Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Austin Championship

I’ll be the first one to admit, I did not know what the name of this week’s event was until late Tuesday night when I started this article. Now that I’ve seen it’s the Austin Championship, I realize this is the event that was named the Good Good Championship, which was renamed after Good Good released probably one of the worst ads we’ve ever seen. But we’ll ignore the drama that is professional golf, as there always seems to be some, and focus on the actual tournament. There are two weeks left in the fall swing before we get a much-needed break from PGA DFS, only to pile all of our energy into NFL and NBA DFS, which legitimately suck the soul out of you. But there is money to be made, so I likely will be joining these final couple of weeks in the lottery to make sure I get the blood flowing (I also have quit NFL, so that’s fun). I will note that Sam and I are in a dead heat for the “lead” in the $200 Driver contest, where we both have lost around $3K this year. Sky better step up these last two weeks with a big win.

WWT Championship – Recap

I decided to forgo the lottery last week, and maybe I do regret it. I just played one single-entry lineup for the sake of the contributor contest, which ended up finishing eighth overall and jumping me up into Sam Brott’s vicinity instead of lagging Skylar Hoke. Either way, a solid but obviously not a mind-numbing week. I do want to take some more time to continue to assess the fall swing and some of the trends happening during it. It’s quite clear at this point that the field is going to continue to hammer the young, high-potential players who they want to be early on, even if everyone’s going to be doing it. The playoff between Blades Brown and Ben James last week is simply going to validate these “chasers” even further. We’ll keep this in mind as we go throughout the Austin Championship, as I fully expect the field and players to be quite similar.

Austin Championship – Preview

This is the inaugural year of the Austin Championship, meaning we will have literally no course history, course fit, or any other data to go off of when building projections. Typically in these types of weeks, a narrative begins to emerge amongst the ball knowers and ends up impacting ownership when the cards flip. From what I’ve been seeing, it seems like the field may lean into the bomber narrative this week. If you don’t believe me, just venture into the Discord AMA run by my nemesis, Skylar Hoke, where some of this is discussed. We know that the fall events are more heavily influenced by the ball-knowing faction of the Golf DFS world, so keep an eye out for potential ownership moves here. Personally, I will be upping “bomber” ownership slightly so that I’m naturally influencing my 150 run with cumulative ownership restrictions.

Speaking of cumulative ownership, the 60-80% cumulative ownership range will be my target for the week, as it typically has been for these types of events. I do think the chalk seems to condense a bit in the fall events, so just be cognizant of getting too close to that 80% range, because you likely will flip a lineup that comes in over. The chalk this week is generally easily playable, so I am sure that optimizers across the board will lean into common combinations. We can easily combat this by using rules, as I always say.

Regarding roster construction, the “normal” build is back again as the most common. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m expecting a bunch of 10/9/8/7/7/7 types of lineups to be the most common builds in the lottery. There is only one $10K+ player, Jackson Koivun, and I am almost positive that the field will be drooling at the ability to play Koivun + Blades Brown together. That is a combination I will strictly avoid, but of course I will highlight some others later in the article. With that $10K/9.9K start, I wouldn’t be surprised if some 10/9/7/7/7/7 lineups actually become common as well. This week is definitely going to be a week where we are leaning into rules in a big way (if you’re playing MME right).

Expected Chalk, How to Play It