Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Genesis Scottish Open

It feels like I need a vacation after the last two weeks of PGA DFS. Luckily, the PGA Tour is going overseas to Scotland, where the world’s top players will prepare for the final major of the year by playing in the Scottish Open. It’s definitely a sight for sore eyes to see guys like Scheffler, Rory, and Xander in a field after sweating out what to do with a $10K Ben Griffin over the last couple of weeks at the Rocket and John Deere. While some people might prefer the weaker fields and birdie-fest courses, for whatever reason the last two weeks have never really gone well for me, so I’m definitely happy we’ve moved on. I did see some screenshots in Discord but not a ton, so maybe everyone is feeling similarly. Even Sky, the greatest to ever do it, was unable to win the monster on FanDuel for the third straight week. He probably still profited, though, but that’s probably a disappointing result for the No. 1 ball knower in the game.

John Deere Classic – Recap

I will try not to spend too much time on the John Deere. But it was a bloodbath in terms of chalk — Griffin, Michael Kim (2018 winner of the JD, by the way), Jason Day, and Ryan Gerard all missed the cut at heavy ownership numbers. My flag plant, Stephan Jaeger, withdrew after R1. I have likely bad Intel from Discord weatherman and story teller Brasi that he was expecting a child, but the last time Brasi told me information, a supposedly “injured” Hideki Matsuyama went -8 in a showdown round. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup in the lotto: 

• The lineup totally skipped the $10K range, instead choosing to double-tap the $9K range and hammer the strong $7K range. I thought this was a very interesting build, as I believed the way to get different last week was to differentiate your $7K players. That turned out to be wrong, as a SWK/DT start up top won it all for this user.
• It had a cumulative ownership of 55%, lower than my normal 60-80% range that I normally target in these basic events. This doesn’t really deter me at all, as most lineups that feature a fade up top will get squeezed as a whole on cumulative ownership. This lineup DID play some chalk in Kevin Roy and Emiliano Grillo down low, so there was still a nice mix of chalk and contrarian here.

Overall, the week could not have gone worse for me. I thought I had a great strategy going on with the variance of birdie fests and a bad field, but unfortunately, chalk cheap guys were the way to build. Oh well. On to the next one!

Scottish Open – Preview

I will always have fond memories of the Scottish Open, as just last year I was able to enjoy the final round with none other than Discord judge THE Kyle in Vegas, where he tilted Ludvig Aberg not being able to close the deal (again) in a loss to Bobby MacIntyre. While I have not won much at this event, it is a nice change-up to go to links golf and get some different European players in the field instead of the Nate Lashleys of the world. Typically, the Scottish is a decent challenge for the players and often attracts many of the top players in the world, as they want to be in the area and playing the week before The Open. The past few years have all been played at The Renaissance Golf Club, a fairly straightforward links golf course. For those of you that are unfamiliar with links golf, courses are typically wide open and highly susceptible to wind change. For showdown, please be aware of the weather conditions for the day in particular. Let’s took at the last five winners and their scores: