RADIO
Win-dham Clark? Or Win-damn, Clark? Which version of the ball striking beast do we get tomorrow as he heads into the 4th round of an elevated event with a 2 shot lead over Xander Schauffele. Clark shot a ridiculous 8 under (63) and Xander a (64). Clark sits 5 shots ahead of Adam Scott and Tyrrell Hatton who sit in a very distant third place with 18 holes to play.
The general logic for showdown has been to target golfers who played well the day before and particularly those who hit their irons well. This makes sense as you want to roster players who are playing good golf right now. We will also be using my DFS Showdown Model which is available for premium members on the website and in our discord.
You can find me on Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me. My DFS style is very ownership-centric, and at times, this can make you feel like an unsuccessful DFS player, but when a sneaky, low-owned golfer comes through for you, it is all worth it. In this article, we are going to break down the tournament's Ballers and Crawlers and use that information to derive a player pool full of upside and leverage.
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Finishing Position Points vs. Ownership
Round 4 showdown adds the element of finishing position points to the mix. It provides an immense leverage opportunity for those of us brave enough to click on names with a T30 associated with them. There is a five-point difference between second place and 15th place, the points equivalent of one extra birdie in a player's round. If somebody sitting outside the top 20 entering Round 4 has an amazing day, making only one extra birdie than the guys in the top five, they essentially nullify the finishing position advantage. Did we mention that they will also come in at a quarter of the ownership?
Ownership in DFS is king. If you are part of the 2% of the field that has John Huh shooting -9, 98% of the field is missing out on those points. This is where money is made in DFS and if we ignore finishing position points for the most part, there is a decent chance that one of the top points scorers is sitting outside the top 10 entering Round 4. There will be instances where the leaders continue to play well, and that is not ideal, but how many times have we seen a 45% owned overnight leader have his nerves get the better of him and shoot over par? In this scenario, you have a major edge over half the field.
Round 4 Strategy
Yesterday we reached a little for a weather advantage, with Finau and Rory not nearly giving us the salary relief we were looking for going off early after barely making the cut. We are going to follow through with the same strategy tomorrow, though, as we have a more severe wind edge in the morning AND finishing position points are available driving ownership to the top of the leaderboard as mentioned above.
Golfers will be teeing off 1 all day, which puts the majority of that left hand column below as options for our player pool, while sprinkling in some guys later on who may pose a kryptonite-like threat to ol Clark Kent 5 shots away.
Round 4 Power Rankings
The Power Rankings for Round 4:
These are the golfers I will be looking to slot into my lineups for round 4. The ownership numbers are projected for R4 of $7.5K SHORT GAME [20 ENTRY MAX], which is important to note, as contest size and entry fee impacts the ownership numbers of different golfers across the contests. Click here for a full field power rankings that is part of the DFS Showdown Model on RotoBaller's website.
With Clark and Xander having such a massive gap between 3rd place the chances one of them win, is pretty good as agreed upon by Vegas pricing them to win at +100 and +165 respectively. Third place chasers are at 16-1 and 25-1. However, with such a large lead, if Xander stumbles and Clark finds himself nursing a 5 shot lead on the back 9, he will most likely chase far less birdies resulting in a win with very little DK points to show for it. That is the narrative we are going to pursue tomorrow, which will help eliminate about 70% total ownership with those two guys missing from our player pool.
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Top 10 Candidates (Chalk)
$10,000+: Nobody.
$9,000: Sungjae Im and Justin Thomas are the two $9k golfers we are going to roster who sit in T5 and T9 respectively. Both have the potential to go nuclear and potentially sneak into 2nd place or if we get lucky enough, win.
$8,000: Tyrrell Hatton is going to be rather chalky but he is playing too well and is priced too cheap to not add him to our handful of golfers who have a shot of going deep and challenging for a win.
$7,000: Corey Conners is always a steady ball striker but if that putter gets hot he has the potential to climb from T9 into the top-3 at a very affordable 24%.
$6,000: Nobody.
Top 10-20 (Pivots)
$10,000+:
$9,000: Viktor Hovland played well today and should have a chance of being one of the highest point scorers tomorrow if he continues his stellar play from today.
$8,000:
$7,000:
$6,000: Alex Smalley is $6,600 and is playing really well right now. He is a nice salary saver who has the chance to sneak into the top-5 with another good round.
Outside Top 20 (Leverage)
$10,000+: Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy were number 3 and 1 in my pretournament rankings, with Xander getting sandwiched between the two of them. At a 1/6th of the ownership of Xander we are going to take a chance that Rory in particular can embrace the easy conditions in the morning and go VERY low before the wind picks up.
$9,000: "Tony Finau seems to have a governor on his short game through three rounds. If he can rev up that putter in the final round we could see a slate-breaker type round from Big Tone. Cameron Young has also had some tough times in the short game department and really hasn't got out of 2nd gear all week. Both these race cars are ready to hit the open road early in the morning and set a number." - RBC Heritage write-up for R4 and its funny how they both find themselves in the same position yet again. Maybe they can finally come through for us as rostering Cameron Young is starting to feel like a disease.
$8,000: Tom Kim and Sahith Theegala both are capable of doing wonderful things on the golf course and Theegala gets a really early tee time, while Tom can sneak into the top-10 with a great round.
$7,000: Keegan Bradley, Emiliano Grillo, Hayden Buckley, Joseph Bramlett, and Nick Hardy. Buckley and Bramlett get an early tee time and have been playing okay all week. Hard blew up in R3 but his ball striking and being in the very first tee time is ultra appealing at a flat $7k.
$6,000: Callum Tarren played just fine for somebody priced at $6,100 and he is priced there again for R4 and we will go back to him again tomorrow.
Good luck tomorrow, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!
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