Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Genesis Open

What a tiring week at the “People’s Open”. With multiple rain and frost delays impacting timing of play, the WM Phoenix Open was definitely a roller coaster ride for those that played DFS. I’ll skip the whole showdown conversation because that’s simply not my circus and focus on all the rest of what we learned this weekend. We’re getting into the thick of the PGA season with the players gearing up for #MajorsSeason and The Masters looming in just about two months. Now that NFL is over, I expect to see more new subscribers to the golf product, so shout-out to any of you who are joining for your first Large-Field GPP Breakdown ever! As usual, I’ll go through the week that was quickly to see if there’s anything we can learn from it before moving on to the Genesis and explaining how I’m attacking the slate.

Waste Management Phoenix Open – Recap

I was able to fire away 60 lineups into the secondary Drive the Green contest this past week, as I continue to manage my play with NBA going on and a new kid onboard. I actually thought I was in for a pretty successful week, as I doubled the field in 6/6 lineups and was over the field in 5/6 lineups as well, but somehow I came out with a -33% return. Most of that was due to me not having any exposure to either Nick Taylor or Charley Hoffman, meaning none of my lineups got any first-place or second-place points that are so important to cashing in any tournaments. I was also heavily under Scottie Scheffler, who I expected to get up to silly amounts of ownership. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup from last week’s DK flagship GPP.

• The lineup utilized a fairly “normal” build, starting with Scottie Scheffler at $11.6K, moving to Burns and ‘Deki in the $9K and $8K ranges, and then finishing with low $7K Kitayama, and $6Ks Hoffman and McNealy. Surprisingly, this lineup did NOT have Nick Taylor, despite his winning score. It just goes to show that we very rarely are looking to hit the optimal in PGA DFS; we’re just trying to beat the field. 
• It had a cumulative ownership of 83.2%, driven mostly by the 39.4% number that Scheffler brought to the table. There were of course ways to beat Scheffler lineups, but the roster construction set up so that you were able to hit on some low $6K players with Scheffler to win.
• I do want to take a moment to point out that Justin Thomas, who came in just behind Scheffler at 38.3%, finished in only 25.3% of top-1% lineups. As I mentioned in my article last week, starting with Scheffler and JT was a play I was not willing to make at those levels of ownership (and JT came in even higher than expected). Just a thought when you’re building large-field GPP lineups. Your combinations matter more than just singular ownership plays.

Genesis Invitational – Preview

We move on to the Genesis Invitational, or what is known as “Tiger’s” tournament. The Genesis is really the PGA Tour’s first test of the year and players will be challenged much differently this week than the weeks prior. The Genesis is actually one of my favorite events of the year, and I’ve gotten a lot of entertainment the last couple of years following it as I’ve gotten more into professional golf. This year, the Genesis is the second “signature” event of the year, but there WILL be a cut as Tiger requested for his event. However, the cut will not be your traditional “cut”, as the top 50 will make the cut in ADDITION to any player that is within 10 strokes of the leader. So, just don’t have a complete meltdown on the first two days and you should be able to make the cut here. It’s a bit of a bummer that many of these events with the top players won’t have a cut, but we’ll just have to look forward to majors, I guess.