WWT Championship | Fantasy Golf Preview & Picks, Sleepers, Data - DFS Golf & DraftKings

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We head to El Cardonal Golf Course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for the World Wide Technology Championship! Rick uses data to breakdown the courses, field and much more!
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Transcript

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What's up, guys? Rick here with your preview for this week's WWT Championship. This is the newer-ish style event, or at least new golf course you're playing in Cabo at uh a Tiger Woods golf course. There's also an event in Abu Dhabi this week, so we can cover that a lot on the live chat on Wednesday as well. But nice to be back in the saddle. Nice to be rocking and rolling. I don't want to waste any more of your time. So let's get right after it. This is the course key stats tool. This might look different to a lot of you. I kind of soft launched this on Twitter a couple of days ago, maybe a week ago, and it is a complete and utter overhaul to the course key stats model and the way it is displayed. The goal is to make it easier to consume more actionable data and model a little bit more predictively. Now, this is a bad week to show it. Not a bad week. It's just not a full week because there is no shot link data, or there has not been historic shot link data in the past, and there's only two years worth of data. So you'll see when we get to places like Bay Hill, this becomes a lot more actionable because you're getting more predictive modeling. So we'll we'll talk about all of this when when we get there. But for now, it's El Cardinal, it's it's Diamante. This is a resort in Cabo, Tiger Woods, uh again, resort style golf course, Pazpolum greens, large fairways, not a lot of trouble if you miss the or excuse me, large greens, not a lot of trouble if you miss the fairway, right? That that is what resort golf is. Um, if you look at the scoring rates, 23% birdie or better, that is five percent more than the PGA tour average. Obviously, then uh not in all cases, but in most cases, the bogear worst percentage is going to be lower, and that's the case here. If you look at the scorecard, and even without the shot link data, we can do this regression model, and the regression model has been updated. So I had previously I had the primary stats in what was like a spider graph, and then I had the secondary stats in the um in a table on the side. And what I've done is I've basically just meshed those together, merged them together into this bar chart. And this bar chart are uh basically, I think it's like the top 40 best stats. So it's your strokes gain stats, it's some of the drive. It's you know, you're rarely gonna see like 75 to 100 yards from the right hand rough. It pops up, it's not actionable, it's a very bad stat. So these are the best stats to use, and then they're of course um uh ranked or sorted by how strong of a correlation they are, higher correlation to the right into the green, that's better. White, that's kind of your middle stats, red, those are your weaker correlations. And then um, if you hover over them, you'll be able to see what the ranks are. So little just quick tutorial there. What this ends up showing is that um you want to be a pretty prolific birdie maker. So birdie to bogey ratio and birdie average and birdie or better percentage are three of the top four most correlated to stats to success at this golf course. And remember, that's not that is not just while they're playing here. That is their their season stats, right? Their their last 100 round stats. The guys that are like, hey, they're birdie makers everywhere. They come here and they have more success than usual. So birdie to bogey ratio is usually a pretty uh highly correlated stat, but it ranks 13th, which means there's only 12 other courses in which uh birdie to bogey ratio is more important. Well, now that I'm doing this mod, there's like 90 courses. There used to be 50 courses, now there's 90 courses. So it is pretty significant when you start getting even inside the top 25 for some of these stats. After that, um, you see par four scoring, you see par three scoring, and you see three putt avoidance, and then five and then putts made over 10 feet. Um, that would be the last one, and maybe greens in regulation. Those would be the last ones that are in the green strong zone, if you will. Maybe we'll come up with a cooler name than that, but like that green zone where those correlation values are significant and they are strong. So you're talking about part three scoring, par four scoring, no surprise there. Birdie makers, large greens. So three putt avoidance, uh like a charm. Every time you get large greens, three putt avoidance starts to become a lot more correlated to success because you get guys that have 50 foot, 60 foot, 70, 80 foot putts that are getting to the range where you are much more likely to three putt than you are to make those putts. So that always pops up. And then putts made over 10 feet. Okay, now we're cooking. Uh, that's where you make birdies from. Now, if this was a different course with shot link, I would be able to show you what the approach bins are, which is what this is showing right now. But you'll see for a course it's blank, so it's just showing you tour averages right now, and it would show you the relative shots. So if if you know 20% of the shots are coming from 100 to 125, that would be plus 12 because the tour average is only eight. Okay, so it would be relative to tour average. Then what I do now is I try to predict this a little bit more. So knowing where these guys' shots are going to come from, knowing their skill base for each one of these shots, uh, in strokes gained, not in proximity. Proximity is not a very good stat, uh, but strokes gained is, you can predict an adjustment in terms of strokes gained approach, which is what I've done here. Now, again, this week, this isn't very actionable because it's just using PGA Tor average numbers. Okay. Um, still Victor Perez gets a bump, Henrik Norlander gets a bump, Ben Coles gets a bump. These guys are getting positive approach adjustments, but it's relative to tour average, not opposed to this golf course. And then I'm gonna do the same thing, and I do do the same thing for putting. So we know make percentages from inside five feet, six to nine feet, 10 to 15, 15 plus at each golf course. And we know I've started to calculate now the strokes gain metrics for each golfer's putting numbers from those ranges, and we know the frequency in which they're gonna come from for each player. So now you start to be a little bit predictive and you give guys putting adjustments. So we're talking about those putts from 10 feet and on being very highly correlated to success at this golf course. The guys who gain the most strokes on those putts per putt, Taylor Montgomery, Sam Ryder, Maddie Schmid, Jacob Bridgman, Max Grazerman. I've got thousands of putts on these guys. This is only for 2025. I've got tens of thousands of shots for all of these guys, right? I mean, Ben Coles, 1,500 approach shots are going into his model. Um, Maddie Schmidt, 2,200 putts going into his model. And then we can start to make those putting adjustments. So guys that get a good 10 to 15 adjustment and a good putting adjustment overall, Sam Ryder, you know, Nico Echeveria, Gordon Sargent, he doesn't have as many putts as everybody else does, Sammy Valamaki to name a few. And then if you see where this is going, the new adjusted course fit uh uh takes uh your adjustment off the T, your adjustment on approach, your adjustment with the putter, and adjusts you per round. So the easy way to look at this, and and again, this week is not a great example because it's not the shot length data, but we'll talk about this a lot in the next months and years moving forward. A way to say this would be something like Michael Thor Björnson gets a 0.94 stroke per round skill adjustment on this golf course, okay? Because he gets a big boost off the T, gets a pretty good boost on approach, and he is flat with the putter. That adds up to nearly a stroke per round. Okay, so this will continue to evolve, but the idea around this is being as um predictive as possible, as opposed to retrospectively, and using every single shot to start building these models out. So I'm really proud of it. Check it out. Again, it'll get a lot better as the weeks go on and and they have shot link. It'll be it'll be very easy to see what's going on here, but I I hope that's in enjoyable for y'all. Okay, here's the cheat sheet on my website, riprungood.com. All this is on riffrungood.com, obviously, if I didn't mention that. We've got three golfers over$10,000, and this is a really interesting group. We've got Ben Griffin, who has been out of everybody in this field, maybe the second best player in this field for 2025. Um, he does it in a lot of good ways. He's a is a very strong putter. He plays an international game. He just came back from India where he finished 32nd and he picked up 6.2 strokes from T to Green. He actually struggled putting there and at Beth Page, which is very rare because he's a he's one of the better putters that we have on the PGA tour. He's played this event each of the last two years, or excuse me, he's played here two of the last three years. He's only played once at El Cardanal. He finished T24. El Cameleon hosted this event prior. That's now a live course. I played that course last week, or not last week, last year. Uh, very fun course. Uh El Cameleon, beautiful, beautiful. They don't play it there anymore. Um, so keep that in mind. There's only two years worth of data at El Cardinal at Diamante, which is the Tiger Woods golf course. The the interesting thing about Ben Griffin is as much as I love Ben Griffin, he's$10,500. JJ Spawn is$100 cheaper, has had the better year. So I would say JJ Spawn, if everybody in this field has had the best 2025. Is that actually true? I'm I that's my opinion. Let's go look. So everybody in 2025 in this field, minimum 20 starts, stroke scan. Let me zoom out a little bit so you guys can see it. Strokes gain total per round. We're getting, let's do only, I only want PGA tour rounds. I'm not going to give these guys credit. Oh, it is Ben Griffin. It is incredibly close, though. JJ Spawn uh Ben Griffin's 1.17. JJ Spawn is 1.14. JJ Spawn, of course, has the victory at the US Open. Very, very sound. Both these guys are great, but I would say JJ Spawn's been better in 2025. Um, should be well rested, hasn't played since the since the since the Ryder Cup. He's played here one time. He finished T30. That was last year. The other thing that I find interesting about JJ Spawn is you did not see driving distance anywhere near the most correlated stats to success at El Cardinal. In fact, the three lowest correlated, weakest correlations, the three are ball speed, clubhead speed, and driving distance. Okay. So if you're a JJ spawn and the things that you do poorly, driving distance, all drives, 103 on tour, club head speed, 116 miles an hour, 88th on tour. And his ball speed is yeah, 173. Uh nothing, nothing to write home about, right? So ball speed, club speed, and carry below average. Those are the three things that statistically just do not matter. So I'm gonna be firing quite a bit of JJ Spawn every chance that I can get. And then Rico Hoey has probably been the fall MVP. Uh no wins, but he's got the 10th place for the ninth place finish at the Pro Corps, the fourth in Japan, the runner up at the Black Desert. The metrics are beyond amazing. The putter that he has unlocked with the long putter has not always been outstanding. Like, for example, he only gained a stroke putting last week, but the last three rounds he picked up like five strokes putting after a really dismal start. You know, it has not been always perfect for for Rico with the with the um new putter, but it's been good enough to keep him in things because of what a great ball striker that he is. So I I it's hard to dislike any of these guys, but you're you're probably gonna see me take on a significant uh stand on JJ Spawn here. I wish he I probably wish he would have played a little bit more this fall, but I'm I'm pretty happy with the way he sets up for this golf course. The 9k range is great here. I might try to catch Max Grazerman in this spot. Um finished runner up at the Bay Current Classic, the Japanese event, which had shot link, but it was so bad and so wrong. Actually, the PGA Tour recommended um not using it. So I don't know how Max did it strokes gained wise, but he finished runner-up. He also finished fourth at this event last year. Max has had post-uh Rocket Classic. So basically, from the the late summer on, he has not been himself, it has not looked good, it has been very different than what we've normally seen. If he is, quote, back after taking a month off and is back to doing what he what he was doing for the year prior to that, he'd be a very strong approach player, he'd be a very strong putter at a golf course that he has um finished well at. And I think this is a great spot to grab him. So you're probably gonna see me also take a little bit more risk on Max Graserman. Garrick Higgo might be in the top five of fall MVPs at the moment. He's got three straight top seven finishes at three completely different golf courses, right? You've got um Silverado in Napa, you've got the Country Club of Jackson, and you've got Yokohama Country Club, all three of those places asking you different things. He gains across the board in all of them. He has found it, right? He has found the game that we saw him have a lot early in his career. DP World Tour, coming over, winning the um event in South Carolina at Congoree, and we're starting to see that much more now. So you're gonna see me get a pretty good bit of exposure to Grazerman, Higgo, but I understand there's a lot of risk involved. Uh, if you noticed, when I went to the Holy Grail and I looked at just PGA tour events in 2025, it was Ben Griffin one, JJ Spawn two, Thorbjorn Ollison number three. And if you dive deeper into that, it's a lot of really good play. He he misses more cuts than a lot of his peers. You see that here. He's he's he's missed a third of his cuts in 2025, which is half or twice the rate of JJ Spawn, but he has got uh a bunch of top 20s, 24%. When he plays well, he finishes inside the top 10, inside the top five. He has a very strong strokes-gained um profile where he gains in all four major categories. I I think this is a really interesting spot because you're gonna get you're gonna get everybody in on Michael Thorbjornsen, and you're gonna get in on Higo, and maybe people are gonna be in on Kevin Yu, or even what Michael Brennan did. And what does that leave Thor Bjorn Olison just like, well, well, now what? Um, you know, it it's it's a pretty decent spot, I think, to run him out. He is making his debut, but I'm not too worried about that. Look at these last four. Look at these last six, all over the world, five top 20s. Uh Denmark, the Danish golf championship, Irish Open, Jackson, Mississippi, Madrid, Southern Utah. Sick. Here's Michael Brennan. Are we buying this? We're gonna find out. I don't even have a headshot for him yet. I guess I should update that. Um Michael Brennan wins the Black Desert with some pretty gaudy numbers. Seven and a half strokes gained off the T. He pulled driver in places you shouldn't pull driver, and he executed it. Picked up two strokes on approach, picked up six with the putter, five and a half with the putter. I'm going to assume we've got regression coming. Uh, probably unlikely that you can gain seven strokes off the T at Black or excuse me, at El Cardinal without being Bryson D. Chambeau and hitting it like 400 yards. So that is probably not gonna happen again. Uh putter, probably not gonna, but I I I will say I don't think I'll get to Michael Brennan this week, but I will be in on Michael Brennan a lot in 2026. Uh, I think what the most likely scenario is is we start to see that sigh of relief that we see a lot from guys who win early and win for the first time. He's at a golf course that is not going to allow him to put together the same stat profile that he put together in southern Utah. But we're gonna find a lot of really good spots for Michael Brennan that are not necessarily now paying$9,000 for it with a$9,000 range. That's that's pretty savvy. If if you are though trying to decide between Brennan and maybe some of the guys in the um in the upper 8k range, I'd probably prefer Brennan, but I I think you're gonna see a lot of my exposure go towards some of these other guys who are a little bit more expensive. The 8k range is a little soft, you know, still wondering what Wyndham champion uh, what Wyndham championship, what Wyndham Clark is going to be up to. His run and metrics have not been good for the past few months. No really idea or feel for what's gonna happen there. Nick Taylor, I'm a believer in, but you know, Pearson Cootie is probably the guy that I've been singing the praises for the most, and I'm and I'm quite happy about that. The third at the Black Desert, I've I've probably said this 15 times, but back and forth between the Corn Ferry tour, he's been very strong. His last two PGA tour events alone were a 14th in Sanderson Farms and a third to Black Desert. Um, really talented player, drives it well, just a lot of a lot of game, great pedigree out of Texas, like all that stuff. So probably just defaulting to Pearson Cootie. As much as I love Nico Echeveria and he put up a pretty solid title defense in Japan, that was not that feels more like an outlier than anything. Um, Jacob Bridgman shows up on a lot of those um modeling the course. You know, we don't have a lot of data, like, but like small sample size Jacob Bridgeman shows up in a pretty good spot, finished 14th here last year, not thrilled. Again, just like really not thrilled about the entirety of this 8k range. Yes, Burst Svensen is a uh just kind of like a statistical darling at the moment. He hits the ball so hard and so far, he gives himself a three or four stroke off the T advantage. Um, just just with that club alone. You see, ball speed, he's he's fourth in this field, or excuse me, club speed, he's fourth in this field, 123 miles an hour. Ball speed, he's fifth in this field. Carry, he's very high, 306 um, 306 yards, kind of sprays it all over the place in a lot of different directions. I don't think that's a huge issue here, but you know, I I am waiting for him to kind of put a lot of this together. He cannot putt to save his life on a golf course that's gonna ask you to try to avoid a lot of three putts and make a lot of putts from 10 feet. That's probably a concern. So we'll keep an eye. You know, admittedly, paspolum greens do make usually make bad putters better. Um, in fact, if you start looking at let's just do this real quick here. Um, last couple of years, let's do back to 2022 on Pazpolum, and we're gonna look at strokes gain total because there's not always a um shot link available at uh passpolum golf courses because they're usually tropical, they're usually coastal, they're usually foreign outside of America. They don't they don't usually take it there. So guys that you know have putted well, Chan Kim, who's not a very good putter in general, putts well on Pazpolom. Um Joel Damon putts well on Paspol, Ben Griffin, even better. You'll see guys like I was looking for Emiliano Grillo, here he is, gaining two-thirds of a stroke putting on Pazpolum and plays pretty much well above his baseline, hasn't lost strokes putting in any of his last, has has never lost strokes putting in a measured paspolom event in 2022, since 2022. Now, he missed the cut here last or two years ago, no shot link. We don't know if he how he did there, right? So there's it's a double-edged sword. But that if there was a place where you'd hope Svensen could putt to a zero, maybe you hope it's here. Hope is not particularly a good strategy, though, but I'm I'm pointing it out if you want to make that decision for yourself. The talent that resides at$7,900 alone, I think, is gonna garner a lot of attention. Johnny Kiefer is$7,900. He is uh I don't know if his PGA tour status starts now or if it's 2026, but he's he's through. He like won Corn Fairy. I think he won both player of the year and rookie of the year on the Corn Fairy tour, which I think the last guy to do that was either Scotty Scheffler or Justin Thomas. Don't quote me on that. It also does not mean that Johnny Kiefer is going to turn into either one of those guys, but he is phenomenal. He's very, very talented. Again, we don't have a lot of his data. He we have a lot more data, um, a lot less data on him than anybody else. But I think what you're gonna see, yeah, he's right here. Young, modern, 120 mile an hour club speed, 181 ball speed, puts him like 12th in this field, just a ridiculous specimen who has one at every single level. And$7,900 is criminally low at a golf course that is not gonna throw much penalty at you and is gonna ask you to make a ton of birdies, which is what these guys' specialties are. He's gonna be very popular. Takumi Kanaya is also$7,900. Uh, a longer burn for Kanaya, but one of the great one of the best amateurs in the world, turns pro, starting to find his feet a little bit, right? 21st at the Sanderson Farms, fourth at the Bay Current. He won a Japanese event uh in there somewhere, 33rd at the Black Desert. I love this guy. I think he's incredibly talented. Um, he is older than Johnny Kiefer, right? Uh three years older, probably a better amateur career, but is taking a little bit more time in professional golf to get everything figured out, but it looks like he is starting to get everything figured out. A couple other guys in the$7,400 range. Um, you'll see me on Luke Clanton. It is with a little bit of caution, but come on. He doesn't go from being everybody's shiny new object uh to$7,400 and dead to the world in the time frame that he has. Yes, he's turned pro. Yeah, it's harder when you turn pro. He is still an elite driver, a very good approach player, and he's gained strokes with a putter in each of his last two. He has a short game problem. Don't miss these 8,000 square foot greens, okay? You won't have to worry about your short game at all. It's a resort golf course. Go out and just smash this place. That that is exciting to me for Lukland at$7,400. William Mao and um Taylor Montgomery are still two very highly ranked 7K players, uh, Patrick Fishburn as well, in the strokes game trend department. So playing over their 100-round baseline, William Mao is basically now a stroke per round player. Montgomery a little bit better than that, Fishburn a hair better than that. And both Mao and Montgomery's significant improvements have come from Tita Green. Mao is actually, oh boy, Peter, Peter uh Nade, Kate, I don't know how he pronounces that, is screwing up my my chart here. But the um the William Mao stuff, even with a win, looks like he is still due for a statistical come-up. He is still putting below his 100-round baseline, despite a win, a seventh and a 38th, and an 18th place finish that I had to throw away his shot link data from in Japan. Right? Miscut the Black Desert, not good. Unique golf course. I can make a lot of excuses for that. I'm I I don't think William Mao is done. I I think there's another top 10 coming this fall. 7,400, maybe another win is coming, probably not, but but the stats are very uh positive. That I thought I was gonna come up with a cooler word than positive. Very good for Mr. Mal. Let's see if Ben Coles is going to make a putt this week. Um, probably not, though he was a zero putter at the Black Desert. That's all we ask. T20 with zero, with a zero with the putter. Love that for you. Last time he was a zero, T8 at the ISCO. So that's all we're that's all we're asking for, Mr. Coles. That's all we're asking for. Jackson Suber, amongst all the other guys with great collegiate and amateur records, uh, I feel like has gotten lost in the mix. Finished 15th at the Black Desert. A lot of it was with the flat stick. However, he's a very, very good putter. It's already the second time in his last like 10 starts, he's gained five strokes with the flat stick. So I'm not too concerned about that. He could fill it up in a big way at this place, make a lot of birdies. The most mispriced guy is David Ford. And I will I sat here two weeks ago, or was it last week? Two weeks ago, I don't know what it was. And what conversation did I have? I said, listen, I don't know when David Ford is gonna figure this out, but he's gonna figure it out. He's now through PGA tour you, has his tour card, is incredibly talented, incredibly talented. Um look at the driver, multiple strokes with the driver every time he tees it up, starting to show some better signs in the other areas. We've got a putting problem again, but he picked up four strokes putting at the Black Desert. He gets on past pollen, who knows? Finishes third at the Black Desert. He is$6,700. We do not need much, and he has top eight upside in this field. So really, really excited for him the next 12 months and the next 12 years, but is very playable in this spot. Let's run a model here, and I'm gonna refresh my memory. So we want birdie makers, par three, par four scoring, three putt avoidance, putts, especially outside of 10 feet. Um we're not putting a lot of emphasis on distance, clubhead speed, ball speed, apex height. We're not putting any emphasis on that. So, what we will do is we will run this model for the last uh we gotta kinda go 50 rounds. We'll put a little bit of our our um weighted strokes gain total baseline in there just for for solidarity. 15 on weighted strokes gain total. So now we are gonna say go make some birdies. I want birdies or better gained for 20. I want putting uh from 10 to 15 feet and 15 to 20 feet for 10. Those are like your bonus putting zones. We could also put 10 on approach putt performance because that is like how to avoid three putts. Okay. We could also do slower greens. Pazpolum generally runs much slower. That would give us like 40 on putting. Let's put let's put five on slow greens. Let's put um 10 on strokes game par three, ten on strokes game par four, course history. Um do I want course history? I don't think I need to. Where's our last 10 gonna go? Oogie avoidance? No, I don't care about that, do I? Driving, no. Approach? I guess I could do um opportunities plus gains, which would be approaches with inside 10 feet for Birdie uh relative to the field. Alright, let's see what happens. My number one golfer, okay, wow, oh boy, is Ben Griffin. That's fine. I'm not I'm not surprised about that. My number two golfer is Taylor Montgomery, which is a little bit scary. He is getting just a significant Significant boost on all the putting metrics, which is like half of the stuff that we have here. And is actually pretty good on par threes and part fours because he's terrible on par fives. Schmidt is four uh three, Higgo is four, Grillo is five, JJ Spawn is six, Victor Perez, Keith Mitchell, Eric Cole, Max Grazerman. Okay, I'm gonna favorite some of these guys because I need to do a little bit more homework here. I'm gonna favorite Schmid. I will favorite Victor Perez and Keith Mitchell. I know what Keith Mitchell is about, but I'm worried about that. I need to look at that again. And I want to see. If we sort this by putting, yeah, okay. So putting from 10 to 15 feet. Yeah, Montgomery's in there. He's top five. Rider. Okay, I just want to see some of the other guys that scored well for me. Um, David Skins pops in. He's actually a pretty good score as well. 72. David Skins,$6,700. He's 18th in my model. Really good putting and birdie making numbers. Interesting. Okay, wow. We got work to do, and we're gonna get it done. Wednesday, live chat, 3 p.m. Eastern time, WWT or Abu Dhabi. Talk about anything you want. Stoke to be back home and just rocking and rolling. Um, that's all. Best of luck this week. Talk to you guys soon.