Large-Field GPP Breakdown: The RSM Classic

We have officially made it to the FINAL week of golf in 2024! What an incredible year it has been for ETR Golf, where we have seen countless wins in all types of formats, transitioned our projections, and survived another year of golf being separated in two leagues, one of them largely irrelevant for us as DFS players. Unfortunately for my fellow contributor, Sky, the end of the 2024 season also means that he has one event left to catch me in the personality contest, where he is $2,250 behind me and basically needs to win the Long Drive SE tournament this week — while I don’t cash — to beat me. If he pulls that off, I will happily wear a costume of the Discord’s choosing, because that would just be straight-up clutch. At least we get the privilege of playing with a pretty strong field this week for a fall event. That may or may not be a good thing for him, as we’ll see later on. First, let’s take a look back at the week prior as we always do!

Butterfield Bermuda – Recap

I was able to register on time this past week for the regular Sand Trap lotto, but unfortunately, it was not a positive slate for me. It wasn’t my worst, but it wasn’t my best either. These slates are always interesting where there is a pretty random winner, as Rafael Campos winning was certainly not on my personal bingo card. Kudos to anyone that had him in their pool, though! Campos winning shows again how birdie fests are oftentimes the tournaments with the highest variability, and I really love to lean into contrarian plays when the PGA Tour is on these types of courses, especially in the $7K range. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup from the Sand Trap:

• It ended up being a pretty normal build at 9/8/8/7/7/7, actually not rostering Campos, who ended up being 0.26% owned in the lotto. The lineup did feature Andrew Novak, who came in second place, as well as some other fairly-owned players across the board despite not having Campos in it.
• The lineup had a cumulative ownership of ~95%, much higher than the normal 60-80% threshold we normally like to target. Part of this was driven by Ben Griffin coming all the way up to 24% owned, and a few chalky players down low like Michael Kim and Jacob Bridgeman coming through for this player on Sunday.

These are typically the weeks I am going to struggle in. Sometimes the chalk hits, and that’s shown by a winning lineup that almost reached the 100% cumulative ownership threshold. I don’t think that I have to change my process at all based on the results of this past week. I’ll continue to trust the projections and make my lineups unique by just playing different combinations of salaries to ensure I am taking some leverage. We shake this one off and move on to The RSM Classic! 

The RSM Classic – Preview