DFS Odds and Leverage for Draftkings - 3M Open - July 2023

Its been a busy week but we are back with more odds, ownership and leverage to sift through for these upcoming tournaments. I am going to go chart by chart and highlight the names that pop for certain circumstances. Then you can make the best choices towards who to fill in your lineups based on your leverage thresholds.

Updated 10:16 pm CST

Odds and Situations

Final update: Seo, Nesmith, Kuchar and Spaun; those are the 4 names that went the most underowned in the bunch as I do this final update. I checked last year's article and the leverage spots didnt do all that great and it sorta feels like that can happen again with that range of names; regardless I will play all of them in my pool at some capacity. Just doing a 3 max and then some 20 max entries this week so I can stay in tune with the results.

Previous update: Finau has survived the purge. I am not all that excited to play him but he is in play due to his odds of success being high. I know his form stinks and hes in the upper half of ownership, but many guys who stink do find their way eventually. Maybe its Finau time. Or maybe not. I wont be locking him in - but I will play him in some of my lineups. Moving down the list, JJ Spaun is the next candidate for guys who no one is playing. Having the 4th best odds sorta makes it possible for me to play him at that level of ownership. His history sucks but I'm hoping that a course with only 4 PGA historical events has a little variance. Jaeger and Woodland are intruigingas well with a bit more ownership behind them. Beau is floating on his own, in a value stance. The 8K range seems to be what folks are avoiding this week. The 7k range is crowded and no doubt will lead to the most failed lineups. Si Woo Kim is the reason I went 5 of 6 last week. Now we get 2 more Kims to choose from as our cheapest options. Nesmith and Hodges are otherwise the top of the cheap range. Its crowded, meaning lots of ways to fail here and we just don't know who the fail play will be just yet.

The bottom tables indicate that 1) Justin Thomas actually has the most upside in the field. That is a tough one to trust after what he has done for weeks though. Kevin Yu is lacking in the leverage but could be a high value play. I personally will limit that play due to the lack of leverage. There could be high leverage on Andrew Novak this week, in addition to JJ Spaun. Their course history is not good here but their odds are high for a reason. Finally Grillo has had the top tournament history here in the last 4 years. He has played well recently and is a bit overowned as of now, but still may be a good play considering the other options.

Core but Leveraged

Updated - I am just going to mention the second set of names here that showed up. Theegala and Svensson. Sigg may still be an ok play but just wanted to say that one or the other could pann out.

Previous: this chart to show the 2 guys who check all the boxes for form, leverage, history and value. I have never been excited to play either guy but I will have to consider them. Ceiling wise they both leave something to be desired, but we all want 6 of 6 so maybe the upside tradeoff is ok.

Expected vs Actual Wins

The only qualified name on the chart this week is Tony Finau. The problem is he has already won twice, with his expected wins at 1.94, which is pretty much in line with expectations for him. Therefore this isnt an angle for this week to consider.

Course History

In case of course history, I try and look at how things panned out over the last 5 years and see how top 20 performed vs the rest of the field. Approach play seems to be the strongest indicator while around the green play really didnt have much impact. Finau and Grillo have gained more strokes here than the field, where Finau gets it done using good approach shots. This year, Finau and Woodland lead in SG in Approach and Woodland has struggled around the green, which makes Woodland intruiging. The only issue with him has been the strokes lost putting, which are important here. Adam Long is a guy who hasnt lost strokes in any category but is really cheap compared to others here. One thing not pictured here is the datagolf course fit - but I can tell that it favors Driving Accuracy and Around the green play as being important based on the course layout.

Course Stat Angles

Something interesting about this course is that it ranks as a top 5 easiest course for putting, which means that bad putters can potentially do better than normal here. Long putts also rank in the top 5 easiest to make on the PGA Tour. That is why I'm going to ignore poor putters and focus on those with better approach play. This isn't a strong take but I believe that those golfers who have the best chance to take approach shots within less than 150 yards more frequently will have a slight advantage here. Unfortunately most golfers will have an increase in their shots from 150 -200 yards and up this week. In peeking at who has done the best in this field, Grillo and Yuan are two names I'd like to mention as folks to watch.

Recent Form

Not a lot of names to look at this week, who have posted top 15s lately, but Brandon Wu and Alex Noren lead these lists. JT Poston looks like he could be a strong candidate based on his recent form as well, which is trending upward the most.

Leverage

In the final update, it seems that Beau has popped in the top leverage plays. Otherwise these leverage plays stayed consistant through the day. Rodgers may have the most upside for birdies of this list so I hope to get extra there. Otherwise will stay try to my dashboards and play Spaun and hope for the best!

Last Years Optimal

One thing that is cool about my page is that these blog posts don't go away. Ive been posting on this site for a year now and can go back and look at how the data stacked against this tournament last year. Finau was up there. Sungjae was up there. Then names like Revie and Hadwin were important last year as wel. They didnt make the optimal though.

Instead two guys from the top 10k range made it. Only 5 guys scored over 100 points last year but I also believe we had bad weather/wind. This is a look at the scatter plot from 2022:

Very similar view, granted my odds were calculated slightly differently. 2 guys over 10k were 20%+ owned and ended up there. Sungjae was the top odds on the chart even which is odd.

This is a shot at how he came into the event. 3 missed cuts in a row, at every Open. Then smashed for 2nd place at 3M. Moral of the story is that good players can turn it around in a major way, and waiting for them to turn it around first will take away the leverage you need to jump a leaderboard. Lets see who turns it around this week!

One final peek at the full scatterplot...

I tried to underline the highest owned plays on the slate and compare to the most optimal plays on the slate. Notice where the underlined plays are in the spectrum. They have the top odds for the price. 10K range has 4 of the 5 and then Rai is apparently just mispriced at his odds. In searching for pivot potential, I found 2, and one doesnt even come from the most owned. If not playing Rai, Beau is a good looking pivot for half the ownership. Also mispriced and seems to be a good fit for this. The other? Same guy I mentioned in this writeup in JJ Spaun, who is cheaper, half the ownership and higher odds than Adam Hadwin for whatever reasons. Will they work out? I dunno but its all about taking a stand to be different.

Good luck!