Jeff’s Hardcore Core- WGC FedEx St Jude

The Open Championship is now in the rearview mirror and we do not get much time to sulk because with the changed schedule this year we swing right into a WGC event.  Formerly just the FedEx St Jude with a mediocre field, becomes a WGC event this year and suddenly has a loaded field.  I will dive deep into this week’s field as well as small field, no-cut strategies in my column this week, but first let’s recap the Open Championship.

What went right? If you were to have asked me this question prior to the weekend, there would have been many more things to be happy about then after it played out.  Certainly play was tough for everybody especially on Sunday, but for some reason many guys in my core were hurt worse than the field.  A good share of players in my core made the cut and many were positioned for Top 10 finishes like Matt Kuchar, Henrik Stenson, Webb Simpson, Erik Van Rooyen, Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed, and Justin Harding.  When the dust settled and the carnage finished it was only Patrick Reed who cracked the Top 10.

What went wrong? Having zero exposure to Shane Lowry basically did not allow for me to compete for a GPP win, bottom line as he scored thirty more points than the next highest player (Tommy Fleetwood).  It wasn’t just not having Lowry, I didn’t own any Fleetwood, Koepka, Finau, Willett, or Westwood, all which would have been very helpful.  The most disappointing thing for me however last week was how few teams had 6/6 players through the cut.  I only had 8% of my teams get 6/6, which was just below two times the average across GPPs, but still far below what I felt we should have.  Obviously Rory McIlroy occupying 40% of my rosters and being essentially eliminated from any chance of making the cut after hole #1 of his tournament was extremely frustrating. Adam Scott was right there with Rory as most disappointing part of my core last week as he missed his first Open Championship in a decade. Cabrera Bello, Lorenzo Vera, and Andy Sullivan all were painful misses as well. Overall my results last week were the worst week of the season. Very disappointing as I have had quite a bit of success over the last years with The Open in DFS being profitable three of the last four.  Sometimes things do not work out as planned, and last week was an example of that.

This season has been too good and too profitable to let one week get us down, so let’s crush our research harder than ever and get back on the winning train this week.

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- WGC FedEx St Jude

Sign up for an FGI account today to see the rest of this post.