Fantasy golf advice: One & Done, Sanderson Farms ChampionshipFantasy golf advice: One & Done, Sanderson Farms Championship
To quote a wise man, I’m a perfectionist with lowered expectations. Not everyone is on board with my philosophy to target top 10s. I see them as goals with top fives the bonuses and victories reasons to celebrate. That’s fine. At least you’re provided some premise for the picks. Meanwhile, there’s the relevance of long-range strategy. Occasionally, the golfer I like to win now might make more sense later in the context of the fantasy competition. Remember fantasy rule No. 3: Remain fluid. While this explains how I play the One & Done, especially early in a season, I still get after it in the additional events. This week’s Sanderson Farms Championship reserves space for 132 golfers, almost none of whom you’re going to miss in the remaining 41 tournaments of 2018-19. The only entrant who deserves pause is Martin Laird for the Barracuda Championship, but you’re not going to consider him long for the Sanderson Farms, anyway. Therefore, it’s a rare week when I’ll settle for a top 10. Lucas Glover is atop my Power Rankings. He’s popped on a number of occasions in recent week and you can’t rule out a level of comfort in this neck of the woods as a Southeasterner his entire life. Bill Haas, Chris Kirk and Hunter Mahan follow in order. Each is cut from a similar cloth as ball-strikers with impressive résumés. Haas and Kirk are among only four who appear in Future Possibilities below. The Country Club of Jackson has served as a coronation for first-time winners Nick Taylor (2014), Peter Malnati (2015), Cody Gribble (2016) and Ryan Armour (2017), so there’s a surplus of fuel to support your decision to invest in a current non-winner. Harold Varner III is highest among all non-winners in my Power Rankings at No. 5. Dylan Frittelli is No. 8, Cameron Davis is No. 9 and Patrick Rodgers is No. 10. Because Frittelli and Davis are first-time PGA TOUR members, they’re the most intriguing of the bunch and the Sanderson Farms Championship is a proper setting to latch on. If there’s a snub in the Power Rankings, it’s Aaron Baddeley, veteran of a T4 (2015) and T30 (2017) in Jackson. Not dissimilar to Glover’s recent trend, the Aussie connected four top 25s on two tours, and then opened the new season with a T4 at the Safeway Open. Ironically, for a guy best known as one of the best putters of his generation, it was his irons that yielded the top five at Silverado. He led the field in greens hit and ranked T4 in proximity. The advice for two-man gamers is the same. Holster Laird and consider one of the stalwarts to pair with Badds. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES NOTE: Select golfers committed to the tournament are listed alphabetically. Future tournaments are sorted chronologically and reflect previous success on the courses on which the tournaments will be held in 2018-19. The numerical values in parentheses represent the order of relative confidence of where to use each golfer if multiple sites are listed (e.g. 1 for strongest, 2 for next-strongest and so on). To present weighted confidence in real time, numerical values will not change all season no matter how many tournament remain listed for each golfer. All are pending golfer commitment. Bill Haas … RSM (7); CareerBuilder (1); Genesis (3); WGC-Match Play (8); Heritage (4); Charles Schwab (2); Wyndham (6) Chris Kirk … Sanderson Farms (6); RSM (1); Sony (4); Valero (3); PLAYERS (5); Charles Schwab (2) Martin Laird … CareerBuilder (6); Waste Management (1); Genesis (3); Valero (5); Barracuda (2) Kevin Streelman … Sanderson Farms (3); Shriners (6); Mayakoba (2); CareerBuilder (8); Pebble Beach (1); Valero (9); Heritage (5); Memorial (4); Travelers (7)
