Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Farmers Insurance Open

I am not going to lie, the first two weeks of the season had me thinking for a second that I missed NFL DFS. Then, I snapped back to reality and realized it’s only been two slates so far. The consistency of PGA DFS is back as we head into our third event of the year in as many weeks, and DraftKings continues to bless us with summer-level contests to keep us interested. Overall, it’s been nice to see that DK is clearly putting a priority on PGA DFS this year, as they have a “Main Event” scheduled for The Masters that they haven’t had in the past, along with another Milly Maker for The Players the month before. It feels like we’ve already ramped up in golf season and we’ve only just begun. In other news, both Sam and I failed to enter the $200 Driver, meaning fellow contributor Sky gets to enjoy an early lead in the contributor challenge. Enjoy it while you can, Sky. It won’t be this way for long.

The American Express – Recap

It was an awful week for me at the American Express, as I got buried by Scottie Scheffler and cheap guys going crazy winning pretty much every contest out there. The slate ended up finishing perfectly for the Scheffler jammers, as Scheffler won by a healthy margin while multiple $6K players finished in the top 10. The key was really Andrew Putnam, who was priced at a low $6,300, finishing T2 with cheap chalk Ryan Gerard and Matt McCarty. Even if you didn’t have $8,100 Jason Day, you likely could have played those four players above and finished close to first, especially in small field. This was never going to be my week, but that’s the name of the game sometimes. I’ll get hot when it counts. Let’s take a look at the actual winning lineup this week instead of my pathetic MME set:

• It featured a 14/8/7/7/6/6 build, getting Jason Day in there to grab the top four finishers in the tournament in a single lineup. When that happens, especially when three of them are T2, you’re going to win it all. Lucky enough for this person, he played the same lineup twice and took home a total of $270K because he duped himself. Sometimes you just have to ask, how did he know? All jokes aside, one of the ways I suggested you play Scottie was to have at least one player from the $8K range, forcing you into either three $6K players or someone in the very low $6K range. This lineup did that, even though I did not think it was the best way to play this slate. Oh well.
• The lineup came in with a cumulative ownership of 55%, just under the 60-80% range that I normally look for. The thing with Scottie lineups this week was that it forced you into so many “low-owned” players in the $6K range that you were bound to get a number under this range. However, if you did a deep dive on those $6K players, their ownership with Scottie probably doubled, if not more. So it’s important to remember, when a single player is priced so high on the slate, it’s really going to condense ownership on those lower-priced players and may give the illusion of a lower-owned lineup. 

For more on last week’s slate, my friend Cody Main and nemesis Skylar Hoke debuted a new lineup review show on Mondays, and it looks like the feedback has been really good. You can watch it here if you want more golf content and want to continue to learn the game from the best! 

Farmers Insurance Open – Preview

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the DFS slate, I would not be a golf fan if I did not quickly recognize the significance of this week because of a certain player. Brooks Koepka has returned from LIV Golf, and this will be his first PGA tournament back on Tour. This will of course have some impact on the DFS landscape, but I can’t tell you the last time I was more excited for a regular-season PGA Tour event. It should be a fun environment, and we’re also going to see a decent amount of these players for the first time in 2026. I’ll of course talk about some of the impact of Brooks on the DFS slate later, but I wanted to point it out quickly here.

The Farmers Insurance Open is a long-standing event that has been held in San Diego since its beginning in the 1950s. Starting in 1968, the tournament began its long run at the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course, where it is still held today. Torrey Pines is one of the many iconic courses on the PGA Tour every year and has typically been a challenge for players over the years. The South Course, in particular, has been a U.S. Open venue multiple times. For the Farmers, the players will switch between the North and South courses on Thursday/Friday before playing the weekend on the generally tougher South Course. For more data on the two courses, check out McKinley’s Course Preview and Fits article. Here are the past five winners of the Farmers Insurance Open: