Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Houston Open

There are two weeks until The Masters, but who’s counting? Welcome back to another edition of the Large-Field GPP Breakdown, where I will try and make up for Sky’s absence with an even MORE in-depth article since you all won’t get a Value Report or AMA these next couple of weeks. Congrats to Sky, by the way. It’s crazy that two GOATs are taking off this week in the golf world for the same reason. We officially kick off our short Texas swing this weekend, which isn’t my favorite swing of golf courses. But, as Discord participant The Dealer has said, “If there’s $200K to first in the lotto, it’s a good week for golf.” I definitely agree with that.

Valspar Championship – Recap

It was an exciting week at the Valspar, where we almost got the full revival of old friend Sungjae Im before chalk (but not too chalky) Matt Fitzpatrick took home the trophy with a Sunday run. For me, this was devastating, as I had an overweight position on Sungjae driven by my strategy to take some chances on a bunch of low-priced players who I thought had upside. Another observation for me was how far Fitzpatrick came down in ownership from his projected ownership, which was quite strange, given his projection. The Golf DFS world is currently straying from our projections a little more than usual. I just wish that we knew what the biggest influences are. The most surprising flip was Brooks Koepka coming way up while Fitz came down, making Fitz an excellent play at 24% owned and Brooks an awful play at around the same. 

Either way, let’s look at the winning lineup from last week:

• The lineup featured a very interesting 10/9/8/7/6/6 build, limiting the $7K players in favor of dumpster-diving with David Lipsky and Kevin Yu. This allowed the lineup to get Xander Schauffele and Fitz in there, which was one of the combinations I docked heavily. Here is one of the reasons I tend to use docks instead of max, because there are lineups that you can create that are +EV if done right with certain combinations. Looking at this one, it seems like that was the case here. 
• It came in at 83% cumulative ownership, just above the normal threshold because it started with an X/Fitz/Ryo Hisatsune trio that took up almost 80% of cumulative ownership. Obviously, the lineup played three players under 5% and two under 1%, so no problem in terms of roster construction on my end. 

We can take some of the observations from last week into the Houston Open, so let’s go ahead and do that. 

Houston Open – Preview 

As I mentioned, this week we enter our first Texas event of the brief, two-week Texas swing before The Masters. The Texas swing has always felt out of place, and I wonder if they’ll even have this event next year when the PGA Tour moves to a more condensed schedule. These two events, as a lead-up to The Masters, are quite strange, and a lot of players end up skipping out to just head to Augusta for some practice rounds.

The general narrative that you’ll hear about the Memorial Park Golf Course for this event is that it’s a bombers’ paradise. The only problem is that we only have two years of data from this particular golf course, and the jury is still out on what archetype of player really does well here. I’ll be looking to exploit this narrative as I build my MME sets this week. Let’s take a look at the last two years here at Memorial Park:

• 2025: Min Woo Lee (-20) def. Scottie Scheffler and Gary Woodland by one stroke 

• 2024: Stephan Jaeger (-12) def. Thomas Detry, Tony Finau, Taylor Moore, Scottie Scheffler, and Alejandro Tosti by one stroke