Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Bank of Utah Championship

I take one week off and apparently everyone in the Discord crushes the slate. Maybe I should take more weeks off! DraftKings seems to want me to, given the size of the lotto tournament, but I’ll complain about that a little bit later in the article. For those of you still grinding PGA DFS here, I truly commend you. It takes a certain type of commitment to put down money for a whole weekend spanning across Thursday Night Football and a full Sunday slate. Let’s hope that DK makes it a bit more worth it for us over the coming weeks (doubtful).

I didn’t play last week as I was traveling for work, but I did want to say a few words on the Presidents Cup. Obviously, we had projections, but last week was another week where doing the opposite of what the field’s lean was paid off for subs. The U.S. was a major favorite entering the competition. Projections reflected that. But Sky also noted that the Internationals had the most players likely to play five events, and if they even kept it close, you’d likely have some low-owned nuclear performances. Well, that worked out, as we saw several familiar faces at the top of almost every contest. In every DFS sport, finding where the field is overconfident is always an elite strategy. Not only is the field wrong more often than not, but you’ll get players at lower ownership than you should as a result. It’s not always comfortable (“how can the Americans lose this!”), but it’s the right way to play.

Bank of Utah Championship — Preview

We are back to a regular golf format for the Bank of Utah Championship (formerly the Black Desert Championship). A full field with a cut and a bunch of players fighting to improve their status for the 2027 season. You have to love it. For those uneducated on the history of this tournament, please see McKinley’s Course Preview and Fits article as always. We’ve only seen two editions of this event, and funny enough, two rookies won, solidifying their Tour status for the next year. Here are the winners and their scores:

• 2025: Michael Brennan (-22) def. Rico Hoey by four strokes
• 2024: Matt McCarty (-23) def. Stephan Jaeger by three strokes

As with most fall events, we’re going to get a good bit of scoring here. Typically, the fall events are always birdie fests even if the talent at each tournament isn’t anything like a normal PGA Tour event. While this changes little for my strategy, I’m slightly more willing to take chances on cheap players, given the courses are easier. We’ve seen some signals that an easy course is a bit of a skill equalizer, but it’s hard to tell in fields like these.

Moving to cumulative ownership, we will have to make some adjustments this week, as the “lotto” is now down to about 5.5K entries. While I still consider that a large-field tournament, it certainly will act a little differently than the 15K-entry DTG, for example. In the DTG, I think the normal rules can and will apply — 60-80% cumulative ownership makes sense there. In the lotto, we will have the room to come up in ownership a bit more to the 90% range, as the smaller field will allow you some leeway to take on more ownership. While I will still manage combinations the same way in either contest, these distinctions are important for those of you who may be joining both.

As you probably expected, we’re going to get the typical fall-event player pool here with a mix of young, high-potential players and a bunch of veterans just trying to make it into 2027 tournaments. The highest-priced players on the slate are three youngsters: Jackson Koivun, Ben James, and Michael Brennan. Because the pricing isn’t prohibitive, we’re likely to see a bunch of lineups start with Koivun and James ($10.8K and $9.9K, respectively). These lineups will skip the low $9K and high $8K ranges, giving us regular 10/9/8/7/7/7 builds or something along those lines. This is one of those weeks where I actually see “stars and scrubs” builds coming up in ownership, as a bunch of the field will also go with Koivun/Brennan to begin. I’ll account for this as I go through the next two sections on chalk and contrarian plays.

Expected Chalk, How to Play It