Large-Field GPP Breakdown: U.S. Open

We have arrived at our third major of the year, and it feels like the year is flying by. Time flies when you’re having fun losing money, right? This week marks the first week where I am actually in last in the Contributor Challenge, so that just means I’ll have to win the $200 Driver and put Sam and Sky in the grave. But that won’t be the only contest that I’m focused on, as DraftKings has given us a large-field and smaller-field Milly Maker as they usually do, so we can continue to dream of winning the big one for another weekend. I’m pretty excited to write about this week, as we’ll see the toughest course we’ve seen all year, but I’ll wait until the later sections to talk about all of that. 

RBC Canadian Open – Recap

It was an absolutely awful week for me in Canada, as fairly chalky Bud Cauley came through as the winner when he was probably the only player I was rooting against on Sunday. We saw some young guys like Jackson Suber and Ben James falter over the weekend, as the veteran Cauley grinded it out for his first PGA Tour win. Cauley has played well so far this year, as evidenced by his projection and ownership in last week’s contest. Whenever a cheaper player wins a tournament with some ownership, it’s almost always a death knell for me because you can’t make up those points with roster construction or combination management; they are just so cheap, and there are so many options to choose from when playing them. This really defined my week, even though I hammered a low-owned Matt Fitzpatrick (no one wanted the third-best player this year?). Let’s take a quick look at the winning lineup:

• It featured a 10/9/7/7/7/7 build that did NOT feature Matt Fitzpatrick, which was quite surprising. This actually is interesting, as anything but a win from the top guys is usually beatable, depending on your lineup later on. However, the same thing cannot be said of a cheap winner, who you will get beaten by in almost all formats. The Sam Burns/Wyndham Clark start for the winner was one that hurt me, as I had zero exposure to either player, instead opting to be way overweight on Fitz and other $9K players like Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose, and Robert MacIntyre.
• The lineup came in at 85% cumulative ownership with no player below 5% owned. This was definitely a chalky week for the winner, as the lineup featured Cauley, Sudarshan Yellamaraju, course-history champ Ryan Fox, and up-and-coming Suber at 6%. Not a huge fan of this lineup, but I am sure that whoever played this doesn’t give a damn, given they just won $200K. But playing Fox (who I thought would steam based on course history and bomber narrative) along with chalky players like Cauley and Yella was definitely something I would not have done, and that would have been filtered out of my MME set.

Looking forward to this week, it will be a MUCH different week, so let’s talk through the U.S. Open after a Canadian Open warmup.

U.S. Open – Preview

The U.S. Open is definitely a golf purist’s favorite week of the year, where the tournament is known to give the players one of the toughest challenges they will face. This year, the U.S. Open heads to Shinnecock in Long Island, New York. Shinnecock was the site of the 2018 U.S. Open that Brooks Koepka won with a +1 finishing score, so you know everyone is expecting some carnage this week. As a major that isn’t The Masters, the U.S. Open does not get played at the same course every year. However, let’s take a look at the past five winners to see if there are any narratives that we can identify:

• 2025: J.J. Spaun (-1) def. Robert MacIntyre by two strokes

• 2024: Bryson DeChambeau (-6) def. Rory McIlroy by one stroke

• 2023: Wyndham Clark (-10) def. Rory McIlroy by one stroke

• 2022: Matt Fitzpatrick (-6) def. Scottie Scheffler and Will Zalatoris by one stroke

• 2021: Jon Rahm (-6) def. Louis Oosthuizen by one stroke

The narrative on tough courses is usually that it is a great skill separator and we should expect only thoroughbreds to rise to the top. However, three of the past five U.S. Open winners won their first (and only) major at the U.S. Open, which is quite interesting. While all three are legitimately good players (Spaun, Wyndham, Fitz), we definitely should not be counting out players who have never won a major in their career. That being said, we know that a player needs to be performing in all facets of the game this week to even have a shot.