2026 US Open DFS Lineup: The Perfect DraftKings Build

If you grind PGA DFS, you know the major weeks are the ones you circle, and the 2026 US Open at Shinnecock Hills is the meanest test on the calendar. On the latest Stokastic Perfect Lineup show, Ben Rasa handed over three core golfers and let Josh Engelman and the Stokastic tools round out the rest, then ran the whole thing through the Single Lineup Simulator to see where it might land. This is that build, with the same three anchors and the same logic, so you can take a 2026 US Open DFS lineup into your own DraftKings 🎁 entries.

In Summary

• Three anchors, then let the tool finish it. The show locked Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, and Patrick Cantlay, then used the Single Lineup Simulator to complete and sim the last three spots.
• The finish is what scores. Fleetwood is the lead example: a major-tested player who makes the cut and posts four solid rounds piles up DFS points even without the trophy.
• Grade the whole roster. The Stokastic PGA Sims rate it by how it performs across thousands of simulated tournaments, so you see the cut, the upside, and the downside before you lock.
• A little randomness shows you the trade-offs. Adding 10% randomness rebuilt the same core into a cheaper, lower-rated structure, a fast way to compare builds side by side.
• Fit the build to the format. Simulated ROI and chance-to-win are tournament reads. Cash games want the higher-floor build instead.

Start With Three Anchors You Trust

The Perfect Lineup format is simple on purpose. Ben Rasa gives three selections, the tools fill the other three spots, and you see where the finished roster grades out. We like this structure for any major, because it forces the call that is hardest in golf DFS: deciding who you actually believe in before the math handles the optimization around them.

Here are the three core golfers the show locked, with the case for each.

Tommy Fleetwood ($9,700) is the first click. The honest knock is that he has not closed a major, and yes, he had a lead late on a Sunday just a few weeks ago and did not win it. But he has spent more than a decade being all over US Open leaderboards, his irons are sharp, and his ball off the tee has been close to automatic. Ben does not think driving is the biggest indicator at Shinnecock, but it still plays a role, and a clean tee-to-green week is exactly Fleetwood's profile. The point Ben kept coming back to is the one that matters in DFS: you do not need him to win, you need him to play well. At under $10K he gives you flexibility as a first or aggressive second golfer, which is why he leads the build.

Major weeks are where Ben trusts Tyrrell Hatton ($8,700). He plays him mostly in the majors, and the resume backs it up: third at the Masters this year and fourth at last year's US Open at Oakmont, where the winning score was just one under. That tells you he can navigate a brutal, grind-it-out test, and if the wind comes up at Shinnecock he thinks it helps Hatton more than it hurts him. The one caveat is form: because Hatton is not in the field every week, it is harder to read his current shape, so you are leaning on the major-week track record.

The bargain of the build is Patrick Cantlay ($7,300). Major fields are deep, which pushes a player of his quality down into a price where he can be your fifth or sixth golfer. He is quietly building form with five of his last six events inside the top 20 and the irons doing the heavy lifting. At this number, the math is friendly: if he simply makes the cut and gives you four rounds, he pays off most of the time, and any contention is a bonus.

Those three names eat up roughly $25,700 of your $50,000, leaving three spots to fill at an average of $8,100 each. That setup is where the tools take over.

Let the Single Lineup Simulator Complete the Build (A Worked Example)

This is where the show stopped talking and started building inside the Stokastic PGA Sims. We build major lineups the same way the show does: lock the names we trust, then let the optimizer handle the rest. With Fleetwood, Hatton, and Cantlay locked, Josh hit "Complete this lineup," and the tool finds the optimal plays for the open spots, using as much of the salary as possible for as many projected fantasy points as possible.

The first completed roster paid up once and paid down twice: Matt Fitzpatrick at $8,900, Sam Burns at $7,700, and Si Woo Kim at $7,200. It left about $500 on the table rather than forcing every dollar into play. Then came the part that counts, running the lineup simulation to grade it. That first build came back around 53% ROI in the sim with roughly a 34% cash rate. The number itself matters less than what comes next: clearing the build and adding randomness to see how a different structure stacks up against it.

New to Stokastic Sims? The Stokastic PGA Sims let you lock your own core, hit Complete to fill the rest with the optimal plays, then sim the whole roster across thousands of US Open outcomes so you see the cut and the ceiling before you fire. Get in for the major with code SPAUN10 for 10% off any Stokastic PGA DFS package.

grab the PGA tools

Add Randomness to Compare a Second Structure

The reason to build inside the tool instead of by hand is how fast it gives you a different look. Josh cleared the completed spots, added 10% randomness, and re-ran Complete on the same three anchors. Now instead of the single optimal solution, the tool gave a little wiggle room and rebuilt the back half: it dropped Matt Fitzpatrick ($8,900) and Sam Burns ($7,700) for Cam Young and Alex Fitzpatrick, kept Si Woo Kim, and slid those two new names all the way down into the $6K range.

When that second build simmed, it graded out around 18% simulated ROI, clearly below the first one. The reason was structural: it spent more total salary while paying down further on the back end, and the Sims flagged that the first construction held up better. The workflow earns its keep right there. You are not guessing which version is sharper; you build one, add randomness for the next, and let the simulated grade tell you which structure to trust.

From there you scale. The single-lineup tool will build one, three, five, or 20 lineups on the same logic, and you can export them straight to DraftKings. For the deeper version of this process, our PGA DFS strategy guide walks the Sims columns end to end, and the free DFS Sims let you try the build flow on this week's board before you subscribe.

GPP vs. Cash: Which Numbers Apply to Your Format

One scoping note, because golf DFS is where this gets missed most. The simulated ROI, the chance-to-win figure, and the leverage built into a randomized back half are all tournament reads. If you are playing large-field GPPs, that is exactly the lens you want, and getting under the field on a lower-owned golfer is where the edge lives, which is the logic behind our ownership and leverage breakdown.

Cash games flip the build. There you are trying to beat about half the field, so you want the higher-floor roster, which usually means leaning on the proven, reliable ball-strikers and fading the low-owned darts you would chase in a tournament. Same slate, opposite construction. Then size it to your bankroll before you fire, because even a great pre-lock build can finish near the bottom on a single high-variance major weekend. For the full split, see our GPP vs. cash breakdown.

Prefer to tail a proven card instead of building your own? The value-first habit above still applies; you just outsource the legwork. DFSnDonuts Picks on Tails is a DFS-native expert (#8 on the MLB Hot Streak leaderboard as of July 16) whose plays come with the receipt every Tails expert carries: a full graded track record you can check before you tail. Start with the free expert picks feed, where free picks post every day.

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Build Your US Open Lineup Before Lock

The Perfect Lineup show makes the workflow obvious: pick the three golfers you believe in, let the Single Lineup Simulator complete and sim the rest, add a little randomness to compare structures, and export the ones the Sims grade highest. That is how you build a 2026 US Open DFS lineup on real simulated outcomes instead of one projected score. New to it? Code SPAUN10 takes 10% off any Stokastic PGA DFS package, weekly or monthly, so you can lock in just for the major if that is all you want.

grab the PGA tools and start building You can also try the build flow for free in the DFS Sims and the PGA DataHub.

Want the full build? Watch It's Major Time! PGA DFS Picks for the 2026 US Open on DraftKings on the Stokastic DFS channel. DFS is high-variance; play within your means, 21+ where legal.