Daily Fantasy has quickly become a numbers game, columns and columns of advanced player stats are now readily available to leverage. Many of the top DFS users add all of these stats into their projection models to scientifically determine which players should be selected based on their stats and fluctuating salaries. It has almost gotten to the point where if you are an average DFS user and don’t use analytics and tools when putting together your lineups, you are likely consistently losing to the sharks who are spending countless hours analyzing, organizing, and trying to make sense of dozens of complex data points that they pay a monthly fee for. Despite having more sports player data than ever before, when it comes to golf, projecting golfer’s fantasy point totals are still as hard as ever, the variance is high and not really decreasing any. Why is this the case? In this article I try to give some insights into why golf has the largest fantasy point variance of any sport, and what you can do about it.
Anything Can Happen When You Bet On Golf
Golf is one of the very few individual sports available to bet on for DFS. In some ways that’s a positive thing as teammates don’t matter, it’s all on each golfer to first earn their eligibility into each tournament and then play 72 holes to earn themselves a paycheck and earn your lineup fantasy points. I rely on projections when I construct each of my DFS golf lineups, I look at projected eagles, birdies, pars, bogeys, double bogeys, final score, win percentage, fantasy point total, and other projections that should factor into player selection. Comparing these projections to actual results is an interesting activity to do, and most of the time they are pretty far off even though algorithms for these projections take into account all kinds of stats and data points that matter. Why are projected numbers typically way off then for golfers? The thing about golf is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure with so many variables that can’t be projected or possibly known before the tournament’s first golf ball is hit. These variables include wind speed and direction that can change at any time, unexpected rainfall, balls rolling into divots – giving a bad spot to hit from even on fairways, a golfer playing with others in their group who they don’t like (Patrick Reed maybe?!) which can affect their game, a recent death in the family which affects mindset, a bad sleep the night before and having a 6:50 am tee time, last minute tournament withdrawals, injuries that can happen at any time, and even things like a player having to hold off going to the washroom – which can be very distracting and affect each stroke. There are so many things that can go wrong and lead to a bad round, a bad hole, or a bad shot, and screw the player’s whole tournament up.
What To Do About It?
Quite honestly, unless you are friends with players on the PGA tour and can get some inside information that will help guide your lineups, you will be like the rest of us who put in a few lineups every week and hope for the best. Get all of the information you can about each player before locking him into your lineups, and if a withdrawal happens, a cut line is missed, or a total collapse happens in round four after leading by 5 strokes after three rounds, you can’t be faulted when something goes wrong. If you can’t handle underperforming lineups, losing contests, and seeing your money fade like your player’s golf balls, then stay away from DFS golf and play sports with less fantasy point variance such as NBA, for example.
Hedging is an important word to act on when it comes to DFS golf, I highly recommend playing lots of different lineups for GPPs. I tend to have core high-end players and/or core value players for my lineup portfolio on any given week, but that presents risk too since any core player can flop when you least expect it. Even if you take a loss come Sunday evening, you want to at least win some money back and not take a complete loss, and hedging your bets can somewhat salvage your bankroll on that front.
When Will Fantasy Point Variance Be Less for DFS Golf?
Some golf tournaments require more experience than others – off the top of my head, The Masters is a tournament where experience really factors in when looking at projections. Take a look at results from this tournament over the past few years and you will see the same names making the cut lines and on the leaderboards. Tiger had won The Masters 4 times before this year, and he added his 5th Masters championship earlier this month which was surprising to many of us, but keeping in mind that this tournament is more predictable than others, we can’t be that surprised despite all of Tiger’s injuries and personal drama over the last 5 to 10 years.
DFS Projection Providers For Golfers
You may be using a DFS analytics website that gives you projections for golf players in each tournament and
Check out FantasyData’s PGA Tournament Projections
