PGA Ownership Report: The Open

Here’s the data for this week’s Milly Maker at The Open!

Name Ownership
Rickie Fowler 38.9%
Matt Kuchar 29.4%
Hideki Matsuyama 28.8%
Sergio Garcia 26.6%
Paul Casey 24.5%
Jordan Spieth 20.3%
Adam Scott 19.1%
Phil Mickelson 18.4%
Louis Oosthuizen 18.2%
Tommy Fleetwood 18.0%

Full field ownerships (for the $4, $33, and cash games) can be found here!

And we have a co-ownerships matrix that shows who the highest owned pairs of golfers were in this week’s Milly Maker:

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We’ve got all the best in the world teeing it up this week, and you can only pick six of them. Who’d we take!?

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Rickie Fowler (39% Milly, 75% Cash) – Pretty Rickie was far and away the most “obvious” choice, seemingly far outplaying his salary level. He brings the pedigree and the recent form to compete with the most expensive guys here, but for $1,000+ cheaper! Rickie was on everyone’s radar, with most choosing to fade simply because they wanted to be different. The strategy here is the crux of a lot of DFS golf – to fade or not to fade. With so much on the line, most people rostered him in a good chunk of their lineups.

Matt Kuchar (30% Milly, 75% Cash) – Mr. Kuchar, a classy man on a classy course. We were advertised that distance matters less and accuracy is at a premium, also that staying in control and avoiding big numbers would lead to a top finish. Kuchar checks all of those boxes, and has long been lauded as a guy who can finish high but not necessarily finish off a big tournament. With that, he was a shoe-in for cash games, but with a lot of other choices at his salary and the reputation for maybe not winning it all, a few more people got shy on him in the Milly Maker than they did for Rickie.

Sergio Garcia (27% Milly Maker, 37% Cash) – Sergio is still riding his peak wave from his Masters victory. Always a fan favorite, he gets another boost in Europe and another for links golf expertise. The only thing holding him back this week was the fact that the oddsmakers have caught on to his popularity and therefore his salary is a little higher than it would have been for most of the past year in such an event. I think most who took him are satisfied that “only” these percentages followed along.

Jordan Spieth (20% Milly Maker, 6% Cash) – Interesting split here! Spieth will not soon be forgotten for his ability to win majors, and like Kuchar, this is a rare opportunity where a major championship isn’t at a course that has been extended to flush out anyone who can’t hit it 300+ yards consistently. We’ve seen what he can do even at a slight disadvantage, and a good chunk of us paid up to see what he can do on a course that is more well-suited for his skills than many elite tournaments. The flip side is, nobody wanted to pay the extra thousand bucks for him in cash games. That says a lot more about lineup construction preferences – opting for more mid-salary players in a cash game lineup – than it does about Spieth’s prowess as a player.

Brandt Snedeker (1% Milly Maker, 0.7% Cash) – I always like checking these guys out. Snedeker withdrew on the same day the tournament was set to begin. One percent of the participants either didn’t realize, couldn’t get to a computer, or forgot to take him out. This might sound like small potatoes, but DFS is a game of percentages, and every point matters. Several people showed up to their office jobs today cursing their busy evening or whatever distracted them from reacting to the Snedeker news after making early lineups. To give it some more perspective, over $33,000 was placed on Snedeker lineups. Free money for the rest of us to compete for.

Good luck this week everyone. Don’t stay up too late this week!

About the Author

hokie2009
Sean O'Donnell (hokie2009)

Sean O’Donnell is a proud Hokie (Virginia Tech class of 2009, electrical engineering) as well as a Grateful Dead enthusiast. A fantasy baseball player since age 12, he has flirted with DFS in the past, but only this season stumbled onto the dearth of information that exists pertaining to daily fantasy golf and made a commitment to analyzing PGA tournament data on a weekly basis. When he’s not scouring the web for obscure PGA data, he works as a consultant for small businesses involved in research grants with the federal government.