Large-Field GPP Breakdown: John Deere Classic

We are truly in the dredges of summer. This part of June and July represents probably one of the more cookie-cutter stretches on the PGA Tour, where we have 4-5 weeks between the U.S. Open and The Open that are filled with vanilla tournaments. It seems like a lot of the top PGA Tour pros take most of these summer weeks off to recharge on their yachts after cruising to millions of dollars at signature events. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for us, that means there are some big DraftKings tournaments like the FGWC that play the first rounds at these traditionally “shitbag” events. So, this week at the John Deere Classic, 300 entries of the biggest DFS golf tournament of the year will be cut down to 150 playing guys like Aldrich Potgieter. What a time to be alive. Of course, I do have to mention that our resident ball-knower, Sky, hit ANOTHER six-figure score on FanDuel, making that two weeks in a row on the fake site. Some are saying that user gpiros is nowhere to be found, as my assumption was that he was unbeatable on that site. Either way, I’m still waiting for the day that Sky does anything of note in the PGA DFS streets on DraftKings, where the real players are.

Rocket Mortgage Classic – Recap

As with the Travelers the week before, I was on the losing side of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, where a guy that seemed to have the whole golf betting world behind him won the whole damn tournament in a playoff. I also did not have much of Chris Kirk, who popped in the ETR projections. I didn’t take much of a stand on Kirk, instead letting the projections guide me, but unfortunately, it looks like I boosted some other players in the range. This resulted in me being heavily underweight on Potgieter (X’ed him out) and Kirk (didn’t adjust, but adjusted those around him). I was around the field on Max Greyserman, but given his chalk status, it really wasn’t a huge win for me. Add this all up and you get a pretty tough week for me, and I wasn’t able to play R4 because I was in Toronto for the weekend. Hopefully, those that live in California won’t feel that pain soon. However, it WAS a good weekend for ETR subs, as there were multiple screenshots in Discord and on Twitter. If I’m going to lose money, I’d much rather it be to subs like vandyjerm and THE Kyle than some dude with a SaberSim logo.

Let’s take a look as we always do at the winning lineup in the DraftKings lotto:

• The lineup featured a triple-tap of the $9K range, which is actually the first time I am seeing this in a few weeks. Starting with Ben Griffin/Hideki Matsuyama/Greyserman, this lineup skipped the whole $10K range, $8K range, and $6K range in an effort to get unique with roster construction. This type of lineup will be one that I try to emulate this week for sure, and it’s good to see unique roster constructions still making their way to the top in these tournaments. 
• It came in with a cumulative ownership of ~75%, just inside the 60-80% range that I normally target for these full-field events that feature a cut. It’s really important for us to understand that week after week, it usually does not pay to get too contrarian, and of course it doesn’t pay to get too chalky. This lineup used Griffin as the highest-owned player on the slate, but with a unique roster construction and enough contrarian pieces to stay below 80%, it was an unduped winner. Thoughtful roster construction allows you to feel good about your lineups no matter which players you’re playing.

That’s enough about the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Let’s move on to the esteemed John Deere Classic, which has an even worse field. If you’re looking for more analysis on last week, I would suggest you read Cody’s GPP Data Review, where Cody takes you through both Skyler and I’s MME sets on DraftKings.

John Deere Classic – Preview