PGA Ownership Report: Valero Texas Open

Here’s the data for this week’s $4 20-entry-Max at the Valero Texas Open!

Name Ownership
Brendan Steele 34.6%
Adam Hadwin 33.7%
Tony Finau 30.4%
JJ Spaun 24.7%
Ollie Schneiderjans 23.2%

Full field ownerships (for the $4, the $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 $4 20-max:

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Everything’s bigger in Texas! And this week we’ve got a few pretty big ownership number’s that everyone’s chasing in both the GPPs and the cash games.

I sometimes think it’s more likely to have a crowd at the top in these types of tournaments, because people are more likely to follow tout advice, which seems to converge some times, rather than splitting between Rory/DJ/Spieth and a few others in, say, a major championship.

Regardless, let’s look at the results!

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Brendan Steele (34% GPP, 68% Cash) – All of the factors are combining here, with Steele coming in on a courageous cuts-made streak, along with a strong history here, a salary that’s right down the middle of the road … it’s very hard to avoid him in any format. He’s the most-chosen player in all formats this week, and the man everyone’s success or failure will be hinging on most likely!

Adam Hadwin (33% GPP, 57% Cash) – Not far behind Mr. Steele is the young Canadian who seems to be in the midst of a full-blown breakout. He’s been on fire for a couple of months, and there’s a lot of good feelings surrounding those of us who have been riding the wave. He was very high owned last week and people are going to keep playing him until he’s $10,000 or they get burned pretty bad!

Tony Finau (30% GPP, 34% Cash) – Finau is a long-time fan favorite, and people love to wait for him to show a little form, and end up on a long. Open course. That’s what we see here. His GPP ownership is a little higher than his cash ownership (relative to other golfers, that is), and this is a reflection of the perception that he’s got a tendency to be able to REALLY score – or flop out. Still, lots of people are hanging their hats on the idea that even if he doesn’t finish top 10, he can score enough to earn his keep this weekend!

Daniel Summerhays (20% GPP, 42% Cash) – An interesting case of a guy being way more popular in cash games – typically we see this when somebody is obvious chalk, and the field kind of over-corrects in backing off of him in GPPs. The story with Summerhays is he’s got a pretty strong course history the past few years, but his recent form would give me pause in cash. I think those who played him are happy with 20% ownership in GPPs. But just saying that kind of has me choking a little bit. We’re talking about Daniel Summerhays after all! It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. Full disclosure – I fired a few lineups in featuring him, and I’m usually pretty ambivalent about course history!

Charlie Hoffman (22% GPP, 26% Cash)SPEAKING of course history. Charles Hoffman! This is one of the best course histories I’ve ever seen. So stellar. I am one to usually say “ah yes but that’s factored into his salary no reason to go crazy over it” but I’m honestly surprised he isn’t higher-owned. His recent form isn’t total crap … and if you are interested in history at all, I don’t see how you avoided him. I did notice there were a lot of golfers this week with strong course history, and maybe if you play that angle you just couldn’t fit them all in! That said, Hoffman should have been top of the list, and I have to wonder if this isn’t a case of over-correcting by the field – everyone expecting him to be 35% owned in GPPs and to be honest he’s not the scariest fade in the world. I’m not totally settled on the course history thing so it will be interesting to observe where this little case ends up this week!

Good luck guys. See you next 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.