Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Travelers Championship

To say that the casualties of the cut at the U.S Open were a surprise would be a vast understatement. Being at Erin Hills personally and watching the top players in the world struggle mightily while others were able to score was beyond any explanation that I can offer. Losing DJ and Rahm as two of our top players in the Hardcore Core last week was painful, but it was made tolerable by the fact that so many other of the top priced players performed poorly. Not having Day, Rory, Rose, or Spieth who were all heavily owned across all GPPs helped us stay in contention. Especially since we had the two lowest owned top priced players in Matsuyama, who pulled off a remarkable runner-up finish and Rickie Fowler (T5) who I was shocked that he was only owned between 10-15% in most GPPs.  A measily 1.1% of the field had 6/6 rosters at the start of the weekend and under 10% even had 5/6.

I was fortunate enough to have a 6/6 roster and took 21st place (out of 2,335 entries) in the Club Pro contest for a $3,000 win. My lineup consisted of: Fowler, Matsuyama, Kuchar, Kisner, Cabrera Bello, and Oosthuizen. I clearly wish I had included Brooks Koepka in my core, because I have owned him so much the past few years, I was just concerned about his wildness off the tee and mental stability when things are not going his way. It turned out that he brought his A game and was unstoppable for the better part of the weekend. The big highlights from the Core last week were Kuchar (T16), who I was sweating a 5 foot putt on the 18th green in person watching to make the cut, Steele (T13) at only $7,100, and Lingmerth (T21) for only ($6,600). The big disappointments beyond DJ, Rahm, and Scott were Pieters, An, and Horschel all who missed the cut. The big thing that I want you to take-away from the U.S Open is that aggregate ownership is always important. I talked in depth about it last week and said that you need to be between 60-80% to give yourself the best chance in large field GPPs. The winner of the Milly Maker for the US Open this year had an aggregate ownership of 55.4%. Considering he owned both Shauffele and Mullinax, both with ownership under 1%, which skewed the numbers a bit, it was really close to that 60% that the winners of the milly maker the past two years have had. Every week you should be putting ownership estimates on your players and seeing if you fall into that range. Anything way above 80% is too chalky and anything way below 60% is probably unnecessarily contrarian. If you need help with ownership predictions, you can check out ours: Ownership Predictions.

Onto the Travelers Championship which has a shockingly strong field this week.

Jeff’s Hardcore Core & Strategy-
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