That’s why we’ve put this guide together. So, before you draft a fantasy team for the PGA Championship, there are a few things to keep in mind. Here, we will go over a few of the top golfers that are in the tournament, and some strategies to keep in mind as you select your team.
Good luck!
Who Do You Like for the 2018 PGA Championship
The Top Golfers
The biggest names in golf will be headed to the PGA Championship, but that doesn’t mean that they are all worth having on your team. In fact, you can’t have all of the biggest names on your team due to salary cap restrictions. Instead, focusing on a couple of the best golfers that provide high value, and then finding great golfers of high value, but lesser cost, to fill up the rest of your roster will be your best strategy, but we’ll talk more about that below.
Some of the biggest names in golf will be playing at the Championship. Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth are all early entrants to the championship. Although each of these golfers has a great chance of winning, they are not necessarily great picks in a daily fantasy golf league. The fact that they are so popular means that they will also be expensive. The only reason that one of the top three golfers entered should be chosen is if you can find incredible value lower down on your roster.
This will include golfers like Patrick Reed, Henrik Stenson, Paul Casey, and Justin Rose. Each of these golfers could easily be a number one or two pick in other tournaments, but in this field, they are more likely to be three or four picks. Rickie Fowler is another golfer who might be worth drafting if your favorite DFS site has him priced cheaply. He has potential to finish in the top five here, but because of the hype of other golfers that have been entered, there’s a chance that he will be cheaper than he should be. If you can find one of these golfers at a cheap price in your respective league, they will do a great job picking up slack in other places on your roster. Paying too much for a mid-tier golfer is never smart, though. Each DFS site will have a slightly different pricing algorithm in place, so pay attention to how things are formatted where you play.
But what about golfers like Tiger Woods and Justin Thomas? Woods had one of the greatest performances that we’ve seen from him in over five years not too long ago at the British Open, and Thomas won this championship last year. Both have the skill and talent to do well here, but even if they do, the hype that they carry with them will be far too expensive in most leagues. Being a great golfer is not quite enough to be a great daily fantasy golf pick. In almost every instance, the golfers that carry the most amount of buzz will not be worth spending your salary on. Even a great performance from Tiger Woods is likely to not be a strong value play.
DFS Strategy
A good strategy is what separates the average golf fan from a golf fan that understands fantasy sports. You want to employ a strong DFS strategy while drafting your team in order to give yourself the best chances possible of winning your league. Ultimately, that concept of value is what’s going to bring you the most amount of success.
Value is a complex subject in the world of daily fantasy sports, but it can loosely be described as the relationship between a player’s salary cost and their expected fantasy point return. A high value player is one that returns a lot of fantasy points for a low salary. The higher the value, the more inclined you should be to include that player on your roster. This allows you to squeeze the most amount of points out of the limited space and salary that you have for your golfers.
Here’s an example to better explain the concept of value.
A golfer expected to return 78 fantasy points with a salary of $9,000 can be said to have a value of $115 per point (cost divided by points). A golfer expected to return 68 points at a price of $8,000 has a value of $117 per point. Even though the second golfer is $1,000 cheaper, you are paying $2 more per point earned! Because each fantasy manager has the same amount of salary, the person who pays the less per overall point on their combined team total is going to be the winner.
This is not an exact science because we are dealing with humans and other variables. There’s no way to know that a golfer will return such and such a fantasy point total. But by looking at their history and that of other golfers, we can come up with some decent predictions. Tying this in with the specific site that you use, and their fantasy calculations and salary assignments will help you to come up with a better idea of which golfers should be drafted, and which should be avoided.
Ultimately, it is not the value of a golfer that wins championships, but the points that they produce. With this in mind, breaking from the value model of drafting players is acceptable, but only if you are positive that doing so will grant you a higher point return. As you gain more experience playing fantasy golf on sites like DraftKings and FanDuel, these opportunities will become a lot easier to spot and capitalize on.
The post The PGA Championship 2018 is Coming first appeared on Win Daily Fantasy.