Daily Fantasy Golf Basics
Weekly DFS golf tournaments generally take place over four rounds, the first being on Thursday and the final round being played on Sunday. Most tournaments invite anywhere from 132-156 golfers, “cutting” anyone who scores below the average line of the field after two days. This approach reduces the pool to the top 65 golfers (plus ties) for the final two rounds. Note that if more than 78 golfers are included in the top 65 (including ties), there is another cut after the third round in order to chisel the field to 65.
Scoring
While some players may dive head-first into DFS golf with the same approach across sites, it’s extremely important to note the difference in scoring across platforms. For example, most sites — DraftKings, FantasyDraft — have scoring systems that heavily reward birdies. However, FanDuel in particular actually values pars more heavily than other sites. The golfers that grind out holes to avoid bogeys quietly carry more value there.
It’s different on DraftKings where you receive just +0.5 points for a par and are penalized only -0.5 points for a bogey and -1.0 for double bogey or worse. On the other hand, that’s also where you’re rewarded +3.0 points for birdies, +8.0 points for an eagle, and +13.0 for a double eagle. Knowing that, you would ideally want to bake as much upside as possible into your DraftKings lineups, especially for large-field top-heavy payouts, by targeting golfers who excel at finishing holes with a greater outcome than par.
Variance
It’s important to understand the volatility in golf scoring — anyone who has ever picked up a club understands that good shots are merely borrowed rather than struck with consistency — and how tournament players build lineups based on recent performance. Recency bias, if anything, should be avoided completely when gunning for first place given the ups and downs that naturally come with the game of golf. Better players will come out as long-term winners, but it can be frustrating if targeting them for consistency from week to week.
In most cases, getting 6-of-6 golfers in your lineup through the cut and into the weekend will guarantee a finish in the green; for cash games, 5-of-6 will suffice most weeks. With that knowledge, we can also use game theory to our advantage.
In understanding variance then using it as leverage against the field, we can look to pick out two or three golfers each week that we know will be highly rostered for their recent performance and instead fade (not play) those players in our own lineups for an edge. Reminder anyone is capable of missing any cut, and zigging while the rest of the field zags can certainly vault our lineups to the top of tournaments for lucrative payouts. As a great philosopher once said: “Rather correct on an island than wrong with the masses.” Embracing chaos, especially in guaranteed prize pool (GPP) formats, is our best chance of becoming winning DFS golf players.
Featured Image credit: Michael Reaves/Getty Images