Hey everyone, welcome back. Cognizant Classic this week! Lot of interesting research to dig into. I will admit, you can definitely feel overconfident on weeks like this, when the focus is somewhat narrowed. We know exactly what type of drives they will have to hit, and where most approaches will come from, and of course Bermuda splits. In my opinion, I love building my best stat-focused lineups for SE, 3-Max or Cash (if that’s your thing). And then when you go into the GPPs, whether it’s $3 birdie, $5 DTG or the $25, get weird with some lower owned fringe plays. That’s what I intend to do.

In summary for strategy this week, I want to build a really good stat-focused lineup. I hope this is basically an optimal build with comfortable 6/6 and a few top 15s. Basically everyone checks a lot of boxes.

And then when I build the pool for $5 and $25 I will look to include those same players, but feel comfortable spreading my bottom range a bit thinner with guys that may only be doing a handful of things good. Hopefully that makes sense and you can build your strategy with that concept in mind.

Course Preview PRO

This week I am going to keep this part light. I think I have spoken through the course enough, but basically here are the highlights.

• Par 71
• 7150 yards
• Bermuda everywhere.
• Par 3s very tough: 2 from 175-200 and 2 from 200-225.
• Par 5s are vital for success/surviving. All other Par 4s basically play to a scoring average of -0.1 under par to +0.1 over par.

There are 10 tee shots that average 270-290 yards off the tee. In all, majority of players hit about 8-9 drivers each round. This is my biggest angle this week (apart from approach of course).

I think if you can pick off the best players in this field driving the ball, assuming their irons are decent, they will have a great week.

I had tweet (X Post?) out earlier which is a nice rundown of my overall thoughts and also includes some screenshots of our FGB tools where we can fine tune our entire process for the week.

*The Driving Accuracy by Distance tool is in the works, but the Player Profiles pages includes this breakout now.

The other part I highlighted was Approaches. While SG:APP is a good stat, some weeks it just doesn’t hold as much weight. This week (and last week, and also because of last week) are part of the reasons why I wanted to look at SG:APP from specific distances. I really focused on 175-200 and 200-225. As we assume our best players will be hitting plenty of fairways, here were the best from the fairway from those 2 distances.

That’s pretty much it, for the nuts and bolts of what I want to focus on this week. Bermuda splits are a last point in the decision tree. Obviously they need to be getting to the green in a good manner prior to worrying about putting. But it is important!

Last thing on approach. While it seems logical to focus on Proximity this week, there is less variance for players in shorter ranges when looking at Proximity than further distances. In other words, if I wanted to see who the best was with their wedges or short irons…I would look to use proximity. If I want to know who the best from 200-225 is, SG:APP or GIR% are far better metrics. SG:APP is non-linear, so it is less penalizing the bigger the miss than Proximity.

Like a big APP difference is 5 ft to 15 ft which is about 0.5 SG:APP effect, but 50 to 100 feet would only be 0.2 SG:APP difference. To me that’s better for longer distances.

Weather

Weather looks great on Thursday and Friday. Max of 10mph or so on Friday. Looks great.

Core Plays