Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Wyndham Championship

Well, well, well. After seven months of fairly mediocre results in the Sand Trap, I was finally able to break through in the lottery, making it three straight years of finishing with at least a chop for first in DraftKings’ flagship contest. I’ll use some time today to talk about my process in the “Recap” portion of my article, as I did not have a special GPP Review article this week. Aside from that, it was an elite week for ETR subs at the Rocket Classic, where there were multiple screenshots in showdown and classic. Special shout-out to DonGDonatelli, aka PantherFan, who made it three weeks in a row that an ETR sub has won the R4 lotto. Despite the majors season being over, Golf DFS season is certainly not over, so let’s have another go this week at the Wyndham Championship, which will have quite a similar vibe to last week.

Rocket Classic – Recap

It was obviously a good week, but I try not to let results cloud my process evaluation. Looking back at the week, however, I believe my process was spot on. It really was a perfect week for me when the cards flipped, as I am very sensitive to where ownership lands. I get a lot of flak in Discord for being sensitive to ownership moves of even 5%, but one of the things you have to remember about my process is that I am trying to operate (pre-lock) with ceiling and floor ownership in mind. A 5% move either way in projected ownership could mean many different things. This week, that meant certain players had ceiling ownership that was not reflected in a static median projected ownership number. First, let’s take a look at the two lineups (mine and fellow ETR sub TheMish’s single bullet) that chopped the lotto with the same score:

• My lineup featured a different build starting with Xander Schauffele that went 10/8/8/8/7/7, something I specifically built rules for in my pre-lock process. I did this by boosting $8K players together (with different percentages depending on the combinations I wanted). Luckily, Sunday went quite well for me, as Schauffele, Michael Thorbjornsen, Doug Ghim, and Matt Wallace all moved up on the leaderboard. A birdie on 18 for Rickie Fowler put me in the driver’s seat, so I did get quite lucky to win. But that’s why we play the game!
• TheMish had a more traditional build of 10/9/8/7/7/7, but did of course start with Xander and paired him with Hideki Matsuyama up top. Knowing this was a hand-built single bullet, there were obviously no rules on this lineup; just pure ball knowing. Crazy how that kind of stuff happens.
• My lineup had a cumulative ownership of ~68%, while TheMish had a cumulative ownership of 77%. Both were within the normal 60-80% range I normally target, with my lineup falling in the 50-70% range I target with my MME sets. It’s great to see basic parts of the process still working. While DFS will never be “solved,” given the impossibility of perfect projections, we can give ourselves small edges over time by simply making sound lineups. If you’re wondering why your MME sets are not working but you have cumulative ownership ranges of 30-100%, for example, you need to do some fine-tuning to make sure every lineup you create could be one you would theoretically hand-build.

I will talk a bit about my pre-lock process and why last week was a prime week for me to get lucky and win. In these “lower skill” events, I find there is a lot of movement from projected ownership on players whom the golf world just wants to play regardless of the DFS slate. There was one narrative that stuck out last week: the “bombers” narrative. All week, people were talking about how bombers had historically won this event. While all this may be true, Golf DFS is extremely sensitive to narratives, to the point where it moves ownership in ways that work against them. I made the following assumptions going into my pre-lock process:

• Jake Knapp would steam to at least 20%, if not more. He landed at 25% in large-field contests and a whopping 35% in The Driver. At these levels, I felt like he was a FFNQA candidate. 
• Chris Gotterup would steam because of the bomber narrative and his price point. There was the chance that Gotterup would be the highest-owned player on the slate. I didn’t want much of that, and I ended up with 5% ownership in MME. Gotterup flipped at 28%.
• Because of Gotterup and Knapp steam, I figured the following players would come down in ownership: Xander, Patrick Cantlay, J.J. Spaun, and Russell Henley. All basically came true, and I was heavily overweight on all four.

These were the key drivers of my MME set, along with basically mixing and matching the $7K players, specifically players who fit the bomber narrative and came in low-owned. My flag plant, Marco Penge, was an example of this. Because of all of this, my lineups fell into a nice sweet spot of 45-70% ownership because I was willing to mix low-owned combinations up top with decently-owned $8K players, rounding out lineups with differentiators at the bottom. As many of you know, I spend a good amount of time optimizing, tweaking, and optimizing more lineups until I get all the MME exposures I want by player and, more importantly, by combination. If you have more questions about my process, feel free to ask in Discord. 

Wyndham Championship – Preview