Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Sanderson Farms Championship

We are officially back. After grinding through the first few weeks of the NFL season, I’ve remembered why I love golf DFS so much — you can only lose once per week. That, and the fact that I don’t need to deal with D/ST CPTs in this sport either. We now enter the shortened fall season for the PGA Tour, where we’ll have events basically every week up until Thanksgiving! Seven shitbag events for the people to try and make money on. After a fairly disappointing Ryder Cup with a lot more gossip than competition, I’m glad to get back to a format that involves projections, larger player pools, and fewer duplicates. First, I’d like to pause and say shout-out to Discord member BigT44 for his win last week. In classic BigT style, he shared his winnings with some friends! No wonder why he likes the Ryder Cup so much. All jokes aside, let’s travel to Jackson, Miss. where this week’s event will be held.

Sanderson Farms – Preview

It feels good to be back to our 130+ player events, where we can lean on basic roster construction rules to start us off with a base in our lineups. This week’s flagship GPP is $100K to first and features 14K entries, which is a bit smaller of a field than we’re used to. While I don’t think we’ll need to deviate from our normal cumulative ownership restrictions, a part of me would not mind increasing ownership depending on how you feel about the projected chalk. I’ll leave those decisions up to you, but I’ll of course play my normal contrarian lean, targeting 50-70% cumulative ownership across the board. I’m not going to overthink it here.

Let’s talk about the event a little bit. Sanderson Farms has a long history and has established itself as a consistent fall event. As with more fall events, it’s likely going to be a birdie fest unless we get a hurricane running through the area or something of that sort. Of course, check our dear friend Tom Peabody’s Course Preview and Fits article for more detail, but Jackson CC is an extremely straightforward course. Here are the past winners and scores at this event:

• 2022 – Mackenzie Hughes, -17, playoff over Sepp Straka 

• 2021 – Sam Burns, -22, one stroke over Cam Young and Nick Watney 

• 2020 – Sergio Garcia, -19, one stroke over Peter Malnati 

• 2019 – Sebastian Munoz, -18, Playoff over Sungjae Im

• 2018 – Cam Champ, -21, four strokes over Corey Conners 

As you can see from the past winners, there is a wide variety of skill sets in the top finishers. This year, it truly is a wide-open event when I look at the field. The highest-priced golfer on the slate is none other than Ludvig Aberg, the young European phenom coming off a Ryder Cup victory this past weekend. We’ll talk more about him later. Looking at the rest of the field, we’re going to get a pretty evened-out field after you get past Keith Mitchell at $9,900, and ownership is likely to reflect that. I would not be surprised if a studs-and-duds lineup is popular here, at the very least pairing Aberg and maybe Svensson at $9,000. The $7K range is going to be extremely popular, with recognizable names that seem to be significantly better than the $6K range but not too far off from the $8K guys. Knowing this, we can predict that many rosters will ignore the low-$9K and high-$8K players so they can fit two high-$9K/10K players, then litter their lineups with $7K/8K golfers. Slightly flipping the build and making sure I jam some of these low-$9K options seems like a very easy way to get different.

Expected Chalk, How to Play It