I’ve spent most of the past three months diving into different ways to model PGA Tour performance. As with most things, predicting golf exists on a spectrum. On the “most predictable” side of that spectrum, you have things like Driving Distance. It doesn’t really change from event to event with some, rare exceptions. On the other end, we have things like putting performance. The variance is off the charts. It’s a fool’s errand to devote much time to predicting it. 

The one piece of information that we can be reasonably sure of heading into a tournament is what a golfer’s potential ownership will be. Each week, I publish the PRK Model results alongside my ownership projections. With that in mind, I’ve decided to do a series on performance vs ownership at different salary ranges. Last time we looked at golfers who were priced at $9,500 or above. Today we’ll look at golfers between $8,500 and $9,500. 

What Does Ownership Look Like in the $8,500-$9,500 Range?

The average ownership of all of the golfers in this group is 13.7%. I broke out the historical results of this cohort into four equal groups.

As we go through the rest of this piece,^[1]and subsequent parts of this series we’ll use these same ownership group names but the numbers may be different across salary ranges. 

We’ve seen three golfers hit 35% or more in this range. Tony Finau did it twice while Matt Kuchar has hit that mark once. 

Are We Good at Picking Golfers from this Range?

I looked at how golfers performed in this range over the past three years. A ceiling outcome — 80th percentile — is considered a score of 89 DK Points. An average outcome is 66 DK Points. Finally, a floor outcome — 20th percentile —  is considered a 34.9 DK Point performance. 

We aren’t looking for average outcomes when we’re attacking GPPs. It appears that as a community, we’re a little bit better at selecting the best plays in this group. This cohort of golfers has a median OWGR of 46 in this sample. That means we’re mainly talking about golfers that should make the cut and have flashed some reason for us to play them. My hypothesis on why we’re better at selecting golfers in this range has to do with price changes. 

Do Price Changes Matter?

There are likely some golfers that jump up into this price range that are playing some of the best golf of their life and are, therefore, popular options. On the other end of the spectrum, there are likely golfers that essentially have one foot in the stud range ($9,500-plus) and another in this tier. Some of this is field-dependent, of course. When a golfer who’s usually $8,000 makes the start at an event that is lacking star power, they’ll likely see a price increase. 

It’s nice when these things click and make sense. Golfers that are dropping down to this range from the stud range perform the worst of anyone. Whether the price drop comes because of their form or a stronger field is basically irrelevant — they just underperform compared to other golfers in this price range. Next, those golfers that jump up in price from the $8,400-$7,500 range are usually golfers that are on the ascent and their first foray into this range is right around their peak. Guys in that group range anywhere from 1% to 35% owned so we can apply the lessons from the ownership groups to these risers. A lot of community backing plus a price jump from the $8,400-$7,500 range is actually good chalk in a lot of instances. Performance from those that jump up from the lower tier is a mixed bag when it comes to ceiling projections, though they do manage the highest floor rate. 

Conclusions

Picking the right golfers, from a game theory standpoint, is much more difficult in this range. In the stud range, it’s literally just “don’t play the high-owned guys.” This range needs some more finessing and massaging. You’re allowed to eat some chalk here, but you’re generally better off chasing golfers who are moving up into this price range from a lower tier, rather than moving down in price. Sticking to decisions within this structure isn’t a guarantee for a winning week every time you build a lineup, but it is a way to embrace the chaos of PGA DFS. Over the long term, the gains you make with these decisions will outweigh the weeks where it breaks in the other direction. 

It’s also worth noting that over the past year of doing ownership projections the r-squared to actual ownership in the biggest 20-Max contest of that given week has averaged out to about 0.84. If we can gain leverage in all of our lineup decisions based on the work here and in the rest of this series, then we’re going to be at an advantage over the long-term.