Fantasy golf advice: One & Done, Valspar Championship

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Harold Varner III … All you ever needed to know about his spirit was realized in the wake of a closing 81 at the PGA Championship where he settled for a share of 36th place but admitted enjoying just being on the scene for the experience. In the context of the opportunity lost, it didn’t hurt that his 2019-20 card was locked up months ago. Currently 85th in points, his most recent of eight top 25s this season was a T21 at the Travelers Championship where he ranked seventh strokes gained: putting and fifth in scrambling. Amid a heater en route to a solo sixth at last year’s JDC, he missed on only three of 71 attempts inside 10 feet. Vaughn Taylor … Continues to flourish at 43 years of age. He’s 6-for-6 with three top 20s since the Wells Fargo Championship. Finished fourth three weeks ago at TPC River Highlands where he paced the field in proximity to the hole and ranked second in putting: birdies-or-better. Sits T9 on TOUR in proximity, fifth in strokes gained: putting, fifth in red numbers (49) and T4 in sub-70s (T37). And since his debut at TPC Deere Run in 2004, he’s 8-for-12 with four top 20s. His scoring average in his last eight loops around the track is 68.125. J.T. Poston … Still having trouble finding the handle in final rounds, but the third-year talent out of Western Carolina University puts himself in position often enough that he’s bound to connect at some point. His most recent bit of unfinished business stung him in his last start at the Rocket Mortgage Classic two weeks ago. After sitting alone in second place through 54 holes, he stumbled home in 73 to finish T11. In his two previous appearances at TPC Deere Run, he’s beaten par in each of the first three rounds but closed with 73 both times. One of these days, something he throws against the wall is going to stick and it might as well be a spot where he keeps coming back for more. Dominic Bozzelli … Because he’s navigating just his third season on the PGA TOUR, the 28-year-old can’t be labeled as a horse for a course just yet, but TPC Deere Run is first in line if he reaches the stable. Both of his appearances resulted in top 25s and his scoring average in those eight rounds is 68.00. The only other event at which he’s recorded multiple top 25s (of seven others in all) is the Desert Classic where he has a pair of fifth-place finishes. And why not? The correlation between the two events is a shootout and he can roll it with the best of ’em. Currently ninth on TOUR in strokes gained: putting and 12th in putting: birdies-or better. Dylan Frittelli … The 29-year-old has been feeling the heat all season. While 153rd in the FedExCup and under pressure to secure conditional status as a safety net for next season, there have been rumblings of late that he’s ready to pop. After a T46 in Detroit, he sat T9 entering the final round in Minnesota, only to plummet to another T46 with a Sunday 73 due to a tee-to-green game that abandoned him. Yet, he ranked 13th in strokes gained: tee-to-green for the week and he’s 41st on TOUR in the stat this season. So, he might be close and he has the bonus of being able to tap into the experience of a pair of European Tour victories just two years ago. NOTE: Sleeper is a relative term, so Rob uses unofficial criteria to determine who qualifies. Each of the following usually is determined to be ineligible for this weekly staple: Winners of the tournament on the current host course; winners in the same season; recent major champions; top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking; recent participants of team competitions.

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Through two rounds at the World Golf Championships – HSBC Champions, Tony Finau sits at 11 under par and has opened up a three-stroke advantage over a trio of players. Here are the top 10 win probabilities heading into the weekend: The top 3 in terms of their share of win probability, Tony Finau, Justin Rose, and Tommy Fleetwood, are all among the top 6 players in this field according to our model (Rose at #2, Finau at #5, and Fleetwood at #6). There is a 72 percent chance that the winner will emerge from that trio of golfers. While Rose has been a top-10 player in the world for several years now, both Fleetwood and Finau have only recently risen to that level. In fact, they have followed similar trajectories: here are plots of their respective performances over the last few years (Fleetwood above, Finau below): Each bar in these graphs indicates the golfer’s average Strokes Gained at an event, and the black line is a 10-event moving average. Both Fleetwood and Finau were performing at a level similar to an average PGA TOUR professional (i.e. Strokes Gained of 0) near the end of the 2016 season. Recently they have both elevated their games to near the level of a top 5 player in the world (which can be thought of as a golfer who averages +2 Strokes Gained per round). Finau and Fleetwood have done everything but win over the past year on the PGA TOUR; a win at a World Golf Championships event this week would solidify their position among golf’s current elite. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cutâ€�, “Top 20â€�, “Top 5â€�, and “Winâ€� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the World Golf Championships – HSBC Champions, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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