Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Valero Texas Open

We have one week until The Masters! But even if Tiger Woods is stepping away from golf for a bit, that certainly does not mean we will. It’s the last stop on the short Texas swing this week, where we make our way to the Valero Texas Open. For those of you who are trying to make your way into The Masters Main Event, DraftKings has loaded up a BUNCH of satellites for us to enter and waste our money on, so don’t be shy. I’m not sure why I load up on these tickets just to get dunked on in the actual contest, but I have been known to make questionable decisions in the past. Let’s talk about last week before moving on to this week.

Houston Open – Recap

It was a fantastic tournament at the Houston Open, where feel-good story Gary Woodland bucked the recent-form trend and won it all. As you probably know, this was his first win since his unlikely U.S. Open victory six-plus years ago, with surgery to remove a benign brain tumor in between. I love the story, and shout-out to Woodland for his resilience.

Outside of that, however, I want to address the current trend in Golf DFS. I don’t have the numbers on it (I have a life), but it seems as if touts are hitting on more outrights these days and the winners of the lotto have been a bit chalkier to kick off 2026. I mean, Woodland, who came in with basically zero recent form, was a popular long-shot bet here, presumably because of his length off the tee. Obviously that hit. Personally, I won’t be changing my style of play in DFS contests. We’ve had stretches of chalkier performance in the past that have quickly faded away, and I have no reason to believe the touts of the world know more in 2026 than they ever did before. Hell, Discord menace Saul Goodman pointed out a model from last week that had Gordon Sargent tied with Scottie Scheffler. That is all. Let’s take a quick look at the winning lineup:

• The lineup featured a very expensive 9/9/9/7/7/6 build, with a low-priced Brunson Burgoon at $6.2K to round it out. It featured all of the top chalk (Min Woo Lee, Chris Gotterup, Jake Knapp) and needed a generational round from Knapp in R4 to win it. I spoke about triple $9K being a way I wanted to decrease combination ownership, but I did not want to pair these three guys together. 
• It came in at 105% cumulative ownership. This lineup already broke the max threshold I normally use with its top three players alone. I spoke about chalk earlier, but as I said, I will not be changing my style of play because of a few tournaments with chalky winners. The field and industry have not displayed a significant change as to why they would be more accurate all of a sudden, and we are working with a small sample size. 

We’ve got plenty to talk about, so let’s move on to the Valero.

Valero Texas Open – Preview 

I’ve never really understood why the PGA Tour randomly goes to Texas before The Masters, but here we are. The Valero Texas Open, typically played at TPC San Antonio, represents a different type of challenge for the players who do decide to play it. It’s well known that this event sets up much differently than its Texas counterpart from last week, as the narrative is that more accurate players have success here and win. Here are the past five winners at TPC San Antonio:

• 2025: Brian Harman (-9) def. Ryan Gerard by three strokes

• 2024: Akshay Bhatia (-20) def. Denny McCarthy in a playoff 

• 2023: Corey Conners (-15) def. Sam Stevens by one stroke

• 2022: J.J. Spaun (-13) def. Matt Jones and Matt Kuchar by two strokes

• 2021: Jordan Spieth (-18) def. Charley Hoffman by two strokes 

As you can see, we’ve seen a variety of different scores and types of players win here. I’m personally not sure if the “accuracy” narrative will have some impact on ownership, but I’ll certainly be watching to see if it does. As you know, I generally like to fade overall narratives that are pushing ownership above what they should be. 7% Gary Woodland last week, for example, was something that I was never going to play. 

From a player pool perspective, we do have some of the best players using the Valero to get some golf in before Augusta. The tournament is headlined by Tommy Fleetwood and Ludvig Aberg at the top, but it features some solid $9K depth that you can get into if you choose to fade the two Ryder Cup teammates. This is setting up to be a pretty normal field on the PGA Tour, where no one range really sticks out as weak or strong. I expect builds to follow the 10/9/8/7/7/7 type of format (with maybe a 6 in there). One thing I need to do is start really leaning into weirder builds; I have not done enough differentiating lately, and that bugs me. 

In terms of cumulative ownership, I’m sticking with my guns. The 60-80% range will continue to be my sweet spot, and I will not shy away from that. This range almost forces you to make solid lineups by design, and will help you differentiate as well. Because there are so many satellites this week, I do get a lot of questions on how I play them. Generally, since golf is such a variable sport with fragile projections, I typically don’t play much differently than my large-field strategy. The reason why is that I don’t particularly think projections should be used as a given, which is how the field acts, especially in these satellites. I saw some small-field satellites with 30%-owned Brooks Koepka, for example.

Expected Chalk, How to Play It