GPP Data Review: Memorial Tournament

Another GPP Data Review, another dominant win by Scottie Scheffler. It almost has become comical at this point how much better he is than anyone else in the professional game. There are times when others among the top of the world rankings showcase their ceiling games, and many have peaked at the right time to win majors, like Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, and Xander Schauffele as of late. But the sheer consistency Scottie has is what separates. His B game earned a top-five finish at The Masters, and he won the Byron Nelson by eight strokes at a golf course that typically is a putting contest. Then he ticks off a major in ho-hum fashion followed up by another signature event where he won —  winning each by four strokes!

At the same time, rostering Scheffler in DFS has been quite the thought experiment in 2025. Coming off the early-season injury, there was validity to fading with the clear rust it took to get the ball striking back. But once that flip was switched, his price also stabilized above $13,000, and even at these levels, he has been our 8.0 value continuously. But what matters more than Scottie himself is the other five golfers you’re able to roster him with. The lack of confidence, most of the time deservedly so for $6K players, can make it a lot more comfortable to have underweight Scheffler positions. And when DraftKings keeps the $6K floor, it makes that decision even more difficult, especially with a small-field, signature event. Next week’s U.S. Open should see the $5,000 minimum price return, so I will be super curious if we get Scottie up to $14,000 for the first time in DFS history. When that price hits, the two questions I will have are: 1) Does Scottie need to win to pay off? I say yes, unless you get a longshot winner, and 2) Can Scottie win and you still take down a GPP without him? My gut really leans no here, but the winner of the $200 Driver for the Memorial won by 20+ points without Scottie. Both of these answers feed into this ownership plateau we see at times, and I want to spend more time diving into how the field handled him this past week.

There were 92 max-enterers for the Summer Sand Trap — above is the Scheffler ownership in each of their portfolios. The group’s cumulative Scheffler ownership was 43%, which is almost dead equal to what the field had. The median too was 43%, almost a perfect pendulum around how the contest handled him. I also landed pretty much on that average, with 41.33% of Scheffler. I had played around with a Tuesday build with Scheffler being 50% owned, and at that time, I initially was on a decent underweight stance. With our ownership projection landing at 37%, that exposure ended up changing a good bit and I felt comfortable matching that. Rarely will the sims tell you to lock a player at that salary, so that decision is almost always a player’s own hand-in-the-dirt take. I would guess the same for the full fades, too. It’s always so interesting looking through these to see how unique everyone’s process still can be, even with just 72 golfers.