Category Archives: Lessons Learned

Results of Fantasy Golf Sony Open Picks

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My picks for the Sony Open did not fair well.  The results are:

(1) Jeff Maggart -Tied for 13 at 8 under par. Maggart was a long shot but he had my hopes up on Sunday because he entered the 4th round tied for first place with a score of 12 under par.  It was only a few holes into the final round, when he bogeyed the 4th and 5th holes, that I knew it was going to be a bad day for Maggart.

(2) Web Simpson – Tied for 38 at 4 under par. Do you believe that if people talk about something too much it can be jinxed?  I do. All the golf commentators kept talking about how Simpson had 13 straight rounds in the 60’s coming into the Sony Open.  What happened — his streak ended with rounds of 72 (round 2)  and 70 (round 3) in the tournament. The final day he shot a 68 but that was too little, too late.

(3) Roy Sabbitini – Tied for 29 at 5 under par.  Sabbitini had a 7 (triple bogey) on the third hole (par 4) of his final round and even with 5 birdies later in the round he could not recover.  He also had drama in his final round when Vijay Singh swore at Sabbitini’s caddy.  Singh believed the caddy moved when Singh was hitting his putt. When Sabbitini defended his caddy, Singh swore at Sabbitini. According to an article in the New York Times there were a number of witnesses to this bad behavior.

(4) Heath Slocum – Missed the cut and did not play the weekend. Slocum was my “what the heck” pick this week so I can’t really be upset that he did the worst of all my picks; but this represents the second lesson learned in two weeks competing in the Golf Fantasy game.  You have to also think about whether or not your pick could actually miss the cut. It never entered my mind that any of my picks would miss the cut.  Go figure.

Fantasy Golf – Sony Picks

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My rank on the Golf Channel fantasy golf leader board is miserable against the full field of participants.  Ok, full disclosure, my rank is 5550 (yes, I have a long way to go).  However, comparing myself to the “Expert Leader board” for the Golf Channel (GC) Experts, I’m tied with Annika Sorenstam ranked at 14. Annika may not like her rank against her peers but I’ll take it as a positive sign that I am in the mix and not lower than any of the GC Experts.

Now for my Sony picks:

(1) Web Simpson — He is one of my favorite younger players and he tied for third last week at the Hyundai. I think he will win this year and I’m hoping for an early start with picking him for Sony.

(2) Rory Sabbatini — My gut is that he is going to be really motivated after what happened to him at the Hyundai.  What happened?  He was 20 seconds (yes, seconds) late for his tee time and he was hit with a two-stroke penalty.  This is a significant penalty if you think about the fact that Steve Stricker won by one stroke over Martin Laird.  The fact that Rory recovered (by that I mean got his composure back to shoot a 73 even par round that day) and that he finished with a 68,68 on the final two days makes me think he is capable of winning this week.  Motivation and capability makes me pick him from group two.

(3) Heath Slocum — no one inspired me in group three.  So this is my “what the heck” pick this week. He is a middle of the pack player but at least he has played before (versus trying to pick one of the 25 or so rookies playing their first time on tour.)  But I do have my eye on two rookies to pick later in the season.  I’ll blog about them later.

(4) Jeff Maggert — So I am going “old school” on this one and it is a risk but to be honest I picked him because he has been on tour since 1986 and has won in the past. However, 2011 was not a stellar year so I’m hoping he has a decent start to 2012. But, it is a risk because he could also miss the cut.

Being new to this fantasy golf game, I think I will learn something new each week.  Lesson from week one — the group format is tough. I thought I’d be able to pick any 4 players each week which would be easy to pick my favorites.  But now it is clear that the groups are based on performance (with top performers in group one and moving down the ranks to fill-in the other groups) and picking in Group 3 and 4 when you are “deep in the field” with average or low ranking players is a big challenge for me.  I might have to start actually looking at statistics like driving accuracy, GIR (greens in regulation), and putting averages. But that seems like too much work so let’s not go there yet.