This one was a roller-coaster ride, fantasy-wise, all the way through. First Mark Pack leads, then he slows down, then he leads again. In fact, the lead changed each day of the Wal-Mart Open, causing fantasy players a certain amount of heartburn.
Counterintuitively, old faithful Beaver Lake turned out to be a little harder to pick than some of the previous tournaments.
Joe Collins of Lowell, Ark., won the event with these picks:
PICK – PLACE – POINTS
1) MARK PACK – 1 – 5200 **
2) JAY YELAS – 13 – 188
3) SHINICHI FUKAE – 59 – 142
4) MARK ROSE – 40 – 161
5) DAVID DUDLEY – 26 – 175
6) RANDY BLAUKAT – 53 – 148
7) GEORGE COCHRAN – 2 – 1199 *
8) CHRIS ELLIOTT – 48 – 153
9) GREG BOHANNAN – 3 – 1198 *
10) CRAIG POWERS – 100 – 101
Total Points: 8,665
* Top-10 bonus
** Top-10 and exacta bonus
Notice that it only took three of his picks to make the top 10 for the win. Granted, he picked the winner, Pack, which made all the difference. Four of the other top 10 fantasy teams from Beaver Lake also picked Pack to win, but Mr. Collins also sprinkled in the second- and third-place finishers, George Cochran and Greg Bohannon, for good measure (though not in the exactas). All around Collins’ picks were pretty solid with all of his picks save one landing in the top 60.
At last month’s event on Lake Norman, you needed at least four top-10s to compete for the $100,000, but three was the magic number at Beaver.
Interesting note about the winning teams at Beaver Lake: Eight of the top 10 teams had George Cochran on their rosters and earned those bonus points. Remember, Cochran made the cut in 11th place; he only fished the finals thanks to the DQ of Joel Richardson, who accidentally fished an off-limits area in the opening round. If Richardson doesn’t make that little mistake, the top 10 fantasy teams from this event would look a whole lot different.
That said, congrats to all the big winners at Beaver Lake. You earned your stripes at that one. Now it’s onward and upward to Fort Loudoun-Tellico.