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All right, welcome in Inside Golf Podcast, Mexico Championship Betting Picks. We'll bring in Michael Cavalunis in a second, who does the ownership projections for the
fan share sports, very smart guy. And I think if you liked the episode that I did with James last week, you'll really like this one as well. And we talk all through Mexico too. It's a really interesting week for DraftKings. So this one is a little more DraftKings heavy than betting, but we cover all of it. And as always, this podcast is presented by rickrungood.com.
Bunch of new tools dropping in there very soon. All my written work, ownership projections. I gave Rick a bunch of suggestions on stuff that I wanted to add to the site that I think is going to be really cool and you're not going to be able to find anywhere else. So it's a great time to sign up. RickCornGood.com, promo code Andy. All right, let's talk to Michael.
All right. Michael Cavalunas is here. He's the host of The Cutline. He's a data analyst, and he does ownership projections as well for Fanshare Sports. Mike, how's it going, man? Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on, Andy. I'm really excited. By the way, last week's show was phenomenal because it really reinforced a lot of things I do for DFS. And I really, really, you know, anyone listening to this show, make sure they listen to last week's show. The one with James. Yeah, with James. It was great. Yeah.
For the things I do in DFS, it really reinforced some of the better ways to tackle these bigger slates.
Well, I appreciate you saying that. Actually, the feedback that we got on... We DMed before. I was curious about... I was always trying to learn because I'm trying to start doing my own ownership projections and trying to learn that world a little bit. So basically, the feedback that I got for that episode was really positive. People really liked it. So I thought, let's take this momentum. This is kind of a perfect time to talk more about that stuff. And
you do ownership projections. So, I mean, we could take this wherever you want, but I guess I'll just simply ask you at the start, like talk about how you calculate ownership projections and don't worry about rambling. We can, you know, it'll be a conversation, but I know that's a loaded question is, is probably a light term there. Yeah. It's the, the,
The model at Fanshare Sports is pretty intricate. It's pretty detailed. It's good, by the way. I really like your guys' projections, and I know you guys have had a lot of success with accuracy. Yes, we have. We had an RSQ. For those of you who don't know what RSQ is, it's basically your accuracy set a few weeks ago, 0.98.
So we're just 2% off, like a hundred percent correct, which is insane when you think about it from a sane. So our, our model's pretty spot on if, uh, if we're doing it right. Right. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss, but most of the time we're out there and we're hitting, but yeah, long story short ownership for us is not easy. It's not a simple mathematical calculation. And I think most people who try to calculate their own ownership and don't
add in certain adjustments or certain mathematical principles are actually not calculated like a projected ownership, but they're calculating more or less like what they, that ownership should be. If that makes sense. Like if we're using Vegas odds, for example, obviously the highest ownership should go to the lowest odds, which this week would be John Rom, but that's obviously not the case of DraftKings. So for my setup though, I do a lot of game theory before I even put in a number.
So I need to decide whether this is a stars and scrubs week, if it's a balanced kind of lineup week, if you're going to get a mixture of both. So like a neutral setting and I'll go from there. And even within that little balance, I can wait certain things. So like, even though I'm going to say it's a stars and scrubs week, I'm only going to assume that, you know, 40% of a lineup in a 150 max GPP is going to be allocated towards stars and scrubs.
Um, it's from there. I can't take credit for this, but, um, anyone who's a part of fan share and it's probably the most valuable part is the tags that any golfer can potentially get. And that is one of the drivers of ownership. And it gives you a good baseline to, to be perfectly honest, but it can't just walk people through what you mean by the tags for those that, that may not have fan share yet.
All right. So we'll talk, we'll talk, Rick, you know, we'll talk. Game. And he's one of the big pushers in the industry for any player he talks about. You guys got your show, you know? So if you guys are like this week, for example, Aaron wise is already being talked about everywhere.
Okay. So the shows that we validate as worth it. Um, and, and I would kind of characterize those as like a tier one, tier two, tier three show your tier ones are your mails, your bricks, you know, the guys who are movers, um, your tier two guys are kind of like Kirshner, Rob me. Where am I?
Well, you involved with Rick now and the amount of, you know, listeners that you get. You could be honest. You're tier four. The funny thing is, it's like all of a sudden, like someone's not getting enough tags and I'll be like, what, what the, you know, what,
what the hell's going on? Like Andy's talking about him, you know, Rick's talking about him, Pat's talking, we got like three tags. I'm like, this ain't right. So we need to fix it. So we go back and forth with the tags, but literally those tags go into like plays and fades and, or don't plays. And they get categorized into my spreadsheet, my model. And I use that analysis to kind of break it down. But I learned a lot when I first started doing it, that certain golfers are
need rules within their boundaries, no matter how many tags they get, no matter how many dislikes they get. And I think the best reference to anyone who's been playing for a long time, Tony Finau, no matter what form he was in, never was under 16, 17%.
Yeah. Same with Tommy Fleetwood back, you know, back a few years ago. Kind of same with Xander, right? Yeah. Xander too. You know, everyone wants X to finally get that, you know, and they want to be on them. They want to miss them. You know, when Doug Gim pops now. Yeah. Gets ownership, even though the guys that, you know. That's what you talked about with Mayo. That was something I talked about in, in the show with James, where certain players are just, they get that bump if they're, you know, fan favorites from some of the content guys. Yeah.
Exactly. So there's certain rules and caveats like everyone could talk about playing Patrick Reed. And you guys talked about this last week. No one's going to play Patrick Reed. You think anyone's playing 10K Patrick Reed this week? I don't know. Yeah, I would agree with you. I think you're probably right. I think I have him. I would imagine he's like 5% this week.
It's a little higher right now, but that number could go down and go up. So with that baseline then comes in more or less where I will go into DraftKings and I'll build lineups. So I'll take chalk plays and I'll try to determine what is the most feasible conceptual lineup, like for a single entry, for a three max, whatever.
with these chalk plays. And then I'll use Fanshares Optimizer as well as Fantasy Crunchers Optimizer to kind of build further lineups and kind of get an idea of what is going to dictate based on my projection model. And I have my own separate projection model that's different from Fanshares Sports. And this is where a lot of manual adjustments come in. And it's funny because I'll get messages all the time. Like, are you really sure that Rory McIlroy is going to be sub 10%?
I'm like, yes, I'm 99% sure he's going to be sub 10%. And if you don't want to play him and leverage the field, by all means don't. And then of course they message back like, holy shit, you're right. Like, how did you do that? And that's really what it comes down to it. Now, the funny thing is though, with this season in particular, that I've gotten so into the ownership projections, it's probably made me a worse DFS player because I'm trying to get two different players.
I know the feeling well. Yeah. So what I've kind of adopted as a rule, and I've gone back and I looked at the optimal lineups for most of these tournament fields, your ownership range is like 70 to 100, that aggregate ownership. Yeah. And that's kind of optimal. I tend to build below that, which is not great always. Right. And that's where...
That's where you're, yeah, if that hits, you're winning. There's no doubt in my mind, like you're winning, but the chances of it hitting, there's a reason that there's low ownership. There's a reason that their biggest odds are astoundingly high. Yeah. Although Cody, our guy Cody, I think his lineup at the Heritage was, that was definitely sub 70.
for sure i'm not going to say it's not out of the question yeah yeah and and the higher your um the higher you play in terms of stakes like if you join the 888 you know getting that different is advantageous because you are playing with guys who want to get that different but if you go to that 4.20 max you know it's not necessarily often often the case um but from there uh back to ownership
all the manual adjustments going. This is like our first and second run through. And then we keep gathering additional tags, additional information. And I keep running, you know, the lineups that I'm looking for. That could be chalky lineups that are going to be in play. And I don't necessarily project for like single entry and three max. It's more for those 20 max, 150 max that we're looking at.
Uh, that's where the big money is like who, who really wants to chase that $5 single entry. That's going to win you 500 bucks, but that's the smart contest to play for anyone playing by the way. But, um, that's where it stems to. And one of the things that people, I think, misunderstand about other people's ownership projections, depending on how, how detailed they get. Um, I won't, I won't throw anyone under the bus, but I know there's subscribers to fan share who, who use our, uh,
ownership as a guide and average it out and put it as part of their own projections. Okay. I believe you. That doesn't surprise me at all. Can I go backwards with you for one second? So how many shows do you have to watch to
per week? Like, are you kind of sitting there? I know my show comes out on Sunday, but then are you kind of sitting there on, on Monday and you have to consume all this content or are you kind of sitting at your computer screen and watching Twitter too, to, to see what people are tweeting about? Cause I'll give you a good example. It's not, it's not always just what's said on shows, right? Like for example, I tweeted about John Rahm today that he hadn't finished top 10 in
in the last two years and anytime he's been in a weak field. You look at the analytics of that tweet, there's over 20,000 people that saw that tweet. So maybe if we say 2% of them are like, "Oh, I'm not going to play Jon Rahm this week because he's way worse than I thought in shitty field events." Do you have to sit on Twitter and monitor all that stuff?
Luckily, I don't. That's someone else's job at FanShare. And luckily, I don't have to do that. And Andrew Rutherford, Devin Rutherford, they're the owners of FanShare Sports. They do a great job of curating all that content and bringing it to me to use. But God, if I had to listen to all those podcasts, thank God they invented high speed, right? I would go crazy. But we got
Honestly, if we didn't have that as part of a foundation for ownership, our projections wouldn't be as good as they are. It's where it starts. It's how we build such solid projections. But for me, when I'm building, I have particular people I'll follow on Twitter. And they're not necessarily movers, but they're very keen on who the best plays are. And they have their own strong following. Example would be House Money.
Yeah. Shout out House. We love House on IGP. I love House. I love House. We're trying to get him on the cut lines. I reached out to him. Jeff, I don't remember his Twitter handle off the top of my head. Tommy Football. I follow him a lot. There's a new guy out there. His name is Stu Vega. Look at his stuff and try to kind of see where they're going with their sports book plays.
And that kind of gives me a guide on ownership in terms of like specific podcasts or shows. It really depends kind of what I'm playing that week. Uh, you guys kind of talked about it, but if I'm going to play like the male three max, I want to listen to the male and fade. Everyone Pat talks about, um,
And it's not that they're bad plays. It's just that everyone who's listening to Mayo is, is not necessarily their confirmation bias. Exactly. So if you're going to do three Mac, the D gen three max, right? Why wouldn't you listen to Kenny and Tambo and say, okay, these guys are going to place. Now there'll be times like if I want to get like, if I, if I'm lost on a guy, I will listen to other shows, but for me, it's hard to, it's, it's hard to categorize like who I trust because,
versus who I think is like a gimmick or a character. I want you to name names now. This is great. No, I can't. I can't. I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy. But like, and they're great shows. Like, don't get me wrong. They're great shows. They're fun. They're entertaining, but you're just reading Fantasy National and your model you put together and you're not really diving into a slate. And for some of these guys, I'd love to go
I would love to give them a quiz. And one of the questions would be, how many gloves does Aaron Rye wear? And they're like, what the hell are you talking about? So it's stuff like that. So I think there's a lot of noise. And in January, I'll never forget this. There are so many new names and new faces and new podcasts. Still feels like there's a new podcast every week. And it's just...
it's the same crap over and over and over again and it some of these guys know what they're talking about don't get me wrong but i it's just there's only so much you could take
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's survival of the fittest, right? You have to bring something new to the table or people aren't going to listen because you can get stats and picks anywhere. So some will get weeded out, right? The good ones will persist. But I mean, a lot of people also view it differently. This is my job. I get paid to talk about golf. I get
I get, I do this full time. Like I made an active decision that I wanted to make a living off of this. I think probably a lot of people are just like, I have a great job. I'm passionate about talking golf. So I'm just going to shoot the shit with my buddy and talk golf. And that's fantastic. I would, I would never want to discourage those people from doing that.
Yeah. I wouldn't discourage them. No, I, I, I would just, I would just say like, eventually people know you're full of, you know, you're full of BS and, um,
Oh man, it's time to move on. And some of these guys notice, right? Like all of a sudden their listenership goes from like, you know, five, six, 700. And then that's what I'm saying is that it's like the real ones, the good ones will persist. And it's like, like you said, there's only so much content you can consume on a given week. So it's not necessarily like a zero sum game, right? At the end of the day, a listener is going to choose, okay, these are my five go-tos or these are my four go-tos. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I think the biggest difference between a great show and even just like an average or good show is that and I think it's one of the models that we do at Fanshare Sports while we try to produce the ownership that we produce is because we want everyone to win. Like we want you to win. Like it's it's like.
You know, like I, my DMs are full because people tell me that they won or people text me, you know, back when I started, I was giving my number out like a stupid dumbass. And, you know, don't do that. Well, I got give my boy a shout out. He's up in Minnesota. Ryan Kaiser, one of my kind of like original listeners, you know, he, he hit a PGA single entry win for 5,000 and I was so happy for him.
Cause he's grinding and grinding. And it's kind of what actually drew me into doing this and what Rick started doing with his YouTube shows and everything like that. You know, in all honesty, like on the cut line, I should have a little page dedicated to Rick, like a shrine. Hey, this only exists because of him. He was a big inspiration for me as well. Breaking it at the very beginning, him and Pat, you gotta, you gotta give all the credit to them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Um, so, and then, um, with going back to ownership, we, uh, we get to about, uh, you know, two to three updates a day, usually in the morning and the PM for sure. And then that last update comes in, um, at Wednesday night. And just so you guys know, I'm central time.
So for your East coasters that are going to bed at like nine o'clock, nine 30. No, I, I love it. Cause I'm in I'm West coast. Yeah. So there's these coasters. They're like, when you put it up, when you put it up, when you put on like rocks, it'll get there. It'll get there.
That was something that me and James talked about a lot is build at the last minute if you can, right? And that's the fact that you're... I would say that you feel probably... What is the difference between your feeling of confidence in your first ones that come out, what, on Tuesday morning? Typically, they come out tonight. Okay. So late Monday night versus late Wednesday night. How much generally in a week changes? Massive.
I feel like that. Yeah, I've noticed that too. And one thing I started looking at more closely is that movement. Like if somebody seems like they're trending up, they might even be higher than the projection. If somebody seems like they're trending down, they might even be lower than direction. Like what direction are these people moving? So I started writing down what some of the numbers were like Monday night and then seeing what direction they were moving in.
Yeah, that helps on fan share. There's actually an indication how much they've moved. You guys at the arrows and yeah. And it also tells you the difference. Yeah. So if they've gone down an 8%, well, that's a red flag. Why are they going down? Let's do our research. And if you can leverage the field and they keep going down, take advantage of it. But it's actually one of the reasons I push my show back to when I record because...
The previews are nice and they offer a great concept of like a broad view of a tournament field. But when you really want to break it down and dial it in, ownership becomes a massive aspect.
Of who you're going to play and who you're not going to play. I mean, we were talking pre-show how we both faded camp Smith for the masters. I'm sure you had your own reason. I know my reason was, is the guys never won a tournament without having six strokes game putting. Yeah. And like, I just don't see that happening here at Augusta. Um, but long story short, when we ran that first initial ownership, he wasn't in the twenties. He was in my player pool, but then when we got to like Tuesday night, Wednesday, that was changing.
Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to ask you about. Do you ever have situations where I feel like every single week, there's always one guy where I'm like, whoa, how is that guy 17%? Do you notice that? Do you feel like every single week, there's always a player that everyone starts... Because what happens is the narrative builds where people start saying, oh, everybody's playing this guy. And then when people start hearing...
people on shows say everyone is playing this guy. Then they think, Oh no, I got a pivot and it works vice versa as well. It does. And that's more of a game theory though. And, um,
You know who he's really good at is Tambo. Tambo's great. Tambo's so good at those pivots. And Pat Mayo is actually really good at it in those lower levels, like in that 7K range. The problem is they're not pivot. They don't end up being pivots, though. No, that's true. That's true. Because with Mayo, I mean, you got to... Even sometimes with me, and I'm...
As you mentioned, I'm like tier four. I'm not a- You're not tier four. You're not. I've used you as reference so many times. No, I know. I know. What I'm saying is for some of the lower guys, if I spend 15 minutes on my podcast talking about Joel Dahman or JJ Spott, and I'm like, that guy's going to be 1%. He's never 1%. He's like 6%.
So it feels like with the smaller guys, that's what I noticed the most is guys that I think that are going to be literally 1% owned, and then they kind of become the buzzy 6K guy, and they end up at 7%, 8%. I think it's harder with the higher price guys, if that makes sense. Yeah.
It is and it isn't. Like guys are going to pop depending on the field. Yeah. Like two years ago when Corey Connors was 6,900 at the Masters. Like I know it's dumb that I remember stuff like that, but... I remember it too. I mean, boom, I already started at 30% ownership. And when I did my initial run through, I had to make manual adjustments to get into 30 because that made all the sense in the world. So when you look at those like
top tier to lower tier, you're looking at a field-based judgment. And sometimes it's easy to point out those guys. Like we're talking this week with Aaron Wise. Aaron Wise is going to be massively owned, but you've spent a lot of time this past week talking about game theory getting different. So now I have to make this judgment when I'm calculating ownership. Well, are people going to say, huh? Well, a lot of people are going into Aaron Wise thinking,
I might just pay the extra hundred, go up to Kirk, or I might go down and pay for 9,200 Russell Knox, or I might go for Cameron champ and follow the bomber narrative.
So now we're in this kind of like- And Cameron Champ's a very popular betting pick, right? Exactly. So a lot of people, well, Cameron Champ's a weird example because he's like the ultimate good bet, bad DFS play narrative guy. But you know what I mean. People like betting the guys that they, people like playing the guys that they bet on. And everyone loves that bet this week. Correct. And then there's the other things like you got to think about. No one really knows if they're a casual golfer who DeGala is.
Yeah. So people can, he could end up with like 20 or 30 tags and still be single digit ownership.
Okay, there's a question for you. Do you think there's like a large population of the people that play DFS that like don't really consume any content, right? Because I think it's easy to... That's what always is so confusing to me is like how much of the... I feel like I'm in a bubble sometimes. And it's like how much of the people that play DFS like aren't even on Twitter and like...
Tons of people don't know me. That's easy. But how many of the people that play DFS didn't even know who Pat Mayo is either? That's the tricky one for me is that I worry that sometimes we're in a little bit of a bubble. Yes and no. I have a hard time anyone going into a DraftKings contest just clicking names.
i mean i have a couple friends you'd be surprised but i know what you mean i agree with you even when you're even like even when you were a new dfs player right what was the first thing you did you you googled tonight's nba slate top plays right yeah i listened to shows and i yeah they told me who to play and i played those guys so i maybe i'm naive
But I think a lot of people at least do a little bit of research. They probably all don't have subscriptions to, you know, a website that has an endless amount of content to help them make selections, but they most definitely are doing some sort of research and maybe potentially, you know, listening to one show, two shows. I also think that people who are playing this week tend to play every week. Yeah. Right. It's not a major, um,
And that's also a thing I forgot to mention with ownership, ownership changes from week to week, like a major, because we have more casual fans, the chalky plays are going to be that much more popular versus a week like this week, game three comes more into play. Cause you have more experienced players who are going to be like, I don't think I really want to invest in Aaron wise, you know? So it's a balancing act. It's really hard. And, um,
I think the hardest events to kind of project that ownership for are WGC events, the no cut events. Why do you think that is? That's interesting. People are willing to take more risks or even have less risks, you know, and eat the ownership because they're guaranteed four rounds.
Yeah, and there's also a pretty big disparity between the best players in that field and the worst players in that field, right? Because at WGCs, you get all the top names, but then you also get a couple random guys from the Asian tour that somehow get in the field. That's true. Yeah, I completely agree. And someone might pop as chalk, and they might end up doubling their ownership, right? So say it's a WGC event, and
Justin Thomas is there and he's getting 18% and he ends up being 28%, you know, 33% because people are like, well, I'm just going to eat it. What's the big deal? I get four rounds of Justin Thomas. I know it's a no cut event. I want to get as much scoring opportunities as I can. Are there any times with last question? Cause I want to talk about Mexico a little bit too. And I know you're on a schedule and I am too, but are there any times when you're like shocked? Like, are there any times when it comes out on Thursday morning and you're like,
Wow. Wow. I've never been shocked. Okay. I've been upset. Okay. Because I got it wrong. Elaborate. Well, dude, you're human. I mean... Yeah, I know. I know. But I have high expectations and funny story when I did... As you should. You're great, man. When I did the first run through Everett for Fanshare...
oh it was terrible it was terrible and then the ownership came out and i go oh what did i get myself into like i'm gonna be cast aside and that's when i started making rules for for particular players on terms of ownership projections and you know don't get fooled by this or whatever the case may be but i've never been surprised when i'm surprised is when i see the initial run through and i go really
People want to play him? You know, anytime you see, and don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for Doug Gimm, but anytime you see double digit Doug Gimm, you're like, what? Yeah. You know, even maybe not so much this week, but earlier in the year, Aaron Wise was getting all the love in the world. And I'm like, really guys, Aaron Wise, that's who we're going to, you know, throw 25, 30% of our ownership to?
granted he's won once on tour, but it was at what it was. That was the John Deere, right? Something like that. It was a Byron Nelson. Byron Nelson. Yeah. Yeah. And that was not even at a Craig ranch. Nope. It was at Trinity forest. Yeah. So I don't know that I get more shocked in the initial run through than I do the finishing.
Interesting. All right. Well, I could talk to you about this for easily another hour, but I want to get into some Mexico stuff because I think this is a pretty fascinating week for DFS. I gave a full course breakdown on my Sunday show already. You do an excellent one over at the Cutline. Before we dig into the slate, is there anything you want to add about the course?
I don't think I'm going to add anything about the course. I think it's going to play really easy. A lot of people have said that, but a lot of the previews that I've read, a lot of the preview shows that I heard are really emphasizing bombers. And I'm already telling you, I am going way different and I am not going to go and invest my time on bombers. And
I see some, so like such strong correlation to the virus. Which by the way, sorry to interrupt. That was something that right after the podcast with James, we were both like, ah, fuck. I wish we talked about that because that's something that we do too. We try and figure out what the narrative is this week. And you try and have to create your own different narrative because, and you're right. The bomber one is already starting and I'm,
partially responsible for that, I'm sure. But if you can find a narrative that's different, who knows? Well, a couple of numbers, and this is all from the Byron from last year. All right, this is where KH Lee won, if you guys recall. Just looking at the top 10. So that's KH Lee down to Doc Redmond. And I wrote this up in the course preview, but just looking at this year's stats, only two of last year's top 10 are in the top 10 of driving distance this year.
The rest, except for one, are sub 50 in terms of the rankings. Like driving distance at TBC Crook Ranch, and it's kind of like a strong correlation for me this week. Driving distance is not the say-all be-all. I looked at the weather widget that's on my course preview page and wind's not going to be that bad. So it's one of those elements that I'm going to fade in terms of my model building and what I'm looking at.
And I'm going to try and take advantage of just pure ball striking and approach. Speaking of driving distance and pure ball striking,
I think the issue with Jon Rahm this week is one of the more fascinating conundrums I have seen in DraftKings in quite some time. I haven't seen this big of a disparity between the best player and the second best player and just the quality of the field in general. If you told me he was going to be 12K, I wouldn't have blinked. If you told me he was going to be 12-2, I don't know if I would have blinked. So let's start with Rahm.
What are your early ownership thoughts on him? And are you playing him? Right now, I'm going to wait on Rahm until that final kind of ownership run through. And he is going to be double digit owned. That's for sure. But a lot of ownership is going to like that.
Aaron Wise group. Wait, hold on. I thought he was, when you say double digit owned, yeah, he's going to be double digit owned. I think he's going to be, I was talking to Cody this morning and he was like, Rob might be 75% in some of the higher stakes contests. He's way too cheap in this field. In the higher stakes contest, for sure. He'll be extremely higher owned. In your lower stake contests, like the $4.20 max, you're
you're probably gonna be looking at maybe 28%. Oh, that's silly. And, but the reason is people look at kind of those narratives that we're talking about. Like he's been brutal, right? He's been brutal. And then now also you're looking at the field. Okay. I'm going to commit 11,300 to John Rump. That gives you what a shade under 8,000 per golfer, like seven, seven, seven, eight. They don't know golfers in this range.
you know, who's down there, Lipsky, Rogers, Wyndham Clark, Nate Lashley, Pat Perez, you know, most of these guys who are playing this and they're not maxing out these contests, they're going to struggle putting together a lineup that they trust. So his ownership done then just goes down. That's fascinating. Now I'm like, now I'm kind of back to the drawing board. I was going to lay out a case for you. Well, I have two cases. So can I give you the case first for why I think you should play Robb?
Absolutely. Okay. So I think that the issue with ROM this week is, I think the difference between ROM and a lot of the 9K guys is way greater than the difference between the 9K guys and the 7K guys. So for example, you can play ROM and Lanto.
for the same price as Tringale and Munoz. I think Lanto's better than Tringale and Munoz. And however you fall on those guys, they're somewhat mostly in the same tier. But if you're telling somebody they can have their lineup start with Tringale and Munoz, or they can have their lineup start with Rahm and Lanto, why would you ever play Tringale and Munoz? There's so much more talent on one side of the equation.
From that perspective, I agree that you want to take the talent and upside. And if you're going to get ownership for Jon Rahm, let's say it's in the mid-20s when it's all said and done, I'm all in on Rahm. Let me ask you this. Are there guys... How do you feel about the pricing? Do you feel like there are certain guys in the 8s or the 7s that are better than some of the guys in the 9s? Were you surprised by the pricing this week? Because I was shocked.
uh smotherman i thought was a little low i thought you thought he was going to be in the eights i did i thought he was going to get to the eights he's been very popular from week to week i thought it was interesting very popular um doug gimm at 8900 that's a popularity play yeah you know that's a name um aaron wise at 9500 chris kirk at 9600 makes sense to me in this field so it looking at the field but but with with rom it's for me it's an ownership play
Yeah, me too. And, um, I, from, from the, from the fall swing on and I've been practicing my 150 max, I'm trying to transition to that 150 max player. So for me, it's trying to leverage and get as many guys in my player pool that I feel are going to give me the best chance to win. And I try not to expand my player pool past like 26, 28. If I want to get it really tight for 150 lineups. Yeah. And if I want to get really loose, I'd
I won't go beyond. No, that's you play like I do. Yeah. I won't go beyond 30 and maybe I'll go to 32 at a major just to get a little extra because you just never know what's going to happen. But my, give me scenario two, because I know my response. I think I have my response. Why I wouldn't play him. Well, okay. There are a couple of reasons why I wouldn't play him. Well, part of it was, um,
thought that he was going to be closer to 40%. And if Rom's not good this week, which is very much in play, I mean, he has openly said that he hates golf courses like this. You're going to have to make a million putts here. There's going to be a high greens and regulation percentage. His biggest weapon is that he is so much of a better ball striker than a lot of his competition. And that's
That tends to come out. That tends to get accentuated. The poor ball strikers tend to get weeded out at courses like Torrey Pines, at courses like Augusta, at courses even like Memorial, where Rahm's almost starting on second base because some of these guys like Kevin Kisner will be the first to tell you, I just can't hang. I can't hit a long iron that high inconsistently.
And I don't know if this course is giving him an advantage over the rest of the field based on the way that it's going to set up. Reason number two, I tweeted this out. Last two years, he's played in five bad field events where the strength of field was below 400. Two miscut, zero top 10 finishes. I think the best he's done in these terrible field events in the last two years at least is 14th at Amex. And if you play Rahm and he's...
I don't know, 30% own and he finishes 14th this week. Like, are you happy? Because if he finishes 14th, I'm telling you right now, there's going to be one or two guys or three, maybe in the 9k range that will beat him. I have one more, but give me your response first. Well, there's a lot of things that you said that I agree with, but the one thing I think you were kind of hinting at, but not saying directly is the fact that the opponent is the course, right?
Okay. And yeah, John Rahm is hands down the best golfer in the field. The problem is the opponent isn't that good. Okay. And all these golfers in the field can do a lot of the things that John Rahm does on this course. Now what separates John Rahm, which you kind of already touched about like at Augusta,
is the things that they can't do on a course that's that difficult. And I think that's why in these weaker field events or even on these easier courses, like we'll see at Craig Ranch down the road, you know, even we'll see at the John Deere Classic,
Rocket Mortgage, yeah. Yeah. All these courses is that they're so easy that players can hang with the best players in the world because there's nothing to inhibit them or inhibit their skillset from competing. Precisely. Very well said. So that is actually a strong rationale to fade Jon Rahm because the odds are, and I get it, we have no information about this course other than what you or I are spewing out there.
You easily can argue that Russell Knox, his skill set can play well here and he could compete with Ron because he doesn't have to do anything difficult. Yeah. There's not those holes where, like I remember when I went to the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, there were certain holes at that course, I'm thinking of 17 specifically, where if you can't hit a high draw with a four iron, you're fucked.
It's asking you one specific thing that you need to be able to do. Can you execute this shot? And there were more guys on the American side that were able to execute the shot. But there's not going to be shots like that at this course. There's not going to be times where I don't think there's going to be times where if you can't hit a high draw from 220 yards out, you're fucked.
I think it's pretty, I think it's, I think if you can, that's fucking awesome. And you might end up of course still winning. But the penalty for that, I don't know if it's as, as great. Yeah, it's not, it's not. So, I mean, we, we already talked about the generous fairways. So even those weaker drivers in terms of accuracy, yeah. Get an advantage that John Rom already has in his, in his arsenal. So I guess the best analogy to give you is like,
You know, you look at the angels lineup against the bad pitcher. Anyone could have a great night. In theory, you look at that angels lineup versus like an elite Cy Young pitcher. Well, we're going to look at Otani. We're going to look at, you know, Mike Trout. I know this is a golf show, but I just wanted to get. I'm all for it. Yeah. I follow. Yeah. Give that little comparison to who the opponent is. Right. It's not John Rahm versus Tony Fino. It's John Rahm.
versus the course versus the weather and how he's going to play and then how everyone else in the field is going to play against that same opponent. You ready for reason number three? This one's a little more speculative. I'm ready. I think a lot of people think that, I think a lot of people are trying to figure out why he's playing this event, right? Like it's not a big purse. For PGA Tour standards, this is one of the smallest purses of the year.
Right. So I think part of me wants to say, okay, the only reason, the only conceivable reason why he's playing this event is because he really, really needs a win. And you listen to his recent press conferences. He's completely aware that Scotty Scheffler has passed him. I think Morikawa has passed him in the world rankings now too. And like he's due and he knows he needs a win and he wants to be the number one player in the world again. The other side of that is,
I was talking to Cody about this this morning, and he brought up the point where I'm not sure we know how much control that Rom actually has over his schedule. So he plays in a lot of weird events, right? And I think maybe he feels obligated sometimes to go play in these Spanish-speaking countries. Like he played two terrible European tour events in Spain last year, where he was the best player in the field by a mile.
And he finished 17th and miscut. Like, even worse strength of fields than this. In the fall, like the Andalusia Masters and some other tournament in Madrid. Yeah.
There was no other explanation for why he would play those events. It was after a really long season, other than that they were in Spain and he's Spanish. And so he showed up and you could tell pretty early on. If you watch those Euro tour events, that this was not the John Rom that you see at Augusta every year on Tuesday with the glare in his eyes. Right. Um,
And Rahm is at the level already, I think you could argue, that he is going to be measured now by major championships, right? And he should be. He's that good. I think it's very much in play that like,
Maybe there's a sponsorship thing. I wouldn't be surprised if he had business stuff with Grupo Salinas, or maybe his wife just wants to go to Mexico and he shows up on Thursday morning, parsed the first three holes and looks up at the leaderboard and sees that Austin Smotherman is six under through six and says, fuck this.
You know what I mean? Like, it's like, I think Rom could miss the cut easily. He's done it. He does it at these events all the time. So that's the other thing where it's like, why is he here? Because it's Mexico. It's a bad person. Yeah. One side of me is like, this guy really is telling us that he needs a win. And the other side of me is like, is he? It really comes down to sponsorship, doesn't it?
i mean if we're to look at it who like look at the rbc right dj dj you think dj would really want to play there if he wasn't sponsored by rbc i i don't think so um so i i think rom is sponsored by mercedes-benz too
Is that a thing here? I have no idea if he's sponsored by Grupo Salinas. I know Grupo Salinas is very powerful and has their hands in a lot of things, but I'm just trying... It's all speculative for me. I'm trying to figure it out, too. They just had a kid. I don't...
You know what I mean? Maybe you want to take the kid to Mexico. It's a gorgeous resort. I will say that from all the images I've looked at. The whole reason why I bring this up is I'm just trying to throw out alternative theories for why or why not you may want to play them that I don't think a lot of other people are going to talk about. You know, going back to the three scenarios we talked about, for me, the most convincing one is number two.
that that you fade him because he's he's on a more level playing field against the opponent but that would really take some work to dive down into the sponsorship um aspect of things and you know what's funny though it's like i'm my model like i i i get this crazy like i have their wins and majors and then their their average rank over the last three years in the in the official world golf rankings i got their age the college they attended where they live like the state they live
I got their caddies and if they have a caddy change, it'll tell me. All that stuff. So now I'm going to have to look at sponsorships. Preston Pysh : Well, the thing that you have to think about too is these guys are at the ROM level and certainly at the answer level, these guys are all businessmen too. Answer's going to be in business meetings all week. All it takes is one guy, one big player in Mexico to get in touch with ROM and say, "Hey, I have an investment opportunity."
So I'm just pointing, I'm just saying that we don't know. I do not know. I'm pointing out alternative theories for why you should or shouldn't play ROM because I'm having a difficult time deciding myself. It's going to come down for me to Wednesday night. I know that. Me too. I think so too. I think the one thing that I won't do though, that a lot of the guys I talk to in certain text threads and stuff, they kind of attribute...
how they would think at a sporting event versus a professional athlete at a sporting event. I don't ever want to assume that a professional athlete is at a tournament not to win. Yeah, great. Of course. Of course. But don't get me wrong. We've seen it. Yeah. And it's kind of like a thing where...
On hole number one, they're like, fuck yeah, I'm going to win this tournament. It's generally like when, if you get off to a slow start, then you run into a risk, especially at these birdie fests. Because if you shoot even, if Jon Rahm shoots even on day one, and he looks up at the leaderboard and sees all these jabronis at eight under, he's told us how he feels about those events. He told us.
Right. Because he's better than those guys and he knows it. And it's fucking, he thinks it's fucking bullshit. And I understand to a certain extent how that could be discouraging. But is he off? That's the other question. Is he legitimately off? Is he so off his game that he's going to struggle?
I mean, there's that too. He went from being the best player in the world off the tee for a little bit of time. The off the tee went downhill at the Masters. The approach was fine. He was basically a field average ball striker at the Masters.
He was pretty much average at everything. So the putter actually got a little bit better. So that's the hard part. Like if Jon Rahm's field average, that's very, very bad for Jon Rahm. But you go back one or two starts before the Masters, he was like the best off the tee player by a mile.
That's a tough game. Let's move on. I mean, dude, I could talk to you about this forever, but I think it's a tough one to figure out. I'm with you. I thought the ownership was going to be a lot higher than you were saying. I trust you more than my initial thought, so I have to see. But let's go down. So if you're not playing wrong, where would you start? Patrick Reed.
All right, make the case. No one's going to own him. And he's got more wins in the field than anyone in this field. He's got nine wins. He's won majors before.
He's got 10 K, which leaves you get different everywhere else down below him, or even go stars and scrubs and pay up. Like if you wanted to go Fino, who I don't mind either, because he's going to have a little ownership because he's been in the category of what have you done for me lately? Um, 10,100 though for Kevin. Nah, I can't do it. I can't do that. That's did you think this is not a good golf course for Patrick Reed?
I get the ownership side of it. It's never a good golf course for Patrick. Eh, kind of. I like golf courses where short game matters for him. Short game matters, but again, the things he struggles with, he's not going to have to worry about here. That's true. He can probably spray it off the tee a little bit here. Absolutely. So I'm not too concerned about the driving accuracy. And even if he ends up in the rough, he's fine. Fairway bunkers, of course, then I'll be concerned. You know, your scoring opportunity is basically gone. But...
You're not going to be rolling out that much. He's got pinpoint accuracy with his ball striking if he's on, just like, I guess, anyone in this field. That's a big F. He's been bad. Is that the PXG thing? Do you believe in that?
That's another alternative theory we can talk about. I don't have enough information to speak intelligently about it is my answer. I don't want to just say bullshit that I don't. I'm not a huge equipment guy. When it comes to golf courses and stuff like that, I really feel like I'm in my lane, but I don't know enough about equipment to really say. Do you? I think it's more subjective.
Because you're talking about a limited amount of golfers who are using those clubs. And it's not like Callaway, TaylorMade, and Titleist. So I think that's where those numbers are kind of skewed. But the best, I guess, kind of viewpoint that I looked at over the years was Justin Rose, where his game just went to garbage. But is that because of the clubs? Or is that because he was getting older? What was the name of that brand? It was like...
It was Hanma or something like that. Well, something like that. Then he went to PXG. Yeah. And then he finally went back to TaylorMator Callaway. But I don't know. If you're an equipment guy and you don't like the PXG narrative, I get it. But it's Patrick Reed. You want to get different in those big mass multi-entry contests. You don't need a lot of Patrick Reed to get different.
like even 25%, right? That's going to leverage so many lineups. But that's from an ownership standpoint, that's where I would go. All right. Fuck, man. You're good. You're going to have to come back on. I have another podcast to do in like 12 minutes, so I need to move down. But you have more than earned a repeat visit. I could talk to you about that. This could have been two hours. You're good to talk to you about this, man. Give me somebody a little bit lower. So-
eight k into seven k and then we'll we'll maybe throttle a bomb towards the end uh 8k i love uh aaron rye i love aaron rye i love playing him this week um no one right now is on him but that could obviously change by wednesday uh he does have two wins on the euro tour and most people don't even look across the pond to see how they're doing over there and he's one of those players that
I hope he doesn't turn into like Tom Fleetwood, right? He never wins on stateside, but he only wins across his pond. But I really love him. Figala in that AK range also. People forgot how good he was playing. I think Figala is going to be owned though now. He'll have some ownership. But again, we're in this AK range where...
Do you think people are going to play Gim at 89, by the way? Because it's almost like he's priced. Like, remember Taylor Gooch at the Masters where it's like if Taylor Gooch is 7.5, I think he'd be really popular. But he's, I mean, do you think people are still going to play Gim at 8.9?
It's Doug Gim, right? You know what it is for me with Gim? It's like, I've played him so much at certain events. I don't want to, I don't want to fade it and miss it. The one time he actually wins and pulls through.
I bet them every week, like for first round leader or a winner, like, you know, just for fun. I just think the price is like, do you think people are going to play Munoz at 9.8? Yeah. Cause they're going to, they're going to play the narrative, the hometown narrative, right? They're going to look at Columbia. He's never, I know, but that not from Mexico, but from the Latino kind of Latin America, kind of that kind of theme. Same with like Ortiz. And then, um,
I don't know. Looking at the AK range, I would love to go back to Chucky, three sticks. He burned me, burned a lot of people. I was one of those. I'd love to go back to him. Looks like we had the same lineups last week. I'll give you a good one. How about Taylor Moore? Taylor Moore. I got some interest in him when you look at his stats this year. Pretty good. He ranks 18th in ball striking. He'll be 5%, right? Yeah, he'll be low on. Who's playing 8.2 Taylor Moore except guys like me and you?
Not much. The problem is this year, he's been off on approach. So you've got to hope that he puts that together. And historically, that's kind of been his bugaboo. And I feel like that's one of the mainstays in stats that we're looking at here. So he's been pretty bad on approach. He has. He's pretty good with the long irons, though, which I like here. And he's pretty long off the tee. He's not like a Cameron Champ, but he's...
Oh, that's the other one I want to ask you about. Sorry for moving backwards again. What do you think Champ's going to come in at? I'm really curious about that one because he's right next to Wise. And I think a lot of people, if you're not playing ROM, aren't you starting with like Woodland and doing like Woodland, Wise, and maybe one more guy in the nines like Matt Jones? That's got to be the non-ROM build, right? Well, people are getting off the Woodland.
off woodland train. He missed the cut, the masters, and a lot of people banked on him doing well as one of those pivots. I don't know if you knew, like, remember like his course history at Augusta, by the way, is abysmal, terrible, but coming into coming into Augusta, he had a top 25 finish at the Valspar. He had an eighth place finish, I think at the Valero. And then, you know, you missed the cut at Augusta.
People don't have short memories with guys who burn them. Gary Woodland at the masters burn plenty of lineups. Cameron champs getting the love that he's getting because of the masters. And, and,
If his ownership just blows up, I'm not going to touch it. I'm not going to touch it. I know friends of mine and a lot of guys are betting him because they're popping in a lot of models. They're building on Fantasy National, but a lot of those guys are waiting driving distance very heavily. And like I said, I'm not doing that. So Cameron Champ's off my list. I'd rather play Tringale, actually, at lower ownership. Sexy's name on tour.
You think, are people going to play him? Because he has a terrible stigma attached to him. But the thing about Tringali that people don't realize, and it gets a little bit tougher at 9.7, but if we're talking about making a cut here and finishing T12, I don't think he has as much upside as a guy like Woodland or Champ to win.
But it's not like he doesn't contend. He's not finishing 35th every week. He finished third at Torrey Pines, 13th at Genesis, 12th at the Heritage, 10th last week. He can get you a T10. The question is, it's all about ownership. All I'm trying to do here is trying to think of ways...
to get off Wise? Because I'm with you. I think Wise will be close to 20, right? Yeah. My favorite way to get off Wise for me is to go to Chris Kirk or go down to Russell Knox. So you think Kirk will be lower than Tringale? Yes. Okay. I do. The problem with Tringale, and I actually just realized this,
From 9K all the way to Rom. So from Matt Jones all the way to Jon Rom, he's the only one who's never won on PGA Tour. Yeah. So like 9,700 for a guy who's never won before, if I'm starting my lineups there, that's going to be some risk. I don't think Tringale is getting the love that we think. Statistically though, he does fair well here. And then plus with those wider fairways, it's going to help his fairway accuracy, which is something he's been struggling with all season. So, I mean, he's not brutal at it, but he's not great at it.
I have an affinity for Tringale just because back when he was like low seven Ks a few years ago, I kept smashing him in lineups and he was just making me tons of money. But now it's a little bit different, you know, when you're looking at a 9,700, but you can most definitely pivot to Tringale. I just like Kirk a little bit more. Okay. And then even, even when you look at like the opening lines, right.
Tringale opened up on Bovada at like 33 to one. Kirk was 33 to one. And then finally you get to 50 to one when you get to like Knox and Strelman and Matt Jones. Yeah. I look at that stuff too. Is that another thing you look at? We have to go by the way, but yeah, that's, that's fine. Absolutely. Vegas is like number one. They get it right more often than I get it. I get it right. I'll give you a thing that I do that I, I think is, and this is another thing that I've been measuring is,
So the sharp guys in Vegas that bet golf, they only bet matchups. So one thing that I do is you can look at what direction the matchup lines are moving. This is not really necessarily have anything to do with ownership. This is more so about like who's a good play and who's a bad play. But the only way that the sharp guys in Vegas get down on golf is through those matchups, right? So you can look at what a matchup opens at and
And then you can see which way that number is moving. And it's generally, that's the side that the sharps are on. Yeah. I do use the matchup lines, the top 20 lines, all those Vegas lines, looking at the opening lines. And I use Bovada's opening lines just because it's easier to import my model. But I'm looking at where Tringale ranks. He's seventh. He's tied for seventh and he's tied with Aaron Wise. So I have fun, you know, picking between them.
And then the surprise actually is 9,100 Strelman. He actually comes in at 40 to one, which is just above champ, Brendan Todd, Knox Jones. And I haven't updated yet to how they've moved. This was just how they opened up.
Yeah. All right. Give me a plug, plug everything that you're doing over at cut line over at fan share. And we're going to do this again very soon. Yeah. Cutline golf.com. Check it out. We do our tournament model. Uh, we do our Vegas model. We have a course report. We haven't have a blog section about how to, you know, attack certain types of slates and game theory and kind of those ideas. And of course, fan share sports.com. If you're not signed up, just use the discount code cut line and you get 20% off your
your monthly membership for life, not just one time, for life. You get 3% off your whole monthly membership, which is pretty sweet. And we got the best ownership in the industry. Got guys like Rob G, who you know very well. Rob's fantastic. Yeah. And then they're always in the Discord putting content up on Fanshares blog. So
Great team to work with. I love being a part of Fanshare and without a doubt, best ownership in the industry. No offense to everything that you guys are doing. No, of course, man. None taken. You should feel that way. I would be concerned if you didn't say stuff like that and you work. I wouldn't have also had you on if I didn't have an incredible amount of respect for the work you guys do. So thanks again for joining me, buddy. This was a blast. It was good to see you. Thanks, Andy.
All right. That's it for the show. Special thanks to Michael. Special thanks to RickRungood.com. You can find me later this week on The Scramble with Rick, Odds Checker articles, Wednesdays and Saturdays, DFS Final Thoughts article on Wednesday. Oh, I'm also on the Golf Gambling Podcast. I'm subbing in for Twitterless Steve, who's on vacation. So it's me and Capper.
Just yelling for an hour. It's really good. We've got a lot of comfortability there and it's a, uh, it's a very fun podcast. So check that out as well on the golf gambling podcast feed. All right. Best of luck with your bets this week and we'll see you next time. Cheers.
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