Large-Field GPP Breakdown: World Wide Technology Championship

Hello, ETR Golf subs! I am back after a week off while you all played DP World Tour DFS, and I hope that it went well for any brave soul who took the plunge. I am not a huge fan of playing DPWT, as some part of my process involves actually knowing the players and their strengths/weaknesses, which we don’t always know given the limited shot-tracker information we get on the DPWT. However, we did have the Zozo that was played two weeks ago, and I think many began calling it the “Bozo” after a tough couple of days (myself included). Either way, I’m glad that we’re back on the PGA Tour for the next three weeks before we retire for the 2023 calendar year. Who knows what 2024 will bring with the whole Saudi money situation, but at the very least, we’ll always have DFS.

Zozo Championship – Recap 

I’m not going to spend too much time on the Zozo, given it was a couple of weeks ago, but I will say that I had a week to forget, coming in at around -55% in large-field GPPs. The sad part is KAWA SHARKS were rewarded with a Collin Morikawa win. Being a kawa shark myself, I had 37% of the 15%-owned Morikawa. Where I went wrong, however, was that he was paired with Xander in about 35% of my lineups, making those lineups ineffective due to Xander’s performance/price combination. So, I am reeling a little bit from not profiting on a Morikawa week, but we plan on getting it back this week at the WWT. I would like to point out that in the weeks where a 15%+ golfer wins, it is important to continue to differentiate your lineups. Being overweight on that winner still leaves a ton of lineups that we are competing with at that ownership. As always, we’ll go through contrarian ideas and suggestions in this article.

WWT Championship – Preview 

We go international this week on the PGA Tour, as we head down to Mexico for the annual World Wide Technology Championship, which previously had been held at the famous Mayakoba course. Unfortunately, that course has been taken over by the LIV Tour, forcing the PGA to find a new venue for this year’s WWT. So, we won’t be looking at any course history this year or past winners, simply trusting my colleague Tom and his course preview as well as the projections. The course, or El Cardonal, is generally viewed as a pretty straightforward course, with REALLY wide fairways and REALLY wide greens, which makes this week look like another incoming birdie fest. It’s also a really long course, measuring out at 7,452 yards and a Par 72, featuring four par 5s and a lot of opportunity for scoring. I fully expect the winner to be in the -18 or better range, which is generally the norm when it comes to these fall events.

From a DK standpoint, we again get our normal set of fall contests, specifically the $100K-to-first Sand Trap Special as the flagship GPP. Looking at the field, there isn’t much that stands out to me — it feels like a very straightforward event from the course to the field to the contests being offered on DraftKings. While in birdie fests, I do tend to like going with slightly more contrarian teams, I’ll likely be targeting my normal 60-80% cumulative ownership when building my lineups for the week. I, as always, will allow lineups in the 40 and 50% range, but generally for your guides, you can confidently stick to that cumulative ownership number. We’re getting pretty normal levels of chalk up top with Aberg and Cam Young, and a couple of players in each general price range (7s, 8s, 9s) that will garner ownership. If we had some bigger decision points (40%-owned Xander, for example), that’s where I may change my ownership guidelines just a tad. You all have seen the results over the past year, so I won’t keep harping on it. 

Because of the fairly “normal” field strength and pricing structure, we’re going to see the DFS field tend to build “normally” as well. If Cody weren’t on vacation, he’d probably have that really helpful thread on Twitter where he details what that construction would be. God forbid this man take a week off. But I would expect the field to play pretty evenly across the board, with one $10K player, one $9K player, and then a variety of combinations in the $6-8K range. The sub-$7K range is weak, as it usually is in these fall events, and optimizers will generally try and stay away from that range, preferring to hammer the $7K players that will likely project way better. Whenever we get this type of pricing, we oftentimes get underowned players in the $8K range, as DFS players normally can only choose one of them. I’ll look to attack this trend this week.

Expected Chalk, How to Play It