Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Travelers Championship

Another major has been completed, and I am still not a millionaire. But, we do have a two-time Milly Maker winner now in TeeJayorTJ, who won his second milly in the span of two months this past weekend. Incredible stuff from TJ, who will go for the three-peat at The Open next month, I am sure. Or maybe he will just win the FGWC. Maybe he will go for the Milly Maker Grand Slam and be the first to ever do it (I think). Either way, it was a really exciting time in Discord last weekend, where we saw a BUNCH of screenshots of all field sizes. I love to see a great week from the subscribers, and I hope you all will stick around with us throughout the rest of the year.

U.S. Open – Recap

As mentioned, it seemed to be quite a successful week for ETR subs at the U.S. Open. Personally, my Alex Smalley flag plant did me in, but generally, I felt great about the way I played. In the large-field lotto, we saw four teams split the top prize, and it actually wasn’t a four-way dupe. I can’t imagine getting to the top of the milly and having to split the prize with other teams that I actually didn’t dupe. You all wouldn’t hear the end of it. In the small-field $4,444, TJ won with a Scottie Scheffler lineup, which is important to note given his price at almost $15K with a $5K range. I personally had zero Scottie exposure, but the place to do it was in a smaller field, where you didn’t have to be perfect. It just so happened that a lineup with five players at $6-7K ended up being pretty close to optimal, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s take a quick look at one of the milly-winning lineups in the large-field lotto before moving on to the Travelers this week:

• It was a 12/9/7/7/6/6 build, starting with Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood and getting slate-breaking performances from Wyndham Clark and Keith Mitchell. The $6K and $7K ranges really showed out for the U.S. Open this year, which speaks to the depth of majors. Not only this, but the condensed Si Woo Kim and Sam Burns ownership made it so that playing multiple players in this range at low ownership was an extremely profitable strategy with a LOT of leverage. Playing multiple low-owned plays together in a range where there is condensed chalk is one of my favorite strategies in DFS, and I honestly am a bit bummed I did not hammer this more, especially seeing the results.
• The lineup came in at 70% cumulative ownership, within the 60-80% range we normally look for in large field, but on the high end of the 50-70% that I was targeting for this extremely large field. Wyndham Clark came in a bit more owned than projected at 13%, and I actually was thinking that Rory would come down a bit. That didn’t happen, but this lineup still fell within our thresholds. 

There was a lot to learn coming out of this week, but I do think the main lesson is how fragile chalk is in PGA DFS. It’s not so fragile that you should be fading every chalk player every single time, but the Si Woo missed cut just goes to show how much volatility there is. It was consensus that he was mispriced, and he went on to destroy teams almost immediately on Thursday. Crazy sport.

Travelers Championship – Preview

We move on to the Travelers and the one-year anniversary of Sky trying to kill me, Cody, and McKinley (and his wife and child) by having us stay in West Haven at a sketchy Airbnb. All of that aside, the Travelers is known to be one of the best tournaments for the PGA Tour players and thus has earned it Signature status over the last couple of years. We are missing a few players that we normally see in these events (Rory, for example), but of course, with any Signature Event field, we will get the best of the best this week. Played at TPC River Highlands, the Travelers is one of the Signature Events where there definitely will be some scoring, especially given the talent level in the player pool. Let’s take a look at the past five winners of this event:

• 2025: Keegan Bradley (-15) def. Tommy Fleetwood by one stroke

• 2024: Scottie Scheffler (-22) def. Tom Kim in a playoff

• 2023: Keegan Bradley (-23) def. Zac Blair and Brian Harman by three strokes

• 2022: Xander Schauffele (-19) def. J.T. Poston and Sahith Theegala by two strokes

• 2021: Harris English (-13) def. Kramer Hickok in a playoff

As you can see, we’ll get a decent amount of scoring this week out of TPC River Highlands. While it likely won’t get out of hand, if there are perfect conditions, I would not be surprised if we see a runaway score by one of these elite players. You should already know this, but given the no-cut nature of the event and the limited field, I will be going with a 70-90% cumulative ownership range this week in large-field tournaments. I want to get as close to 70% as possible on the low end, while also not getting overly contrarian and shooting myself in the foot.

From a roster construction perspective, we are getting an extremely flat ownership structure across the board, which lends me to believe that “normal” builds will take precedent once again in roster building. These are some of my least favorite weeks, as I tend to gravitate toward the lower ownership combinations that no one really wants to play to maximize leverage. That being said, I am sure there will be some steam and squeeze impact as we get closer to lock that I will be very locked into. There is also the Scottie question, as his $13.8K price tag puts him $3K more expensive than the next player, Tommy Fleetwood. Depending on how much you think the field wants to play Scottie, the common roster construction may change a bit, but as currently projected, there isn’t much lean to a particular one. Let’s hope that changes before lock tomorrow. 

Expected Chalk, How to Play It