Quicken Loans National Post Mortem

We cashed $7 in the $3 entry Quicken Loans National tournament on DraftKings. We both entered the same single lineup and fortunately we had some good performance from our "value" players.

Our lineup totaled 514 fantasy points and compared to the winning lineup as follows:

The highlighted column is a simple comparison of performance vs price. We had notable outperformance in our least drafted players, Wheatcroft and Swafford. Wheatcroft played a rock solid tournament and finished Tied for 11th at -10. Swafford played well but had some luck with two eagles, which added 10 incremental fantasy points (versus two birdies on those holes).

The winning lineup, which was the 32nd entry by the DK player, had massive outperformance from Merritt and Ishikawa, both of whom were less than 2% drafted. This lineup seemed to follow a "barbell" strategy, with both widely held players (Rose, Fowler, and Lee to a lesser extent) and very narrowly held player (Merritt, Ishikawa, Whee Kim). This lineup also had two aces, which added 20 fantasy points. We're not huge fans of double awarding hole in ones with so many points, since eagles already get 8, but there's no doubt this system adds a lot of fun to the tournament.

What could we have done differently? We could have picked Rose, who had the highest projected fantasy score in our model, but we opted for some cheaper options. So not a big miss there. We specifically did not like Fowler for this tournament, but we were wrong in our prediction. The man played like a beast. I wish we could say we liked Ishikawa or Merritt, but both of them ranked below our value guys' expected fantasy scores (all four guys had similar salaries), so these two guys were just not on our radar. I think all things considered, we picked a fairly strong lineup.

It's noteworthy that Tiger Woods had a fairly strong showing, shooting -8 with a 68/66/74/68. He may be worth a look in upcoming tournaments.