picks had a tough time on Sunday, as Charles Howell III was the only player to break par. Sergio Garcia was a big disappointment with his weekend 72-71 to finish T-49th and Jim Furyk and Brendan Steele finished T-39th. In adding things up I was on the verge of winning a couple hundred dollars, specially if Johnson just played the last ten holes in even par. Still it was a step in the right direction. Oh for those wondering, their wasn’t a European Tour event.

 

Picks for the Honda Classic

The top-three in cost are Adam Scott at $12,200, Rickie Fowler at $11,900 and Justin Thomas at $11,800. All three should play well but the prices are extreme so my first choice is Sergio Garcia at $10,900. The first thing to know is that the Champions Course at PGA National is more of a shotmaker type of course, you can’t overpower it and you have to hit lot’s of greens. That is the reason that Adam Scott won last year. So Garcia fits the bill for me, the only problem I have is that whenever I think Sergio will do good, he goes into the dumper like last week. Then when you don’t pick him like at Dubai, he surprises you with a winning performance so I have to be very patient with him. Still I like the fact that he has one of the best tee to green games, maybe the reason he was runner-up last year. My second pick is Russell Knox at $9,000 and this is a great pick for several reasons. First he is 6th in greens hit on tour this year, he is also 5th in Parbreakers for the year. That along with the fact that in three starts he was T-26th last year, T-3rd in 2015 and T-2nd in 2014 shows me he plays well at PGA Nationals. Next up is Brendan Steele at $8,100. He has had a great year, only disappointment is that I picked him last week at Riviera and he finished T-39th, his worst finish in 8 starts in 2017. Statwise nobody is better all-around, he is 19th in greens hit, 3rd in scrambling and 23rd in ParBreakers. He doesn’t have a top-ten finish in six starts at the Honda, but has made the cut every year and his best finish is T-11th in 2015. Last year he was T-14th and if he can duplicate that I would be very happy. Next up is another great ballstriker in Luke Donald at $7,600. I like the fact that he has four top-ten finishes at PGA National, the best being a runner-up in 2008. Last year he finished T-61st, but he also won this event in 2006 on another course. The key is he plays well in the Honda. My last two picks also have good records in the Honda, Graeme McDowell was $7,300. He has four top-tens in seven PGA National starts including his best 5th last year. He seems to have a feel for any course that is within ten miles of an ocean which PGA National is. For the year he has been pretty consistent so I like this pick. Last I choose Stewart Cink at $7,100, he’s had a tough year with his wife battling cancer but he has been on tour for the last Six months and in 9 starts only missed one cut at Safeway and has four top-20 finishes. He is another ballstriker, ranked 22nd in greens hit and in six goes at PGA Nationals has not been spectacular with a best finish of T26th last year but hasn’t missed a cut. So I really like my picks, think they are solid and that all will make the cut and make me lot’s of money this week

The European Tour picks for Joburg Open
First off a warning, this event has the biggest field of the year with 210 players so this brings in the risk of more players missing the cut. Also the field is terrible, only three top-100 ranked players, #69 Brandon Stone, #86 Richard Sterne and #94 Jordan L. Smith. It’s 5pm on Tuesday and they still are missing 25 players to complete the field so it’s an event with a lot of folks that you and I aren’t familiar with (Just found out they will fill those 25 slots with a qualifying round on Wed, ugh). Lot’s of South African players that aren’t household names, it’s hard enough figuring out Stone, Sterne and Thomas Aiken who play regularly on the European Tour. The event is played at Royal Johannesburg & Kensington G.C. (I forgot to tell you they are playing two courses the first two rounds) so anything can happen.

So I will play just one three dollar game so that you folks can pick my brain.  I really am not a big fan of this event and will advise you to take some caution on playing this game, this week.

There are six players over $10,000, first Brandon Stone at $11,500, Jordan L. Smith at $11,100, Jaco Van Zyl at $10,900, George Coetzee at $10,600, Richard Sterne at $10,300 and Thomas Aiken at $10,100. I have taken Aiken manly because in his last five starts in this event as gone T-10th, T-5th, T-6th, T-24th and 3rd. He also has a T-5th in the South African Open and late last year was T-4th at the Dunhill, another South African event. Next is Hao-Tong Li at $9,400, he has never played in this event but I am going off the fact that he was T-5th at Maybank two weeks ago. Next up is Anthony Wall at $9,200 and he was my first choice based on the fact that he was T-3rd last year at the Joburg, T-2nd in 2015 and T-10th in 2014. Next is Trevor Fisher, Jr. at $7,700, he has a T-3rd in this event in 2012, T-6th in 2013 and T-13th last year. I was also impressed in his T-5th place in the BMW South African Open last month. I went for the defending champion Haydn Porteous, who cost $7,400 and as I write this see how bad his record really is for 2017.  The more I think about it I see he is a bad choice so I made the switch to David Drysdale at $6,500. Then with this switch I was $900 richer which meant I no longer had to take Hae-Tong Li and went with Richard Sterne at $10,300 who has been hurt and hasn’t played since he finished 2nd at the Alfred Dunhill and realized he plays well in South Africa and I would rather trust an injured Sterne over a healthy Hae-Tong. So my card is now a mess, one of the reasons I said it’s best not to play this game. My last pick is David Howell at $6,200, he may of missed the three cuts in the desert series last month but has a T-2nd at the Joburg in 2015 so maybe I will get lucky.
So now that I have totally confused you, here are my six picks:
Thomas Aiken at $10,100
Richard Sterne at $10,300
Anthony Wall at $9,200
Trevor Fisher, Jr. at $7,700
David Drysdale at $6,500
David Howell at $6,200

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