Farmers Insurance Open – Daily Fantasy Sports Preview

Farmers Insurance Preview

It’s highly unusual for a player to finish in joint last place and still make most of the headlines, but this is the effect Tiger Woods has on the game of golf. Thankfully I left him out of my picks last week and I will again this week for obvious reasons – although his progress will be interesting seeing as he has won the event on seven occasions. The event at Torrey Pines this week sees the return to the tour of Dustin Johnson and his first event as a father, his fiancée Paulina Gretzky giving birth to a boy a couple of weeks ago. This tournament has a slightly strange format, players playing the North and South courses on day one and two, before playing the weekend on the south course.

Fantasy Picks (DraftKings)

Here are my 8 picks for this week.

Jimmy Walker – When deciding who the best player is on tour right now, Jimmy Walker has to be one of the first names to be considered. After losing a playoff to Patrick Reed in the tournament of Champions, he dominated the Sony Open, winning by an incredible nine shots. After winning the Sony Open last year he missed the cut at this tournament, but he has shown he can play well here with a top 5 in 2013. Anything like the form of his first two events will see Walker look value this week.

Jordan Spieth – Spieth was my first pick last week and despite a lack of fireworks, he did finish in the top 10 – Spieth declaring he was satisfied after a few weeks break. He finished 19^th at this tournament last year and finished 2014 in breathtaking form, dominating his final two tournaments, winning by a street in each. Spieth and Jimmy Walker both attract big salaries this week, and it’s probably not wise to pick them both – but pick one, as these are the only two players who could completely dominate this week.

Graham Delaet – This time last year Delaet had back to back second place finishes and his year looked like it would be a great one. However he never really hit those heights again and struggled at the end of the year. He started this year with a missed cut, but a 30^th place followed by a top ten last week sees a welcome return to form. He clearly likes this tournament with top ten finishes in both 2013 and 2014.

Keegan Bradley – It would be fair to say that the career of Keegan Bradley hasn’t quite exploded the way we would have hoped after his PGA Championship win in 2011 – Bradley not being in the winner’s circle since 2012. However with four top 5 finishes in his last 13 tournaments it’s not all bad, and his start to the season has seen improvement with 48^th and 17^th place finishes in the last two weeks. He finished 16^th here last year.

Justin Thomas – When you keep seeing the same name near the top of the leaderboard you have to take notice and three straight top twenty finishes have seen Thomas achieve exactly that. Thomas graduated from the Web.com tour in the fall and has seen his world ranking improve from outside the top 1,000 at the start of 2014 to inside the top 100 now. A rare start on the PGA tour last season saw him finish 10^th at this tournament.

Tony Finau (sleeper) – I picked Finau as a sleeper a few weeks back and I’m going for this big hitter again. He had an impressive 22^nd place finish last week and he’s had four top 20 finishes since his debut on the tour in October. This means that Finau sits in a lofty 24^th place in the latest Fedex Cup standings and another decent finish will see him offer great value again this week.

Pat Perez (sleeper) – Perez had something of an awful end to 2014 on the golf course, with missed cut after missed cut. However, this fiery golfer is now playing with some consistency. His three starts this year have seen him finish in the top 30 each time and he has shown he is a player who can go on a long run of solid form – 14 straight made cuts in the early part of last year evidence of this. He also clearly likes this tournament, missing out by just one stroke last year and a 21^st place finish in 2013.

Shane Lowry (sleeper) – Lowry has found a level of consistency in his game that has never been there before, playing at the weekend for 15 straight tournaments, with six top ten finishes in this stretch. It’s very rare to see Lowry play on a standard PGA tour event, so it will be interesting to see how he does, but a player with a world ranking of 45 can never be overlooked. If you don’t know too much about Lowry, you soon will.

Keep On Reading

• Join me (Spry13) every week at DraftKings (I’ll be in the cheap contests).
• Fantasy PGA Strategy
• The big fantasy sports website
• New fantasy golf site review: Victiv.