Cash Lineup Review: U.S. Open

Our Adam Levitan devised a tried-and-true method for reviewing his NFL DFS cash lineups every week. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. My goal here is simply to apply Adam’s structure to PGA DFS cash lineups.

To steal directly from Adam, I play around 50-75% of my action each week in “cash games.” Cash games refer to any contest in which roughly 50% of the field gets paid out, such as head-to-heads, double-ups, or 50/50s. 

Each week, I’ll review my cash-game lineup in this space. Sometimes I’ll lose, but hopefully I’ll win more often. Either way, I’ll post it here and give you my thought process. For more on PGA cash-game strategy, see my How to Beat PGA DFS Cash Games article.

The primary storyline for the cash slate at our third major championship of the year was the weather forecast. For much of the week, it looked like there would be a notable wave split in favor of golfers with AM/PM tee times. I thought this could be a very tricky slate if the split looked significant enough to justify only playing golfers from the ideal wave, as a couple of my favorite options were in the PM/AM wave. However, as we got closer to our final run of projections, the weather forecast started to look a bit more even, and there was also the potential for delays. Our projections team decided to smooth out our wind split considerably, and we ultimately projected only a small wave split. As a result, I decided to play the cash slate in line with our projections and did not give any preference to one wave or the other.

The other notable considerations for me this week were each golfer’s past performances in major championships. While I always want to consider how players have fared at past majors, I especially want to for iconic tests like the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. Like everyone else, I expected the course to play extremely difficult this week, and I wanted to roster players who had proven an ability to perform at the highest level at extremely difficult majors, not just a weather-softened Valhalla or grown-out Quail Hollow.