U.S. Open DraftKings Millionaire Maker Recap

Another golf major almost always means a DraftKings Millionaire Maker, and such was the case this week with the U.S. Open taking place in windy New York. The unforgiving course that is Shinnecock was a bit more gracious on Sunday and Tommy Fleetwood took advantage of it putting up a 63 early in the day to move from +9 to +2 and put himself in contention.

Having Fleetwood, who was relatively high-owned at 26.5%, in a lineup would make for huge changes in the Milly Maker standings throughout the day as he moved steadily up the leaderboard. After that, it was a matter of which of the four players tied for the lead heading into the final round would emerge that would ultimately decide who would win the million dollars.

In this case, however, there would be a two-way tie, meaning we would not have a new DFS millionaire on our hands. I’m confident the two that won $575,000 are not complaining too much. One of the winners was DailySportsGeek, who jokingly tweeted this out after the results were final:


Final Standings

1st (tie). DailySportsGeek $550,000
1st (tie): andrew__jayyy $550,000
3rd fleabelt $100,000
4th AGT123 $50,000
5th HannaBarbara $25,000
6th vlahos97 $15,000
7th (4 way tie) ehafner, NGoldstein, moklovin, BigPapaPlank: $8,500

Millionaire Maker Recap

kdoubledeuce started the day in first place by himself with a lineup that had all four golfers currently tied for first. He’d finish a respectable 186th, but that had to be somewhat disappointing after a night filled with dreams of joining the seven-figure club.

Article Image

The eventual winners of the contest would be the first to pass kdoubledeuce behind the great round by Tommy Fleetwood and a hot streak by Patrick Reed. Couple that with Brooks Koepka moving into first place by himself and that was enough to give them the lead with 14+ holes left to play.

Article Image

A strong 66 from Hideki Matsuyama along with the Fleetwood/Reed/Koepka trio was enough to move Wpg_Mike into the lead at one point, but with Matsuyama done most knew that his lead would be shortlived (and it was). He would end up finishing just outside the top 10 in 11th place.

Article Image

DailySportsGeek and andrew_jayyy would retake the lead for awhile, but they would lose that lead momentarily to a group of four taking the lead with DFS legends ehafner and moklovin part of that group. This lineup also had Hideki in it, so it was going to be an uphill battle to hold and they would fall short finishing in a four-way tie for 7th place.

Article Image

One person who did have a legitimate shot to win the million was vlahos97 who had a unique lineup containing Koepka, Fleetwood, and Reed as well as Tony Finau who after a bad start had moved back into contention. With Justin Rose in his lineup as well and in 7th place with 6 holes left to play, there was potential for additional points that would move him ahead of non-Rose lineups. Rose would falter though and vlahos97 would end up in a very respectable 6th place.

Article Image

When you end up with five of the top six golfers in a tournament, you’re usually going to have a winning lineup. That’s precisely what our winners had with Dustin Johnson’s 3rd place finish being the only “hole” in the lineup. Here was the winning lineup – congrats to DailySportsGeek and andrew__jayy for becoming half-millionaires!!!

Article Image

About the Author

thehazyone
Aaron Hendrix (thehazyone)

Aaron Hendrix is a former professional poker player who made the transition from season long fantasy sports to DFS in October of 2014. He used to cover poker tournaments for a living until stepping into his current role at RotoGrinders. He can be found on Twitter at @aaronhendrix