Hello, World

Two words that changed the world of golf and also led me here.

On August 28th, 1996, two innocuous words in the English language were said. It wasn’t the first time they were uttered and nor was it the last. But those two words that fell from Tiger Woods lips that day changed the course of the world of golf and also brought me here to Substack nearly 27 years later.

I’ve been obsessed with sports my entire life. Anything I could get my hands on, I wanted to play, watch, consume — you name it. Golf was no different. It was also the great connector of generations. My grandfather taught me the game from a very young age and it’s been in my blood since. Coming of age already in love with the game when Tiger turned pro made it a very easy segue to have an immediate hero in the game and helped continue to nurture and grow my passion for the game all these years later.

As I got older and discovered fantasy sports, merging my love for data, the weekly guessing game, the gut feel versus following the process with the game I already loved — I’ve been hooked for some time. Especially in weekly DFS tournaments that you can find on Draft Kings or Fan Duel. I wanted to continue to get better and fine tune my game, so I created a model, so to speak, for myself that would help me identify a pool of players that I thought would make the cut each weekend and have a strong chance at winning or posting a very high finish. I didn’t go to MIT or an Ivy League school. I didn’t major in analytics. However, I do take a common sense approach in paring down the weekly field into anywhere from 30-40 golfers by utilizing a mixture of stats available to us in various places (such as the PGA Tour website) and ordering from top down the golfers I think will see the weekend so as to avoid picking any names that may sink my lineups.

I don’t do roster percentage projections and I have tinkered with trying to build actual projections based on what I already build out, but with a regular career and a family, I haven’t been able to invest the time into building that out that I would be satisfied with it.

But here’s how it works and how I see the game, both in real life and in the daily fantasy sports and/or sports betting realm: the course matters. That may seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how often it’s overlooked. Each week, each course has a different ask of the pro’s game and I’ve found that I give myself a better chance at cashing the events I play if I figure out which data points I should be leaning into. Some weeks, I may consider Strokes Gained (SG): Around The Green data, some weeks I may not. I may want to see percentages of greens in regulation from a certain distance. It will vary week to week depending on what I deem as most important.

The reason this Substack exists is encouragement from several friends to share what I put together and see if I can grow an audience. If I can, terrific. If it bombs, then so be it! My model has helped my friends and I make a little extra side money and hopefully it helps you. Since I’ve been tracking last year, the pool I select (usually in between 35-40) sees 65% on the low end to the low 80’s on the higher end of players make the cut and almost always has the winner. It’s pulled J.T. Poston at John Deere, it had Matt Wallace this past weekend in the Corales and even had Nicolas Echavarria in this years Puerto Rico.

The vision for this site moving forward is to provide the player pool in some form every week, thoughts on the course and also thoughts on the players in said pool. More often than not, I will typically reference Draft Kings pricing. I do have folks I share open thoughts with and anything where we all contribute will be listed as “Team” as the author.

I do intend on providing this site free of charge for the time being so you the reader can get a taste of the player pool, my thoughts and apply it to your lineups and see if it improves your game. The intention is to eventually move to a paid subscription model, but we aren’t talking the obscene prices that some services charge for access. I care about the casual player and want access to be — well, accessible.

I’m looking forward to sharing this space with you and may your drives be straight, your irons be pure and may you get 6/6 through to the weekend.

-Toph