Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds & Predictions – 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational Fantasy Preview

The hottest golfer in the world fresh off his first major victory will be back in the spotlight at another star-studded event.  The newly anointed World No. 3, Dustin Johnson, will be linked up with World No. 1 Jason Day and No. 2 Jordan Spieth for the first two rounds of the WGC-Bridgestone this week.

No stranger to a WGC event, DJ owns two trophies after winning the 2013 and the Cadillac Championship at Trump Doral last year.  On the other hand, Jason Day, winner of the WGC-Dell Match Play in March and fellow countryman Adam Scott (2016 WGC-Cadillac winner) will seek to become just the third players ever to win two WGC’s in the same season.  As you can imagine, the absent Tiger Woods has done it six times and Phil Mickelson once with his 2009 victory at both Doral and in China.

Will Jordan Spieth right the ship this week after failing to break into the top 35 in his last two outings (Memorial Tournament and U.S. Open) and get back to the dominant form we all know that he has?  It’s clear that WGC’s haven’t been his strong point, since he has yet to notch a top five finish at one.

Remember, this is a non-cut event, and all players (barring no withdrawals) will be around into weekend to bank you some fantasy points—now let’s get out there and pick the right ones!

Last Week’s Fantasy Results

All seven of our fantasy selections (including both sleepers) made the cut last week, and our low-priced options all came out of the gate firing on Thursday.  Both Jhonny Vegas and Jaime Lovemark added over 50 fantasy points after finishing the first day in the top three before falling off later on over the weekend.

Of our main picks, our best finish was the hot-handed David Hearn, who finished T12 and banked 76.00 fantasy points.  It was a tough call on Billy Hurley (last week’s winner), with his season record of six missed cuts in twelve events.  In those six events where he did make the cut, he never finished better than T41.  This is what we call a huge ‘Fantasy Surprise,’ and a lucky one indeed for anyone who stuck him on their roster.

Most of our success last week came from our highly-demanded Tuesday Sleeper Report, and thanks to some of our Premium Members writing in about their triumphs last week, we’re smiling ear-to-ear today knowing a lot of folks out there mixed and matched our picks and sleeper choices with successful results.

Last Week’s Sleeper Report Fantasy Results

Of the five picks on our Sleeper Report, four players made the cut, and those four managed to bank $1.291 million in earnings.  Perhaps even better was the fact that the average fantasy points earned for the group was just over 70!  That’s right–our two ultimate long shots last week were Jon Rahm and Vijay Singh, and in case you missed it, here’s what our fantasy team had to say about them:

Jon Rahm – Vegas Odds 75/1 – Rahm hails from Spain, but has made a name for himself as a member of the Arizona State Sun Devils golf team under the tutelage of Tim Mickelson, brother to 42-time PGA TOUR winner Phil Mickelson.  There he was the two-time winner of the Ben Hogan Award, an honor bestowed on the top college golfer in the country, and was the first ever to do so in back-to-back years.  He’s had no issues taking his game to the big stage, and in four career PGA TOUR starts as an amateur, is three for four in cuts made, with two top 10’s.  He really showed his talent last week with a gutsy appearance at the U.S. Open, finishing 23rd thanks to two rounds of par or better.  In his two outings this year, both in the top 25, he has putt the ball an average of 1.695 strokes better than the field, and if he can continue doing that this week and if his level of play keeps up, he should see his name near the top of the leaderboard this week.

Vijay Singh – Vegas Odds 175/1 – There is no questioning that Singh is not playing like the player who, over his career to this point, has topped the leaderboard 34 times and made nearly $70 million since 1992, but he is still competitive and comes into the week with 10 cuts made over 15 outings.  Only one of those ended in a top 10, but he has been under par in three of his past four tournaments and has made it to the weekend in each of his five events since the Masters.  He is certainly a long shot to really have a top five finish this week, but he should be a solid option to play all four rounds with an outside chance of more.

Remember, you need any advice week-to-week about how to mix and match our picks, our Premium Members can submit their questions through our “Ask Our Fantasy Experts” portal for prompt assistance.

The 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational Field

This week, we’ll be selecting from an intimate group of 59 players, of which 40 are in the top 50 in OWGR.  Rory McIlroy has opted to play in the Open de France along with nine other European TOUR players, and will not be in our lineup this week.

All eyes will be on the ‘new’ Top 3 ranked players in the world, and it will be up to us as fantasy owners to decide who the horse pick should be among the three of them.  Billy Hurley III will be back in action after securing a spot with his win at the Quicken Loans National, along with any other players who happen to creep into the top 50 in Monday’s rankings.

Along with the big dogs, you’ll see some WGC newbies thanks to their recent victories—golfers like William McGirt (Memorial), Jim Herman (Shell Houston Open) and Vaughn Taylor, who won at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and is back playing his his first WGC since 2008.

This Week’s Course Overview

Firestone Country Club (South Course) measures in at a booming 7,400 yards, and this week will play as a par 70.  This track was initially a very generous perk that Harvey Firestone offered to the employees of his famous tire company, and eventually earned the respect to be held as a tough test for the PGA TOUR elite.

The South Course opened during the Great Depression in 1929, and about 30 years later, was was remade by Robert Trent Jones for the 1960 PGA Championship.  The PGA of America brought the major back in ’66 and ’75, and then Firestone permanently became the landing spot for this event in 1999.

The course plays long, and there are plenty of challenges that lie ahead this week for these guys.

A photo posted by The Golf Journal – Australia (@thegolfjournal) on Aug 7, 2015 at 1:36am PDT

Weather Forecast for Akron, OH

It finally looks like a dry and pleasant week all the way through for this WGC-Bridgestone, with temperatures chasing the high 80’s from start to finish.  Firestone is a long course, and the dryness should allow it to play right at that yardage, if not shorter.  We’ll still factor this in when making our picks this week.

Last Year’s Results from the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

It was the Shane Lowry show last year after the Irishman notched his first victory in the USA.  His bogey-free 66 was all that he needed to close out a two-shot victory over Bubba Watson.  On the back nine, Lowry had two amazing par saves and a couple of tremendous birdies, including an amazing wedge shot at No. 10 over the trees after hooking his drive.  After being granted a free drop, Lowry skyrocketed a wedge to the green and never seemed to look back.

His most heroic shot was on 18 after knocking a wedge through a tree to about 10 feet that he ended up knocking in for a tournament-winning birdie.  Watson also shot 66, but couldn’t execute his birdie putts.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3vp5VumVkE[/embedyt]

This Week’s Broadcast Schedule

• Television Broadcasts
  • Thursday (June 30, 2016) – Friday (July 1, 2016) 1:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST (GC)
  • Saturday (July 2, 2016)- Sunday (July 3, 2016) 12:00pm – 1:30pm (GC), 2:00pm – 6:30pm (CBS)
• Mobile Broadcasts 
  •  PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. (featured groups), 2-6:30 p.m. (featured holes). Saturday, 9:00 a.m.-6 p.m. (featured holes).
• RADIO
  • Thursday-Friday, 12:00 – 7:00pm EST, Saturday-Sunday 1:00 – 6:00 pm ET (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM)

Where to Play Fantasy Golf for the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational this Week

Between DraftKings, Fantasy Feud, StarsDraft, and No Halftime (just to name a few) there are plenty of places to play DFS this week.  Here are just a few of our favorites:

• $1M FANTASY GOLF WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIER #72 ($27 ENTRY): You still have time to qualify for this FedExCup format event, which guarantees a $2,000 payout if you make it to the top 125!  Why wouldn’t you try for this one?  Here’s a full list of payouts for the 125 players.

• PGA $300K BIRDIE [$100,000 TO 1ST!] ($3 ENTRY):  You can turn $3 bucks into $100,000 this week in this 115,657 max player event.  For $30 bucks, you can easily score 10 rosters in this fun game.

• No Halftime:  Player vs. player fantasy games are becoming more and more popular lately.  After your DraftKings rosters lock on early Thursday morning, you can still play heads up on No Halftime all weekend long.  It’s an easy way to double your money.

This Week’s Fantasy Notes for the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

Firestone is a course some say is ‘owned’ by Tiger Woods since the greatest of all time has eight victories there.  But Tiger isn’t playing this week, so we need to focus on the field at hand.

Distance, Greens in Regulation, and Scrambling are our key stats this week.  Our indicators will have a heavy weighting on Power and Accuracy, and from what we’ve seen in recent years, those stats have been crucial to the winner’s success.  Last year, although he finished runner-up, Bubba led the field for the week in both Driving Distance and GIR, while Lowry finished T23 and T5 respectively.  McIlroy, who won this event on this course in 2014, finished 1st that week in both Driving Distance and GIR and was T7 in Scrambling.

Here’s what we plan on doing this week: we will pick a horse out of the top 10 highest salary-ranked players and then build into the next tier, and the next tier, and so on.  We like to offer our members the closest thing as possible to a full roster, but then it’s on them to mix and match our well thought-out sleepers from the Tuesday Sleeper Report—running multiple rosters is also highly advisable.

This week, our fantasy engineers crafted a new feature to the Fantasy Stats Indicators page.  Now you can search for a player based on a specific parameter (or range of values).  For example, if you’re down to making that final pick and you have to be in the $7-7,300 range and want a player with at least an eight in both power and seven in putting, simply enter the numbers in the fields, and our program will spit out the player(s).

Here’s an example of one from last week’s Quick National when we looked for eight in power and seven in putting in the low $7K range.

Sometimes we know we need to fill the empty void (our 6th and final roster spot), and we tend to get tossed up over two or three players.  This is an easy way to filter out the results and pick the best player based on your particular search.

Remember, it’s a non-cut event this week, so we’ll be factoring that in and putting our faith in some strong-stamina horses that can do long distances against the best of the best.  It should be a great event, and we’re pretty sure there is plenty of money to be made with so many solid sleeper picks!

Good luck…

Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

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Last Week’s Top 5 Picks/Odds to Win the Quicken Loans National

• Patrick Reed (Golficity Odds 18/1) T39 ($28,290, Fantasy Points: 64.50)
• Charlie Hoffman (Golficity Odds 30/1) T57 ($15,318, Fantasy Points: 56.00)
• Brendan Steele (Golficity Odds 30/1) T44 ($18,460, Fantasy Points: 60.00)
• Jaime Lovemark (Golficity Odds 50/1) T62 ($14,835, Fantasy Points: 61.00)
• David Hearn (Golficity Odds 65/1) T12 ($127,157, Fantasy Points: 76.00)

Sleeper Pick/Odds to Win the Quicken Loans National

• Hudson Swafford (Golficity Odds 66/1) T21 ($64,774, Fantasy Points: 62.50)

Salary Cap League Sleeper Pick/Odds to Win the Quicken Loans National

• Jhonattan Vegas (Golficity Odds 120/1) T44 ($18,460, Fantasy Points: 63.00)

Fantasy Golf Predictions YTD (2015-2016)

Remember to visit our private Facebook group to discuss this week’s picks for the 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational with other Premium Members.

Looking for European Tour fantasy golf picks for this week’s 100th Open de France?  Get them here.

Cover Photo via Instagram