2021 PGA DFS Preview: CJ Cup

Hi RotoBallers! I'm Andy Lack and I'm very excited to be with you for the PGA Tour Swing Season!

I hope this preview will give you a head start on your CJ Cup research and I'd also like to encourage you to check out my Inside Golf Podcast to hear more of my thoughts on the Summit Club and this week's tournament. If you aren't already utilizing RotoBaller's amazing weekly PGA content, fix that right now by joining us this week and throughout the rest of the PGA Tour season.

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RotoBaller Weekly PGA Article Schedule

Monday

You can find out all you need to know about this week's layout with Josh Bennett's Course Breakdown (Premium) and learn which golfers have thrived at this course in the past with Joe Nicely's Horse For The Course.

Tuesday

We kick your DFS research into high gear with articles from Spencer Aguiar! Spencer will highlight his favorite DraftKings Plays of the week - an article that also includes his popular PGA DFS Rankings Wizard Model - and offer great tips with his Head-To-Head Betting Preview, while Joe Nicely drops some salary savers in his DraftKings Value Plays (Premium) article. We also have you FanDuel fans covered with free PGA DFS picks for every tournament.

Wednesday

Things start getting intense on Wednesday and we've got you covered! You can check out RotoBaller Staff One And Done selections and get inside the mind of our team with our PGA DFS Expert Roundtable (Premium). We also have two of the most popular articles in the PGA DFS industry with Spencer Aguiar's Vegas Report (Premium) and Joe Nicely's DraftKings Core Four (Premium). You can also check out Josh Bennett's DFS Cheat Sheet (Premium) for a quick cram session!

Tournament Overview

2021 CJ Cup 

Recent Winners

• 2020: Jason Kokrak (-20) at Shadow Creek
• 2019: Justin Thomas (-20) at Nine Bridges
• 2018: Brooks Koepka (-21) at Nine Bridges
• 2017: Justin Thomas (-9) at Nine Bridges

Event Details

• Purse: $9,750,000
• FedEx Cup Points: 500 (Winner)
• Field: 70 players

The PGA Tour travels to Las Vegas, Nevada this week for the CJ Cup. This tournament was played for the first time in October of 2017 at the Nine Bridges Golf Club in Jeju Island, South Korea. In 2020, the event was moved to Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas, Nevada due to the COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions. This year, the CJ Cup will remain in Las Vegas, albeit at a different venue, the Summit Club. The CJ Cup only features a field of 78 players, but what the event lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality, as 23 of the world's top 30 players will be in attendance this week.

From a fantasy standpoint, we return to a no cut event! All 78 players are guaranteed four rounds of action at the Summit Club. The point that I often bring up with no cut events is that when the best players in the world are guaranteed four rounds, the cream usually rises to the top over a larger assured sample size. Let's get into the course breakdown, key statistics, and three players that are worthy of further attention.

Course Breakdown

The Summit Club- Las Vegas, Nevada

Sitting in the Summerlin suburb of Las Vegas, the Summit Club is a beautiful and lush parkland layout masquerading as a desert course. The club was designed in 2017 by Tom Fazio, and commissioned by the Discovery Land Company. The Summit Club plays as a stock par 72, measuring 7,459 yards on the scorecard, drawing an obvious comparison to last year's venue, Shadow Creek. A few weeks ago at the BMW Championship, we were in a similar position. Both Caves Valley and the Summit Club are Tom Fazio courses that had previously never seen PGA Tour competition, and thus we have zero data on. In full disclosure, I was able to find far more online info about Caves Valley than I was about the Summit Club, but we can still develop an understanding of this course based on some images and what we already know about Tom Fazio as a designer.

Tom Fazio is one of the most famous modern golf course architects, and he's done a lot of great work on a number of PGA Tour courses. Fazio designed Congaree, the host of June's Palmetto Championship, Shadow Creek, the host of last October's CJ Cup, Caves Valley, the host of this year's BMW Championship and he has also done re-design work on Quail Hollow, Conway Farms, and Kasumigaseki, the host course of the Olympics. Fazio is known for his deep bunkers and large undulating greens. His courses are often in impeccable condition, and the Summit Club is no different. If there is one consistent through-line that we can draw between all of Fazio's designs and re-designs, it's that they certainly favor long and accurate drivers of the golf ball. Rory McIlroy's success Quail Hollow, Kasumigaski, and Caves Valley is not by accident. The reason for this is that Fazio courses often feature intricate and menacing fairway bunkers that frame curving and long dogleg-style holes. Yet if one possesses the length off the tee to cut some the corners and carry the fairways bunkers, it's a lot easier to play offense from there on out.

For that reason, similar to my modeling for Quail Hollow, Kasumigaseki, and Caves Valley, I chose to place a much greater weight on length off the tee than I usually do. The first page of Quail Hollow's leaderboard was littered with bombers, with Rory McIlroy, Keith Mitchell, Viktor Hovland, Gary Woodland, and Luke List rising to the top. The Olympics told a similar story, with Xander Schauffele, Mito Pereira, Sebastian Munoz, and Rory McIlroy all finishing in the top-five. Bryson DeChambeau, Rory McIlroy, Erik Van Rooyen, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, and Sam Burns, all overpowered Caves Valley en route to top-eight finishes, and Jason Kokrak and Xander Schauffele battled it out for the title at Shadow Creek. Point being, those who can carry Fazio's trouble off the tee possess a distinct advantage at these types of layouts. That is not to say that shorter hitters cannot compete here, as players such as Abraham Ancer and Cam Smith have also experienced a modicum of success on Fazio layouts, but their roadmap is far more dependent on elite iron play, bunker play, and putting.

The other Fazio piece that is worth examining is one that I certainly underrated at Caves Valley. On paper, Fazio tracks look extremely difficult. They are big and brawny golf courses with intimidating tee shots and undulating and elevated greens. They will provide average players with just about everything they can handle. With that being said, for modern professional golfers, they tend to play quite easy. Not to belabor the point, but his courses really tend to open up for those who can carry the trouble off the tee. Xander Schauffele won at Kasumigaseki at 18-under par, Jason Kokrak won at Shadow Creek at 20-under par, and Patrick Cantlay won at Caves Valley at a whopping 27-under par. Of course, Caves Valley might be a little bit of an outlier, as that course played extremely soft given the amount of rainfall it received prior to the tournament. On the other end of the spectrum, Quail Hollow is a championship level course that was renovated to host future major championships and President's Cups. While the Summit Club will certainly not be as soft as Caves Valley, it is also a resort course that I expect to play exponentially more difficult that Quail Hollow. If I had to make a guess, I would expect the Summit Club to play slightly easier than Kasumigaseki and Shadow Creek, yet slightly more challenging than Caves Valley. 18 to 24 under-par feels like an appropriate range for the winning score.

In conclusion, a very simple approach of targeting players who are long off the tee, comfortable in easy scoring conditions, and have performed well at Fazio courses in the past, is more than sensible this week at the CJ Cup. As I mentioned, I definitely see value in examining how players have performed on Shadow Creek, Kasumigaseki, Quail Hollow, and Caves Valley. The top players in average strokes gained per round on a weighted average of those courses were Sergio Garcia, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, Joaquin Niemann, and Abraham Ancer. The Summit Club is its own unique entity, yet the similarities between it and other Fazio designs were hard for me to ignore. Let's dig into the metrics!

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Key Statistics 

Outside of the obvious four major statistical categories (strokes gained off the tee, strokes gained approach, strokes gained around the green, and strokes gained putting), here are a few ancillary statistics that should prove pivotal, as well as the top-5 players in the field in these metrics over their last 24 rounds.

1. Birdies or Better Gained  
   1. Cameron Smith
   2. Rory McIlroy
   3. Dustin Johnson
   4. Webb Simpson
   5. Jhonattan Vegas
2. Driving Distance  
   1. Rory McIlroy
   2. Jhonattan Vegas
   3. Brooks Koepka
   4. Keith Mitchell
   5. Jason Kokrak
3. Strokes Gained: Par Fives
   1. Louis Oosthuizen
   2. Cameron Smith
   3. Cameron Tringale
   4. Dustin Johnson
   5. Harris English
4. Opportunities Gained 
   1. Brooks Koepka
   2. Lucas Glover
   3. Keegan Bradley
   4. Viktor Hovland
   5. Carlos Ortiz
5. Sand Saves 
   1. Ian Poulter
   2. Marc Leishman
   3. Talor Gooch
   4. Harold Varner III
   5. Alex Noren

While those five statistics are a great place to start, I am also looking at greens in regulation gained, and course history on Caves Valley, Shadow Creek, Kasumigaseki, and Quail Hollow.

Players To Target

High-Price Tier

Xander Schauffele     

I had a very difficult time picking which player to spotlight at the top this week. I strongly believe that Xander Schauffele, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, and Collin Morikawa are all fantastic options. I write this article over the weekend, before the ownership, or even the pricing comes out. Obviously, who I end up playing is ownership and price dependent. With so many strong options at the top, my suggestion this week would be to let pricing and ownership dictate your exposure to the high priced players. I could make an extremely compelling case for each and every one of the players that I just mentioned, and probably a few others as well. I happen to believe that the margins are pretty thin amongst the high-end talent this week. With all of that being said, so long as the price is not exorbitant and the ownership can fit with my other selections, Xander Schauffele would be my preferred choice at the top.

The four-time PGA Tour winner claimed the Olympic Gold Medal at the Tom Fazio designed Kasumigaseki, and finished runner-up in this tournament last year, at the Fazio designed Shadow Creek. His success on Fazio tracks should not come as a surprise, as over his last 36 rounds, Schauffele ranks eighth in driving distance, 12th in strokes gained approach, first in strokes gained: par fives, and third in sand saves, out of all players in this field. Of course, it must also be mentioned that Schauffele is a Las Vegas resident, who almost assuredly is familiar with the Summit Club, and at the very least, is extremely comfortable playing in altitude and desert conditions.

Mid-Price Tier

Cam Smith 

While Cam Smith is not the prototypical Fazio player, his results at Shadow Creek and Kasumigaseki speak for themselves. Xander Schauffele, Cam Smith, and Sebastian Munoz are actually the only three players to finish top-11 at both courses, which I happen to believe have the most in common with the Summit Club. Although Smith is not an elite driver of the ball, the modeling can help us figure out why the Australian has been able to experience a modicum of success on Fazio designs. Over his last 36 rounds, Smith ranks third in birdies or better gained, 18th in opportunities gained, tenth in strokes gained: par fives, and tenth in sand saves. Smith is able to make up for his lack of pop off the tee with the fact that he makes a ton of birdies and takes considerable advantage of par fives.

Last time we saw Cam Smith, he finished middle of the pack at the TOUR Championship. Yet enough time has passed that I would prefer to rely more on course fit than recent form, as many of this week's players haven't teed it up in over a month. Smith has been relatively quiet since his playoff loss at the Northern Trust. He didn't compete in the Ryder Cup or play in the first few fall swing events. My hope is that this keeps ownership down on a player that I believe possesses winning upside.

Value-Price Tier

Jhonattan Vegas 

While Cam Smith may not be the prototypical Fazio player, Jhonattan Vegas is. I'll concede that calling Jhonattan Vegas a poor man's Rory McIlroy is a disservice to the four-time major winner. Yet from a purely statistical standpoint, both players do the exact same things well. Over his last 36 rounds, Vegas ranks third in strokes gained off the tee, 16th in strokes gained approach, sixth in birdies or better gained, third in greens in regulation gained, second in driving distance, and 13th in strokes gained par-fives, out of all players in this field. In my overall composite model, only Brooks Koepka, Louis Oosthuizen, Sam Burns, Xander Schauffele, and Jason Kokrak rate out as a better fit than Vegas for the Summit Club.

Luckily, Vegas' results on Fazio tracks do back up my belief that he is a perfect fit for this style of golf. The three-time PGA Tour winner finished a respectable 16th at Kasumigaski, and runner-up at the Palmetto Championship on the Fazio designed Congaree. Anytime we are on a course where there is low resistance to scoring and players can hit a lot of drivers, play Jhonattan Vegas. It's really that simple. Already this year, the Venezuelan has finished runner-up at the Puerto Rico Open, ninth at the Byron Nelson Classic, second at the Palmetto Championship, 11th at the John Deere Classic, and second at the 3M Open. I expect Vegas to to be firmly in the mix come Sunday afternoon.

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