Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Wyndham Championship

My fellow golf enthusiasts, we are so close to the FedEx Cup playoffs! If that doesn’t excite you, at least look forward to the fact that there will be million-dollar contests up top for the BMW Championship, the final event of the year. There really is nothing like beating my nemesis roundsb in satellites and turning those tickets into $0 later on. Before we get to the playoffs, however, the PGA Tour heads to the Wyndham Championship. Wyndham has traditionally been the last event before the playoffs for as long as I can remember, meaning that we get a lot of players who are on the cusp of making the tournament playing for a final push to the playoffs. We’ll talk more about that when we get there, but first a big congrats to all of our FGWC finalists from last week. Although the results weren’t what you all wanted, even getting there is tough. There’s always next year, where I might have to go for some tickets given the addition of a dope R4 contest to the format.

3M Open – Recap

Despite doubling the field in 6/6 rate, my week in classic was not the greatest. Some of my highest exposures were to players like Taylor Pendrith, Sam Burns, Tony Finau, and Si Woo Kim, all of whom finished 50th or worse despite being some of the highest-priced players on the slate. Chris Gotterup, on the other hand, crushed once again and has been justifying his price and ownership in a big way. I may have to adjust out of fear of being called a fraud by Chris himself. Either way, kudos to Chris for another great week. I personally full faded Gotterup, which unfortunately turned out to be the wrong call this past week. The rest of my strategy to mix the $7K range and be contrarian down low worked out, hence my solid 6/6 rate. But that’s simply not enough when an owned, high-priced player beats everyone priced around him. A disappointing week for me in classic, but you will never get A LACK of transparency on my end. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup:

• The lineup skipped the $9K range, instead opting for a 10/8/8 start with three chalky players: Gotterup, Jake Knapp, and Kurt Kitayama. While I love skipping any price range, this start was likely quite common given people’s propensity to play Knapp. The lineup did NOT have to go into the $6K range, and I am finding it quite rare for lineups in these types of fields to feature two players from that range. Something to note.
• It had a cumulative ownership of 83%, just outside the 60-80% cumulative ownership range we like to target in these normal events. That being said, I consider this lineup to be quite chalky. While it was unique, I think about ownership more along the lines of the leverage I’m getting to shoot up the leaderboard if I’m right.

These are weeks in classic where I know I’m not really going to have a ton of success. This has actually been a common trend over the last month since the U.S. Open, but that’s how the game goes. I still have a lot of faith given my results over time about how I’m playing and whether or not I’m getting the right amount of leverage in my lineup.

Wyndham Championship – Preview

Moving on to the Wyndham Championship, I am particularly excited about this week as it’s pretty clear where the field might go. But before we get there, make sure you are reading McKinley’s Course Preview and Fits article, where you wannabe ball-knowers get to read and converse about who the best course fit is every week. I personally always look forward to seeing the player takes that fly around in Discord. If you’re too lazy to read the article, the narrative this week is going to be about driving accuracy (and course history). When we take a look at the past five winners of the event, you’ll see why:

• 2024: Aaron Rai (-18) def. Max Greyserman by two strokes 

• 2023: Lucas Glover (-20) def. Benny An, Russell Henley by two strokes 

• 2022: Tom Kim (-20) def. John Huh, Sungjae Im by five strokes

• 2021: Kevin Kisner (-15) won in a five-man playoff

• 2020: Jim Herman (-21) def. Billy Horschel by one stroke