Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Bank of Utah Championship

It’s been quite an intermittent period of golf so far in the fall, as it feels like we haven’t had back-to-back full-field events in forever. But, as Sky mentions in his article, we are back to four straight events until Thanksgiving, which should put us in a nice little routine here before the holidays. For those of you playing NFL and NBA, I hope that we can recoup our losses from those sports here in the golf DFS world that I view to be one of the softest DFS environments out there. Because we didn’t have an event last week, let’s get right to the Bank of Utah Championship and not waste any time.

Bank of Utah Championship – Preview 

This is only the second year of this event and the first year being sponsored by the Bank of Utah. Played at the Black Desert course, Discord old lsahr will be the first guy to make jokes about the moniker, which I will refrain from here. This event sets up as a traditional fall event, with a pretty weak field that might be the weakest we have all year. The Black Desert course is known to be quite lenient off the tee, as McKinley noted in his Course Preview article and Sky noted in his article as well. So, we’re going to get some scoring at this event despite the general lack of talent.

For example, Matt McCarty won with a -23 score last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if that score gets even better this year as golfers continue to improve in skill base. I often say with these birdie-fest events that it’s key to lean into variance, especially at the low price ranges. The reason for this is because you can actually get low-owned winners in the $7Ks here, which obviously puts you at an extreme advantage against the field if you hit on that play. I’m likely going to employ this strategy throughout the fall season and do my best to be bold about fading low-priced chalk. 

In terms of DraftKings contests, we get the normal $50K-to-first, large-field lottery this week. I am still wishing that DK would have some faith and make the contest $100K to first like they did last year, but I won’t complain about a $50K spot up top like Discord rich guy cantfademe. Given this is the most normal of normal events, the cumulative ownership range I’ll continue to target will be that tried and true 60-80% range, with a majority of my lineups likely falling in the 60-70% range as I embrace fall variance.

Before I get to some chalk plays, let’s talk a little bit about the player pool. When the best player in the field is Maverick McNealy, that’s pretty self explanatory. Because of the lack of talent at the top, it feels as if many will just go with that basic normal distribution of salary while staying out of the $6K range. It’s basically unnecessary to take the chance down there, and the field/projections will recognize that. Expect a lot of 10/9/8/7/7/7 lineups in your contests.