US Open DFS Picks & PGA DFS Strategy: 2026 Shinnecock

If you grind golf DFS, our US Open DFS picks and PGA DFS strategy for 2026 start with the slate you circle every year, and this edition might be the meanest one yet. It is back at Shinnecock Hills, a long par 70 that the USGA has not run in quite a while, and the forecast going into Thursday is ugly enough that the early read was wind in the 50-mile-an-hour range. That is the kind of week where you see scores you did not know existed. In our US Open 2026 PGA DFS show on the Stokastic DFS channel, host Ben Rasa walked the full DraftKings 🎁 player pool, talked through what actually wins at a brutal par 70, and built a few lineups live in the Stokastic PGA Sims. This is that breakdown, with the same player pool and the same build logic, so you can take it into your own US Open DFS lineups.

In Summary

• Shinnecock punishes everything, especially around the green. It is a long par 70 where the fescue turns a miss into a 70-yard awkward birdie attempt, so a clean short game matters more than a single bomb off the tee.
• You do not have to bomb it, but you cannot spray it. Distance helps and is not irrelevant, but the disqualifying mistake here is putting it in the nasty long grass, not coming up a few yards short.
• Build for the tournament, not one projected score. The Stokastic PGA Sims simulate the full event tens of thousands of times so the cut, variance, and ownership all show up before you fire.
• Leverage off the obvious chalk. When a player is pushing 20% ownership, you need a reason to be there; getting under the field on a comparable golfer is where GPP edge lives.
• Process over results, with a real bankroll plan. This is a high-variance major in nasty conditions. Even a great pre-lock pool can whiff on one weekend, so size entries to your bankroll first.

Shinnecock Hills sets the whole slate

Start with the golf course, because at this US Open it decides everything. Shinnecock is a long par 70 that has not been played in a long time, so most of the field is in a different stage of their career than the last time it hosted. What does not change is the difficulty. It tests every part of the game, and it is most punishing around the greens.

The key build read from the show: you do not need to bomb it here to survive, and relative to how hard the course plays off the tee you can get away with being a notch short. Distance is not irrelevant, but it is not the disqualifier. The disqualifier is spraying it into the fescue, the brutal, Europe-looking long grass that turns a missed fairway into a 70-yard hack-out for birdie. Miss into that and the scoring gets outrageous fast. So the player you want is not necessarily the longest hitter; it is the golfer who keeps it out of the worst trouble and can scramble when the course wins a hole.

And there is real weather risk on top of it. With wind that severe in the Thursday forecast, there was open talk of a possible delay or stoppage. That uncertainty is exactly why you build a range of outcomes rather than one "perfect" lineup, which is what the Sims are for.

The top of the DraftKings PGA DFS pool

The board opens with the names you expect at a major: Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Young, and Xander Schauffele. As Stokastic does for majors, the DraftKings pricing fed in live, and the early read shaped the show's tiering.

• Jon Rahm was the favorite of the top tier in the show. He has won a US Open before, and his game travels to this kind of brutal, grind-it-out setup. His major form this year has been live, including a runner-up he could not quite close out. If you are ordering the top, he was the first name.
• Xander Schauffele drew real praise as one of the most consistent US Open resumes around, with a tied-for-ninth at the Masters and a seventh at the PGA already this year. He is the type who thrives when the conditions are nasty, which is the whole point this week.
• Scottie Scheffler is Scheffler. Dynamic pricing eased his salary restriction a touch, but you are still paying up. The note from the show: he is always around the top of the board (a 12th at Memorial counts as a quieter week for him), so the question is roster construction around him, not whether he is good.
• Rory McIlroy sat about $2,700 below Scheffler ($14,900). He was also 12th at Memorial, where he struck it well and simply did not putt; at the PGA the putter showed up. A fine major play, just not a strong lean over Rahm and Schauffele in this spot.
• Bryson DeChambeau was flagged as the likely lowest-owned of the group, and the show was cold on him. He was cut in both majors and has not produced what his price implies, even though he does have a US Open in his past. Low ownership is the only thing making him interesting here.
• Cameron Young rounds out the tier without a strong opinion attached.

The strategic takeaway: a healthy amount of all of these guys will end up in the pool because that is the nature of a major. The order the show landed on was Rory and Rahm and Xander first, then Scheffler, Cameron Young, and Bryson behind.

How fast the board thins out

One useful structural read from the show: how quickly the salaries collapse after the top six. You finish that elite tier and you are immediately into the $8K range, which is what makes the middle of this slate so playable.

• Tommy Fleetwood ($9,700) was called a good balance build with a very strong US Open resume, including what he did at Shinnecock in those brutal conditions years ago. The kind of fit you play even if you do not bet him.
• Matt Fitzpatrick ($8,900) checks almost every box: a US Open title on the resume, multiple wins this year, a recent runner-up in Canada. The show expected him to be popular for exactly that reason.
• Tyrrell Hatton was an explicit lean. He was top five at last year's US Open at Oakmont, where the winning score was just one under, and third at the Masters this year, so he can both grind and contend. He had also just won on LIV.
• Brooks Koepka withdrew on Sunday. Whether that was precautionary or a real injury was unknown, so he profiles as a no-ownership flyer where you are knowingly accepting injury risk.

Then comes the mid-$8K band where the show saw a real fork in the road around the green:

• Justin Thomas ($8,300) was framed as a trustworthy scrambler with the right temperament for a survival test, a player who can grind out a two-over and stay in it rather than needing to fire 65. The PGA showed his form.
• Justin Rose has seen everything and has been excellent in the majors this year (third at the Masters, top 10 at the PGA), another around-the-green play that fits the course.
• Patrick Reed ($7,900) is a "he simply knows what he's doing" inclusion at a fair price.

The chalk cluster and the leverage decision

Then the show hit the range that scares everyone, roughly the high-$7Ks, where it feels like every choice can lose:

• J.J. Spaun, the defending champion who won the 2025 US Open at Oakmont, was striping it but could not buy a putt. At $7,500 he will not draw the ownership a defending champ usually does. The only knock was a preference for other players in his range.
• Hideki Matsuyama is the leverage play off Spaun. His weak link right now is off the tee, but he is world-class around the green, so if you believe the course marginalizes driving and rewards scrambling, he gets a boost.
• Patrick Cantlay ($7,300) is quietly building form (five of his last six inside the top 20, irons doing the heavy lifting) and is comfortably playable.
• Si Woo Kim ($7,200) was flagged as underpriced and likely one of the most popular plays on the slate, which makes him a natural cash-game consideration but a tougher leverage piece in GPPs.

This is where the show's clearest piece of GPP logic lives, and it traces straight to the Stokastic ownership read: your golf score only matters relative to the field, so when a player is projected near 20% ownership you need a real reason to be there. The show pivoted toward Jordan Spieth ($7,100), who is now reliable off the tee even if the rest of his game is a mixed bag, precisely because he projects at a fraction of the ownership of the chalk in his range. The discipline there matters: you do not pivot just to pivot. You pivot when the lower-owned player gives you a comparable outcome at a real ownership discount.

Value plays in the $6Ks

Once the board crashes into the $6K range, the pricing gets weird and the field is still full of real golfers, which is what makes Shinnecock so flexible to build.

• Maverick McNealy ($6,800) was the clear favorite on this page.
• Min Woo Lee was a fade, called perpetually over-owned and over-valued, and pushing 20% ownership down here only sharpens that fade.
• Harris English was called the prudent play in his range, a sensible body for the price.
• Bud Cauley got a genuine shout-out as a long-overdue winner who finally broke through.
• Rickie Fowler and Jason Day were the cautionary tales: Fowler's form fell off a cliff (a 60th at the PGA, a missed cut, then nearly 20-over at Memorial losing in all four categories), and Day's form has cratered post-Masters with nothing inside the top 30. Both are around-the-green talents, but the recent results make them hard to trust.
• Adam Scott, Akshay Bhatia, and Sepp Straka were called the more sensible bodies just below.

One more note worth flagging on a player a lot of people roster: Alex Noren, normally a trusted mid-priced golfer, was so bad in his last start, losing significantly with both irons and putter after gaining in six straight on approach and four straight on the putter, that the read split two ways. Either something is wrong and he posts a number like 20-over, or it was two throwaway rounds and you get a big ownership discount. The lean was that it was nothing rather than something, worth a couple of shares but no deeper, with eyes open to the downside. That is the right way to treat a confusing form signal: size it small, do not anchor your pool to it.

Salary savers and the qualifier trap

Into the low $6Ks and the $5Ks, the show got selective rather than spraying darts:

• Jackson Koivun, the 21-year-old who dominated at Auburn, is the kind of can't-miss prospect everyone wants to be early on. He played in last year's US Open (and got cut) and has tour experience, but the honest take was that he may simply be a little much to trust at a US Open right now, even at a tempting salary. The equity in an unknown is real, but it is equity, not a projection.
• Harry Hall ($6,200) got a light endorsement: if he can limit the damage off the tee, the rest of the game is trustworthy, and you do not need much production this far down, especially if you fade Scheffler at the top.
• Chris Kirk was the name the show would look to if forced to play in the cheaper tier, but the broader point was that none of these guys truly stand out, so this is dealer's choice.

The real warning came on the bottom of the board. Because the US Open runs open qualifiers, the field fills with names you do not see week to week, and the show was blunt: most of these golfers project sub-1% ownership and are not worth your time. We are deliberately not printing those low-salary qualifier names. The transcript mangled them, several were not confirmable as players in this field, and the show's own advice was to avoid that part of the board anyway. When you are unsure whether a deep-value name is even real, the correct DFS move is the same as the correct sourcing move: leave it out.

How to build US Open lineups with the Stokastic PGA Sims (a worked example)

Here is where the show stopped talking and started building, in the single-lineup tool inside the Stokastic PGA Sims. The workflow is the one we run for every golf slate: seed your core, add a little randomness, and let the Sims complete the lineup so the build reflects thousands of simulated tournaments rather than one projected score. If you want to follow on this week's board, the free DFS Sims and the PGA DataHub carry the projections and ownership the tool runs on.

The show built three lineups to illustrate the trade-offs:

• A balanced large-field build. Seeding four core plays (Schauffele and Fleetwood among them) left plenty of salary, and adding randomness completed it into a roster the tool returned with a strong simulated rating (46.9% in the single-lineup build on the show), including an Adam Scott and a Brooks Koepka dart. The read: a strong large-field tournament lineup, fully aware the Koepka injury question makes it a GPP-only swing.
• The Scheffler build. Anchoring on Scheffler and a popular partner produced a roster flagged for ridiculous combined ownership at the top, but with five solid mid-priced golfers filling it out, the simulated result still came back positive. The structural point is striking: you can have a $7,000 gap between your first and second golfer and still field five genuine players around the favorite to win.
• The Rahm-and-Rory build. Stacking the two priciest names up top funneled the rest into condensed value, and the tool graded it negative, flagging it as too aggressive at the top. Read that as the Sims doing their job, telling you when a build you like on feel does not hold up across simulated outcomes.

The lesson is not "copy these three lineups." It is that the single-lineup tool gives you a fast read on construction, and when you are ready to scale, the full Stokastic PGA Sims generate hundreds of lineups on the same logic so your whole pool is built by win probability. For the deeper version of this workflow, our PGA DFS strategy guide walks the Sims columns end to end.

New to Stokastic Sims? The Stokastic PGA Sims simulate the entire US Open tens of thousands of times and rank every lineup by how often it actually wins, with projections, ownership, and Top Stacks built right in, so you are not guessing at a brutal Shinnecock setup. Lock in your week (or month) with code PERFECT10 for 10% off any Stokastic PGA package, weekly or monthly.

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Cash games vs. GPPs at the US Open

One scoping note, because it is the highest-error zone in golf DFS. Everything above about leverage, the contest simulator, getting under the field, and chasing the top of a large-field tournament is GPP logic. The Stokastic Contest Sims and the "% to first" read are tournament tools. If you are playing cash games (double-ups and 50/50s), you are trying to beat roughly half the field, so you build for floor: the safe, high-ownership chalk like an underpriced Si Woo Kim is exactly who you lean on, and the lower-owned leverage darts are not your play. Same slate, opposite build. Match your lineup to the contest, then size it to your bankroll before you fire, and read our GPP vs. cash breakdown if you want the full split.

And keep the variance in perspective. This is a high-variance major in nasty conditions. Even the best build by simulated ROI can finish near the bottom on a single weekend; that is the range, not a flaw in the process. Manage your bankroll, be smart, and judge the approach over a long run of slates rather than one US Open.

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.

More on this: BMW Championship DFS Picks 2026: 50 Golfers, No Cut · FedEx St Jude Championship DFS Picks 2026: DraftKings Golf · PGA DFS Strategy: How I Build Golf DFS Lineups · PGA DFS Showdown Strategy: How to Win Single-Round Golf · What Is Exposure In DFS (And How Do You Set It)?

Build your US Open lineups before salaries tighten

Shinnecock is going to be a grind, and a grind like this rewards a build that accounts for the full range of outcomes instead of one projected score. That is exactly what the Stokastic PGA Sims do: simulate the US Open tens of thousands of times, factor in the cut and the ownership, and rank every lineup by how often it wins, with projections, ownership, and Top Stacks doing the work alongside you. New to it? Code PERFECT10 takes 10% off any Stokastic PGA 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 walk this week's board for free in the DFS Sims and the PGA DataHub.

Want the full show? Watch the US Open 2026 PGA DFS Picks & Strategy breakdown on the Stokastic DFS channel. DFS is high-variance; play within your means, 21+ where legal.