If you’re into golf betting or DFS, you never want to see one of your guys withdraw, but if they are going to WD, you hope it’s before lineups lock for Round 1.
Hideki Matsuyama backers, however, didn’t get that lucky Thursday for the opening round of The Players Championship. The reigning Masters champion officially withdrew with a back injury just after 8 a.m. ET roughly 75 minutes after DraftKings lineups locked.
That means anyone who rostered Matsuyama in their tournaments was stuck with him on the lineup for the entire weekend. That’s a bad enough break as it is, but it’s even worse on a weekend like this where a whole bunch of money is at stake.
Matsuyama was owned in 11.67% of lineups in DraftKings’ Millionaire Maker contest that has a total of $2.5 million at stake this weekend. There’s also $1 million going to the winner of a separate contest that cost $2,222 to enter, and 7.42% of those lineups included Matsuyama.
The sharpest DFS players and bettors might have caught this tidbit as shared by the Hideki Matsuyama Tracker account Wednesday, with Matsuyama talking about he wasn’t fully healthy and had his focus on defending at Augusta National next month.
Not everyone was on top of that, though.
Bettors, on the other hand, might have gotten lucky. Most sportsbooks will refund bets if the player doesn’t tee off. So, by withdrawing before putting a peg in the ground, Matsuyama saved some otherwise doomed wagers. PointsBet reported Matsuyama getting 3.7% of the bet count (eighth overall) entering the first round, while DraftKings on Wednesday indicated Matsuyama received the seventh-highest share of first-round leader handle, with only Collin Morikawa getting a higher percentage of the actual bets.
