2016 OHL Classic Recap

Welcome back, fantasy golf world! Our article series here will be a more in depth recap of the fantasy golf weekend, this time looking back at the OHL Classic down in Mayakoba. This will allow us to expand on what some of the top pros did this past week, but also looking at winning lineups in GPP’s, the “perfect lineup”, relevant stats that panned out, among any other thing we can think of! It’s always important to evaluate your process and evolve your game, always looking for improvement. As always, I am using some of the free tools over at TheFantasyFanatics.com and their new website design is just spectacular. Let’s get to it.

Here's your final leaderboard:

• Pat Perez ($7100)

• Gary Woodland ($8600)

• Russell Knox ($11800)

• Scott Piercy ($9800)

• Chez Reavie ($6400)

• Kevin Streelman ($8200)

• Charles Howell III ($7500)

• Chris Kirk ($9600)

• Luke List ($7800)

• Emiliano Grillo ($11200)

• Adam Hadwin ($6900)

• Jhonattan Vegas ($7200)

You all had Pat Perez in your lineups, right? Oh…well, you weren’t alone. It’s a GPP dream when a 5% guy goes out and takes down the victory, but only when you have some exposure to him. That’s the beauty of golf – you can build the perfect model all you want, but sometimes a guy can come out of nowhere. It’s up to us to find the “next guy”!

Anyway, tangent over – let’s see some pertinent stats going into the week:

The two stats that stuck out over the rest were Ball Striking and Par 4 Scoring. Wasn’t super great correlation (compared to other weeks) with 4 guys in each category ranked in the top 25, but like I said, better than the rest. The thing that really popped this week was current form. Eleven of the top twelve on the leaderboard recorded a top 25 within three weeks of this tournament. Moving back just another week, six of the leaderboard recorded two top 25’s within that time span.

The perfect lineup looks like this:

• Pat Perez

• Russell Knox

• Chez Reavie

• Gary Woodland

• Kevin Streelman

• Charles Howell III

It would have netted you a tremendous 732 fantasy points while using $49600 of the salary cap. You notice that a more balanced approach was the correct method this week, but with Grillo making the final leaderboard too, I suspect a lot of cashing lineups featured a stars and scrubs method.

Who fared well in fantasy?

I had a feeling after day 2 that we’d be talking about SaahilSud again – he had himself a monster weekend in PGA only to follow in NFL as well. Every touch matters – he missed out on a cool million dollars by 0.1 fantasy points. BUT – back to PGA… he max entered the $33 Dogleg (100 times) and used 26 golfers. We’ve seen this approach and it seems to be his bread and butter – many lineups but really concentrated on his player set. He wants the most combinations he can get within his “limited” player pool to really give himself the best chance at a handsome pay day. It actually makes a lot of sense because you can maximize your chances at the top spot with going super heavy on your top guys and when they hit, you hit in the best way. Here’s his core:

• Gary Woodland (100%)

• Webb Simpson (100%)

• Keegan Bradley (67%)

• Charles Howell III (41%)

• Marc Leishman (39%)

• Pat Perez (36%)

As the rant went earlier, I don’t see where Perez would rank highly in a statistical model. This leads me to think Saahil weighed current form a bit more heavily (and perhaps does week to week). There – we cracked his secrets. Saahil did a great job this week with not having any duplicated lineups (well, he had one, but 1% isn’t awful). It’s clear he makes that a priority in his roster construction.

Rsully1989 also had a big week, taking the first place prize in the $33 Dogleg. Sully entered it 12 times and used 25 golfers to do so, leaving him with a lot of players on one or two lineups. Here’s his core:

• Kevin Streelman (71%)

• Luke List (58%)

• Chris Kirk (41%)

• Adam Hadwin (41%)

• Anirban Lahiri (41%)

• Jon Rahm (41%)

• Harold Varner (41%)

You see he did a lot of things right in his core, including taking a more balanced approach with not having high ownership on more than one top guy. You also don’t see any straight “punts” here, which is sometimes more common in a winning team in a weaker field. Sully also targets low owned guys in his core, which is somewhat rare but as we can see from this week, very effective. Streelman teed off with 3.5% ownership, List with 8%, Kirk with 6%, Hadwin 10%, and Lahiri 6% - he only gets somewhat chalky with Varner (13%) and then really chalky with Rahm (40%), leaving him a great chance to hit big if his teams performs as he thinks they should.

Feel free to drop any comments or questions – I go by NateKnocks to the fantasy and twitter worlds (Knocks being a tribute to where I grew up – Knoxville, TN) and have been playing fantasy golf for about a year and a half now. I honestly haven’t found a more fun fantasy game than a four day golf “sweat” and I believe we are all out to help each other. May the best lineup win.