Genesis: Trend Table
We stay out west with a Tiger sighting
I had an interesting discussion surrounding the trend table last week and the main question that kicked off the conversation was asking me “if I was putting too much weight on recent performance?”
I think it’s such a good question and a good reminder of how to use this piece as well as the player pool itself.
In the trend table, we’re looking at recent performance over a baseline performance. It’s not meant to be law or the bible so to speak, but to give us a guideline or be able to make coin flip decisions.
Taking last week, we were off Sungjae, Harman & Fowler because of the trend table, even when both Harman & Sungjae had made the pool.
In the $5 entry fee $30K Caddie [Single Entry] on Draft Kings, Sungjae had 6.81%, Harman was at 11.45% and Fowler was at 12.56%. In a three entry max tournament, Sungjae shot up to 8.21%, Harman stayed static at 11.1% and Fowler dipped slightly to 9.82%.
Still, those are numbers we were happy to avoid playing.
Conversely, a player like Dahmen was identified at sub 1%.
They aren’t all winners - just look at my continued blood feud with Greyson Sigg. Hadwin & Rai let us down, too, Rai being more of a victim of the weather draw which ended up skewing heavily towards afternoon-morning wave.
The point of looking back is understanding how to use the tool and help us potentially identify values and over looked golfers or avoiding pot holes in our lineupes - not just taking the top 6 players you can fit and calling it good.
Golf is incredibly variant, hard and weird. We’re just trying to give ourselves a fighting chance.
On to this week:
Not surprising to see Nick Taylor shoot up the list with last week.
Mackenzie Hughes is a little shocking, considering subpar performances at Farmers & AT&T. He has middling course history here (another extremely sticky/predictive course in Riviera), but he has an extremely depressed salary. We’ll see what the player pool spits out.
Kevin Yu got rocked in the second round last week which destroyed his week and some lineups, but again, I think he was slightly victimized by the weather draw. He’s been playing good golf and last weeks MC might help us get him at a depressed click rate.
Poston MC’d last week as well - not super encouraging. Overall has been ok at Riviera, but has MC’d last two years. Going to be interesting to see where he comes in.
Sepp Straka is $7,100 this week, has made the cut three years in a row with a T-15 here, and outside of a rotten showing at Farmers, has a 22nd at the DPWT Championship, 2nd at Hero, a 12th at Sentry & 26th at AT&T dating back to mid November. Assuming he’s popular, but looking like a strong play.
I’m pretty much throwing Tiger stats out this week. He’s Tiger, he’s near min price and will be extremely popular. Interested to see how many clicks he gets.
Scottie playing above his base line still, which is frankly insane. Can he find a putter?
Hadwin’s terrible week gives him a significant drop in the trend table.
Matt Fitzpatrick is steadily rising, even with his “poor” showing in this weeks trend. It’s gotten significantly better as the season keeps humming. He was some wild swings here, MC’ing last year, but also has a T-30 and a T-5 to his name. We’ll need to monitor him.
The precipitous drop of Luke List has the petty person in me gleeful, but I think the fall swing was more of an anomaly than his actual game.
Theegala is more of a case of - he was playing so well, that he’s taken a step back, but still remains one of the top players on Tour.
Cole & Harman are pretty popular players and are on the big downswing here.
Homa has won here and probably has the most elite course history - but his game is in rough shape. A missed cut last week in which he looked — not great — doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence. I think he’s going to come down to clicks - if he’s in the 4-8% range, he’s a great play. Anything in double digits, I’m fine fading him & course history in hopes that we’re right on his game being in bad shape.
Sungjae was terrible last week, although he was mixed up in the bad weather and got shorted on some starts and stops. He still made the cut, but he’s not inspiring right now.
Holy hell, what happened to Rickie Fowler? He just flat out isn’t good right now.
More to come.