Large-Field GPP Breakdown: RBC Heritage

Masters hangover? Absolutely. It was a great weekend at Augusta, despite me not becoming a millionaire overnight. The Masters always reminds me how good golf majors season really is, and I’m excited to keep hammering away at PGA DFS over the summer. Of course, the landscape might change now that there are heavy rumors about the future of LIV Golf, but we likely won’t need to worry about those guys until the next major in a month at the earliest. Congrats to those who won money last week. I saw a few screenshots in Discord. Fortunately for us, DraftKings doesn’t take a break, as we move straight into a signature event with the RBC Heritage.

The Masters – Recap

I want to spend a little more time recapping The Masters, given the different contests that DK provided for the week. I thought this would be one of the hardest weeks to predict ownership in each contest in a long time, which mostly came to fruition. A few things happened with ownership last week in certain contests:

• Adam Scott and Corey Conners came up in ownership across all contests, with the field leaning into the course history/experience narrative.
• Bryson DeChambeau came up in the $3,333 in particular, as players leveled off Jon Rahm‘s ownership and went to Bryson instead. Rahm came in around 30%, while Bryson came up to the 20% range. 
• No one really got out of control — I was suspecting steam on Min Woo Lee and Rahm, which happened a little for MWL but not to the extent we’ve seen in the past. Perhaps the field is getting better at DFS? Doubt it.

My takeaway from the above is that The Masters in particular is unique. The course history narrative is so prevalent that we should expect these guys to steam every year UNLESS they are already 25+% owned. Conners and Scott being cheap held MWL, Si Woo Kim, and Russell Henley all in check. I probably would have played even more SWK and Henley had I predicted this. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup in the $10 and $100:

• In the $10, the winner played an 11/9/8/7/7/6 lineup, mimicking a normal build just with an additional pay up to Rory McIlroy and dropping to Brian Harman in the $6K range. The $100 (shout-out to Nelson) played an 11/8/7/7/7/7 lineup, choosing to avoid the $6K range but sacrificing all the $9K players to do so. Stones.
• The $10 winner came in with a crazy 39% ownership. Kudos to whoever this was taking a shot on a lineup like this and profiting. The $100 winner came in at 70% ownership, slightly lower than the 80-100% range I had set as a starting point.

I love that it was a more contrarian type of week, starting with Rory, which is probably why I had a decent profit. Let’s hope the same thing happens for the PGA Championship. 

RBC Heritage – Preview 

I never understand why the RBC Heritage has to be played the week directly after The Masters, but here we are. With the Zurich happening next week, many players will use this week as a break before entering a brutal stretch of two signature events going into the PGA Championship. The RBC Heritage is a long-standing event on the PGA Tour with one of its main sponsors and has been played at Harbour Town for as long as I can remember. Known to be a short, positional course, it’s one of those weeks where the narrative will be that driver-heavy players give up all their edge, and short, accurate players will win. Let’s take a look at the winning players for the past five years:

• 2025: Justin Thomas (-17) def. Andrew Novak in a playoff 

• 2024: Scottie Scheffler (-19) def. Sahith Theegala by three strokes 

• 2023: Matt Fitzpatrick (-17) def. Jordan Spieth in a playoff 

• 2022: Jordan Spieth (-13) def. Patrick Cantlay in a playoff 

• 2021: Stewark Cink (-19) def Emiliano Grillo and Harold Varner III by three strokes

Over the last three years, we’ve seen an increase in the winning score because of the signature-event fields that are now playing the tournament. We should expect the same this year, with the winning score hovering in that high-teens range, depending on the weather. It’s also important to remember that this will be a no-cut event, where the field is likely to be more comfortable with lower-priced players, given the floor is raised a ton. We’ll keep this in mind when thinking about ownership and player combinations later on. Given the limited field, I likely will be targeting the 70-90% cumulative ownership range, similar to The Masters. Of course, lineups below the ownership threshold will be played, but lineups above the threshold will likely be X-ed out.

Moving to the player pool, we are going to miss Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose this week, which is pretty normal for the RBC Heritage historically. My first thought was that even though this is a signature event, for some reason, the field seemed weaker than others. Not sure if that’s because of The Masters being the week before or not. Anyways, the field will choose one of two paths this week — 13/7/7/7/7/7 with Scottie Scheffler, or 10/9/8/7/7/7 without him, so a pretty standard week.

Expected Chalk, How to Play It