Waste Management Phoenix Open Preview
Now that the Member-Guest West Coast Swing is over, it’s time to focus on professionals playing golf on the same damn course. As beautiful as the scenery is out on the west coast, the variables of playing with amateurs and on different courses minimizes our potential edge. This week the Tour makes its way to TPC Scottsdale for the Waste Management Phoenix Open where Brooks Koepka returns to defend his title and become the third Player to win the Phoenix Open in back to back years and the third to win this event three times. In order to do so, Brooks will have to navigate a field that includes 6 of the top 10 in the OWGR and 13 of the Top 20.
· Top 10 OWGR: Rahm, JT, Cantlay, Hovland, Schauffele, Matsuyama
· Rest of top 20 playing: Oosthuizen, Scheffler, Spieth, Burns, Finau, Berger, and Koepka
This week we return to a traditional one course for all rounds format with plenty of course history data since it’s been played here every year since 1987. This event is also where Draftkings introduced the Golf format for their Daily Fantasy Golf platform giving us 5 years of Optimal Lineups to analyze. TPC Scottsdale is a Tom Weiskopf design Par 71 layout with 3 Par-5s, 11 Par-4s, and 4 Par-3s measuring 7250 yards played in the thin desert air and elevation. While it is always an advantage to hit it far, distance is not as necessary as it would be at courses like Torrey Pines and Riviera. What sets this event apart from any other on tour, is the engagement with the fan’s energy and sheer size. This event has had up to 200,000 show up for a single day although last year it was limited to 5,000 due to the pandemic. While the course may seem destined to be a birdie fest, a projected windy week and water troubles should keep the winning score around the high teens as it has the prior 8 years.
Optimal Builds
Before we dive into the Optimal Builds of the last five years, I first want to state that unlike earlier in the year, the builds here don’t seem to have a ton in common. When this is the case, we may need to alter our approach in our player pool to find our edge if the trends don’t follow our thesis. One variable that assuredly alters what builds can be made is the pricing structure Draftkings utilizes in their slate. This year we have 5 players at 10k+, 7 players in the 9k range, and 10 in the 8k range. This is very much the same format as it has been in the most recent 4 years but in 2017 there were 3 players at 11k+ with none in the 10k range. It’s interesting that the optimal lineup was exactly 50,000 in Draftkings first attempt at pricing the players and while this was the case again in 2020, I will limit 2017’s Optimal Build’s value due to the different pricing structure. Here are the Optimal Builds of the last 5 years in detail but the structure were as follows (Green denotes winner):
· 2021: 11k, 8k, 7k, 7k, 6k, 6k with 2300 leftover
· 2020: 10k, 9k, 9k, 7k, 7k, 6k with 0 leftover
· 2019: 9k, 8k, 8k, 8k, 7k, 6k with 1500 leftover
· 2018: 8k, 7k, 7k, 7k, 7k, 6k with 4700 leftover
· 2017: 11k, 9k, 7k, 7k, 7k, 6k with 0 leftover
As we can see, the optimal builds themselves are fairly different across the 5 years. One of the few things that is consistent across all of them is that there has always been at least 1 debutant in each lineup. This is the only event so far this year where this has been the case in all prior optimal lineups. Another trend we’ve seen is that the winner has had at least one Top-5 at a previous WMPO and at least a top-7 in one of their last 5 events leading up to their win. The rest of the players in the optimal builds represent all versions of players. There are hot players with no good course experience, hot players with great course experience, players in bad form with good course experience, bad from and bad course experience, and those with no course experience. When the optimal lineup history does not eliminate anyone specifically, we’re going to have to begin with a large player pool of the best ball strikers and use game theory to pivot against the chalkiest players. I’ll do a deep dive into this year’s slate to generate our player pool in tomorrow’s article but wanted to get this discussion started with prior Optimal Lineups.
