Farmers Insurance Open

Let’s get a few things out of the way:

1. Jhonattan Vegas is not suddenly a consistent contender on the PGA Tour. The guy hits it a long way, which is obviously important, but he was only 14th on the N’wide Tour in scoring average relative to the field and the authority on these matters says he’s basically PGA Tour average over the past two years. Those kind of guys can be expected to win about every 250 tournaments (or every 8-9 years). Vegas is certainly young and now has a two year exemption to develop into an above average PGA golfer (he certainly has the hitting it 300+ part down), but his college track record (never above 95th in Sagarin rankings) suggests it’s unlikely we have the next Fowler, Kim, or Johnson here.

2. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, opened at ~+250 to win the Farmers this week, which if I recall correctly, is lower than in any tournament since Thanksgiving 2009. The books certainly believe he’s back, maybe not to the level of sustained dominance of pre-knee injury and pre-layoff, but definitely to being the undisputed most likely to win every tournament he enters. He’s won six of the last seven times he’s teed it up at Torrey Pines and may use the next few tournaments he plays as events to dick around in, so there’s literally zero chance there’s value on him here, but he’s back.

3. Martin Kaymer won again this past week which should come as no surprise; he’s been disgustingly good over the past calendar year (probably right there with Stricker behind Westwood) and should be assumed to still be getting better because of his age. However, when discussing all of his recent wins, we need to keep in mind that he faces easier fields on the European Tour (I mean, KLM Open?). All of this means I hope we see a #2-#3 matchup in the Match Play semis between Kaymer and Woods.

Fantasy garbage:

Yahoo:
A: Tiger; Phil
B: Allenby, Mahan; Na, Villegas
C: Kim; Holmes

You can only use each golfer in 10 tournaments, so there’s a bit of risk using Tiger here, but this is probably the easiest field he’ll face all season (no Stricker, Kuchar, Furyk, Westwood, Kaymer, McIlroy, Casey, Donald), he’s likely only going to play ~15> tournaments anyway, and I plan to use Westwood for the four majors. I really don’t see any reason not to use Tiger here, besides that he might fool around and not try to win.

The choice for back-up is simply who has the best chance of emerging as a top three finisher, and that’s almost certainly Phil and not Dustin Johnson or Nick Watney.

There’s so many good options on the B-List that my strategy there is simply to pick the four best guys each week. There’s pretty much no doubt that three of those guys are Allenby, Mahan, and Villegas. Past that, Kevin Na has been playing well lately (for what that’s worth) and is at least as good as Rose, Crane, and Watson.

Anthony Kim is head and shoulders above the other C-Listers this week and with enough other guys (Zach Johnson, McIlroy, Kaymer, Day, etc.) to start in other events, I’m not worried about burning starts on him early. Of the rest, Holmes is barely more likely to be in contention after Saturday.

NG Nation:

For this, you pick four golfers, one of which must be sponsored by Nike, and receive points if they finish 1st, Top 10, and Top 25. The ~10 or so golfers I considered follow with expected points.

Woods, Kim, and Glover are the Nike golfers to choose from. The expected points table says that if Tiger plays seriously this week, he’s far ahead of Glover and Kim. In fact, the 2010 version of Tiger is probably at least as good of a play as either of them. As wary as I am against picking Tiger because he’ll be so popular, not picking him gives everyone else an absurd advantage.

After getting that out of the way, picking the best three remaining guys is the strategy because there’s no limit in how many times you can pick each golfer. That means three of Phil, Mahan, Johnson, Allenby, and Watney. Watney is a defending champion so I’ll avoid him. Beyond that there’s a lot of reason to not pick Mahan and Mickelson (honeymoon, flying from Abu Dhabi), but they look to be unpopular, so I’m in. In addition, I’ll take Allenby who’s hardly below Dustin in expected points and who no one is going to pick.

Tiger, Allenby, Mickelson, Mahan

Gambling:

Pretty likely you can get a good number on Lucas Glover (+8000) and Kevin Na (+10000); also, if you’re into lesser lights, Chad Campbell (+20000), Bryce Molder (+22500), Ben Curtis (+38500), and Angel Cabrera (+20000) have decent prices. If you’re into pain, Villegas (+7500) and Allenby (+5500) can provide it.

In match-ups, I’ll be going against Bill Haas, Ryuji Imada, and maybe others. Those two fit the recent winners, recent over-performance, past success, overrated by the numbers, etc. categories. I’m going to avoid Phil, Tiger, Dustin, etc. because the numbers look fair and who really knows at this point of the season.

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