Sometimes, I can’t believe that we literally play PGA DFS all year round. With NFL season upon us, you can almost feel the interest moving away from golf to people talking about best ball, fantasy leagues, or whatever other NFL products are out there for the next six months or so. However, for us dedicated PGA DFS players, we do not stop. We are in the thick of the PGA Tour playoffs, where we actually head to Colorado this week for the BMW Championship. I’ll talk more about the course a bit later on, but it’s actually quite refreshing for the PGA Tour to play a course we haven’t seen before. For the official 2023-2024 season, the BMW will be the last event that has somewhat of a regular format — as next week, the Tour Championship has staggered scoring starts that really mess with the DFS landscape and projections. Let’s jump right into some results from last week before we jump into the 50-man BMW Championship field.
St. Jude Championship – Recap
It seemed like a pretty good week for ETR subscribers once again, with multiple screenshots in Discord popping up. I thought it was a really interesting week to fade the top of the pricing structure in favor of some more balanced builds, and that turned out to be pretty successful given Hideki Matsuyama won the whole thing with Viktor Hovland finishing T2 with Xander. You could not fit all three of those players in a winning lineup, so Scheffler and Xander ended up getting iced out of the winning lineup despite finishing in the top five. I correctly identified that leaning into the under-owned $8K and $9K plays could be a sharp way to play the week and I had a few sweats going into Sunday. Unfortunately, Tony Finau and Justin Rose had pretty awful rounds on the final day, dropping me from a potentially profitable week into a losing week. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup from the Sand Trap.
- It featured a bit of a balanced build, with two players from the $9K range, two from the $8K range, a high $7K player, and a $6K player. It was a ‘Deki-Hovland-Finau-Burns-Wyndham-Kirk build, which proved to be sharp despite a ton of studs in the smaller 70-man field.
- The lineup only had a cumulative ownership of 54%, way below my targeted range of 70-90%, mostly because of the lineup decision to fully skip the $10K+ range. Kudos to this user for going contrarian, not being afraid to fade some of the best players in the world, and leaning into some more unknowns given some other factors. I appreciate when lineups like this pay off, because it shows that contrarian play can still really benefit you.
For me, I was able to grab a $4,444 ticket for this week, giving myself two shots at the small-field Milly Maker. I know some other contributors and personalities have tickets, so it will be exciting to do battle with some of the best in the industry for $1 million up top.
BMW Championship – Preview
We’re on to the BMW Championship, where the top 50 players after this past week move on to the “next round” in Colorado. We saw some drama at the end of last week, with Tom Kim dropping out of the top 50 by going for three consecutive 6s on the last three holes at the St. Jude, pushing Cam Davis into the top 50 even after he double bogeyed 18 as well. For those of you that don’t know, this week will be another no-cut event, and the top 30 players will move on to the Tour Championship next week at East Lake, where they will compete for $20 million up top.
As I mentioned earlier in the article, this year the BMW is being played at Castle Pines Golf Club, which is located just outside Castle Rock, Colorado. It is going to be the longest course in PGA Tour history, however, it is obviously important to note that the course is 5-6K feet above sea level, causing thinner air and presumably more carry for the golf ball. As always, please check out Tom’s Course Preview and Fits article, where he goes through the new course for the PGA Tour and all of its characteristics. Because of the brand-new course, we obviously do not have any course history to lean on, but we can of course do our research and try and figure out who might have the best chance at a new challenge.
I will leave the player and course takes to someone that is more in tune with the actual game of golf. Instead, let’s take a look at the DFS aspect of things, where I think there are some VERY interesting things to talk about this week. The first thing we have to talk about is the increase in $10K+ priced players relative to the field. Last week, we had five $10K+ players out of a field of 70 players (Scheffler, Xander, Rory, Morikawa, and Aberg). This week, we have seven of these players with Hideki and Hovland entering the fray given their performances last week. This is going to have an impact on builds. This week feels like everyone is a little bit overpriced except the top (Scheffler and Xander) and very bottom to fill out down to the $6K range. Think of the pricing structure as stretched out in the middle but the extremes stayed the same. Given this pricing effect, my guess is that the DFS world is going to lean into stars and scrubs types of builds. We are seeing this with the whole $6K range taking on close to 10% ownership at the very least. Because of the limited field, my cumulative ownership range is expected to stay around the 70-90% range, despite a contrarian winning lineup last week. I’ll talk more about lineup building later on in the other Contrarian Ideas section.
Expected Chalk, How to Play It
Last week, I advised to come in under the field on Scottie Scheffler and Aaron Rai, with neither of them showing up in the winning lineup despite having solid weeks at their price. I’ll consider this a wash, even though my fades were more driven by roster construction than anything. It’s going to be a similar type of conundrum this week, where we will have to decide on what we’re going to do up top and how we’re going to play those players. So, once again, I’ll be starting this section with the world’s best player.
Scottie Scheffler, DK Price: $12,300
ETR Ownership: 26.9%, expect 35% or higher
I properly called out last week that Scottie was going to steam up, and he did in a big, big way. Taking ownership from Rory and Aberg, Scottie came up to 37% even in large-field tournaments, a full 10 points over his projected ownership here at ETR. We’ve seen almost every week that Scottie tends to come up in ownership, and it’s unable to be predicted by the ownership algorithms. I expect much of the same this week, especially with the way the pricing structure was stretched in the middle. It’s a simple math game: If Scottie’s price stayed the same, the middle of the pack came up in price, and the cheap players stayed the same… that probably means the field is going to lean heavily into Scottie. And of course, that means that I will likely be on the other side.
Jeremyqking1’s take: HEAVY UNDERweight, probably around 15%
Whenever Scottie is in this section, I almost never can justify a FULL FADE. He is simply too good and consistent to ever take a FULL FADE position, but we can certainly play him in intelligent ways instead of how the field will. If you think Scheffler ownership comes up, then that changes almost all the other pieces on the slate. For me, I am thinking similar to last week; he gets in the 35-40% range. And at those ownerships and this price, I am willing to take the underweight position. He’s going to be competing near the top 10, you can almost guarantee that. Here’s to hoping that there aren’t too many cheap players that pay those types of builds off.
Max Greyserman, DK Price: $6,300
ETR Ownership: 17.6%, maybe comes in higher
Max Greyserman is another player that came in a bit higher than his projected ownership last week and a fade was looking pretty damn good when he entered Sunday almost in DFL. However, Mad Max pulled out another huge Sunday once again, going a full -7, making putts from everywhere and eventually ending up in a pretty respectable position at the end of it. In the world of projection-based DFS play, I do not expect too many people to come off of Greyserman because of how he started last week. People will simply look at projections (likely a good one for Max) and play him, despite the ownership. My expectation here is that he comes up to 20+%, which makes it quite an easy decision for me.
Jeremyqking1’s take: FULL FADE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED
It really pains me to take a fade position on Greyserman, who is one of my six favorite players in all of golf right now. However, you have to think that this crazy streak is unsustainable for the young player. He’s obviously a great player, but golf is a streaky game, where we’ve seen guys like Rory last week almost finish in dead last. At a 17% ownership mark with potential steam coming, it’s one of the easiest decisions on the slate for me to not allot any of my portfolio to Greyserman. For those of you that cannot stomach a full fade? At least employ some rules docking Scheffler and Xander with Greyserman and vice versa.
Flag Plant, Other Contrarian Ideas
My flag plant of Tony Finau last week was looking quite strong until Sunday, which I guess you can say is classic Finau. That being said, he did end up a good play at cost, and was in the winning lineup of the Sand Trap when it was all said and done. I will take it. As I will continue to remind you all, the flag plant is not the player who I think will do the best in the whole field, or anything like that. Obviously, I think this player will have a good performance, but it generally is the player who I think provides the best leverage in the field. Therefore, this week I will be breaking Adam Levitan’s outdated rules with my flag plant. After losing his tennis bet to me at a disrespectful -2000 number, this is just another punch to the gut I am delivering to our fearless leader.
Ludvig Aberg, DK Price: $10,000
ETR Ownership: 13.00%, I think it comes in lower
It has been a rough few weeks and maybe even months for Ludvig, who has been the apple of everyone’s eye this year. Just ask Discord judge THE Kyle, whose affinity for Aberg is matched by almost no one. Trust me, I sat in a Vegas sportsbook watching Kyle tilt every terrible shot from Aberg at the Scottish Open when he was in contention. It was painful. I think this is a perfect time to strike and go heavily overweight the young Swede. On a course that suits his game well with a presumed focus on OTT play with distance and long irons, I would presume that Aberg will pop in a lot of models across the industry. In fact, he keeps a fairly good projection for us despite his recent play, just with a lot of volatility. The best part about playing Aberg this week is that he inevitably is going to come down in ownership. My guess is that other models and projections across the industry will dock Aberg for his recent form more than us. Combine that with the pricing structure this week, with ‘Deki and Hovland being added to the $10K range, and you get a player that is likely to be squeezed despite a pretty good fit on the course. In a week where almost everyone got a price increase, Aberg basically stayed the same. This is the perfect time to lean in, hope the ownership comes in lower than expected (especially in small field), and potentially get a winning outcome. I expect to go big on Aberg this week, and I would not be surprised if I came in with almost 40% exposure in my MME set.
Other Contrarian Ideas
Okay, so I hit you with some takes that were disguised as player takes. Let’s talk about some roster construction and other ways to get different in this 50-man field. A lot of what I just said about Aberg also applies to the always problematic Rory McIlroy, who seems to be a good fit for this course as well. Rory’s putrid performance last week is going to be fresh in the minds of the public — and with Scottie and Xander playing so well, I would not be surprised to see Rory also come down to 10% in large-field stuff or lower because of this. Starting lineups with a Rory-Aberg duo seems pretty sharp this week. That’s all I’ll say about that. A lot will be made about going stars and scrubs, but the fact of the matter is that the combination of stars and combination of scrubs really matters this week where we only have so many players to choose from. I personally will not be starting any of my lineups with Scheffler + X, which I think will actually end up overplayed, especially when I have limited options to get different down low.
The range I really want to focus on this week is the $8K range, which I think is criminally underplayed. The usual suspects — Justin Thomas, Cameron Young, and the previously loved Christiaan Bezuidenhout — stick out to me as plays that could be slate-breakers if ownership spits out the way I think it will. Right now, we’re seeing pretty even ownership across the board. If you think that holds, I’d just lean into the projections. The difference of 3-4 percentage points isn’t a whole lot in these mid and high price points. We will see where updated runs come out late tonight.
The last thing I want to focus on is popular combinations of players. I talked about one of the likely popular combinations earlier in Scheffler + Greyserman or Xander + Greyserman. Both of those combinations are going to be heavily owned. If I was including Greyserman in my player pool, I absolutely would be heavily docking him or even just max-1 between him and Scottie/Xander. Because of my thoughts on where Scottie ownership is going to go, I am going to be VERY prescriptive when playing him. I likely will not play him with Si Woo, Davis Thompson, and maybe even Aaron Rai. At the very least, I’ll be docking that. I noted this in previous articles, but even though I am coming in underweight on Scheffler exposure, I can still maximize my exposure to him by eliminating potentially dead lineups or lineups that provide almost no leverage on the field. I can achieve this by making sure I am avoiding common combinations that will be forced upon lazy DFS users by whatever their projections/optimizers spit out. This week, there are some things that you can do with your stars-and-scrubs lineups like filtering them in The SOLVER and removing any lineups of those with Austin Eckroat, for example. Or, you could apply IF→THEN rules where if the lineup includes two players in the $10K range, max-1 of Eckroat/Jaeger/Greyserman, for example. The last thing you want is to have four players the same as like 5% of the field.
R4 Showdown SZN
I’ll see you all on Saturday for a R4 update. While I will be vacationing in Vancouver, I will try and get a decent update out there for all of you. Hopefully the time-zone stuff doesn’t mess with me.
Update: Saturday, 4PM ET
Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be able to get a R4 update in time for you all later today with final leaderboard, projections and ownership while I’m on vacation. I’ll still be playing, so I’m going to leave some thoughts here for now and hopefully you all have been following this column long enough to figure out the best way to play it.
We’ve talked a lot about the new pricing structure for DK in R4 based on projected leaderboard and we are seeing it in a big way going into Sunday. This has caused a bit of a shift in LB rules in both birdie-fests and tough courses, with this week’s BMW being a pretty obvious tough course. Therefore, I will be leaning away from the LB here especially given some of the price ups we’re seeing. The following players are priced up from their classic pricing – Adam Scott ($9,300), Keegan Bradley ($8,100), Taylor Pendrith ($8,000), Nick Dunlap ($7,700), Si Woo Kim ($7,300), and Will Zalatoris ($7,300). I expect ownership to come in on all of these players, especially the guys that are priced in the 7 and 8Ks. Adam Scott will be an interesting play tomorrow that will depend on how much projected ownership he’s taking.
The other thing to notice about tomorrow is that Ludvig Aberg is still at $9,600, so assuming he doesn’t totally tank the back 9 that he’s starting at the time of writing, I expect him to be heavy chalk and paired with Xander in a ton of lineups. I like picking one of the two tomorrow and leaning into some other players, specifically Rory (puke), Morikawa (puke), and other 9K players. There are also going to be a ton of solid 7K plays that might go overlooked – Tom Hoge, Shane Lowry, and Sepp Straka are all around the leaderboard but will likely take muted ownership because of the amount of options there are in the low price points. Overall, I believe my tough course rules of sticking to 1-3 LB players and forcing in some sub 25 players into almost every lineup may come in handy tomorrow. We’ve seen the ability to nuke on this course if things work right, let’s hope that some of those players are living down low with no ownership.
Best of luck to anyone with a classic sweat tomorrow as well! I currently am sitting in 2nd and 12th in the Sand Trap, and have multiple lineups in the top 200. Both my $4,444s are sitting in the 80-100 range as well. Hoping for a great Sunday! Let’s win some money!
Alright! That’s all I’ve got for you all this week. Good luck to all of you, and for those of you in the $4,444, I’ll see you on Sunday. Let’s hope for some sweats!
