Fantasy Golf Predictions
Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2022 Valspar Championship
2022 Valspar Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report
The march of the Mullet continues!
Cameron Smith added THE PLAYERS Championship to an increasingly impressive resumé on the PGA TOUR, although he needed a slice of luck to get over the line.
The Aussie inexplicably hit his iron approach into the final hole into the drink, and then watched on as the chasing Anirban Lahiri – yes, we’re as surprised as you are – made birdie at the seventeenth to set up a grandstand finish.
Smith showed immense intestinal fortitude to chip his penalty shot close and make his bogey putt, but he still needed Lahiri to fail to make his birdie effort in order to get his hands on the trophy.
After a fine drive, the Indian looked a hot favorite to force a play-off, but he too made a hash of his approach into the green and was left a tricky little chip to send the tournament into extra time….he came up agonisingly short, and Smith was left to clutch a third strokeplay trophy in a career that is going from strength-to-strength.
The Florida Swing reaches its conclusion this week – mercifully for some of the players, you imagine – with the Valspar Championship, and if you thought the tough golf was coming to an end you’d better think again.
In truth, with a more benign forecast in Palm Harbour this week, the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook should play a touch easier than Sawgrass and Bay Hill before it (famous last words). That said, there’s still plenty of demons to be found.
For starters, the Par 71 routing allows for four Par 5s and five Par 3s, and some of these shorter holes require devilish approaches that feature elevation changes and quite dramatically contoured greens.
Those Bermuda greens are small in size and run pretty quickly too – albeit they may be slowed by the rain, perhaps, and as if all that wasn’t enough there’s thick rough, more than 70 bunkers, water in play on nine holes and quite sharp angles off the tee to satisfy courtesy of the tree-lined, doglegging fairways.
Like we say, it’s another week until we return to fun-time golf.
The slight hesitation in suggesting this will be Bay Hill style test – despite the similarities – is that Copperhead can be tamed. Sam Burns won with -17 here last year, and while that was something of an anomaly in more weather-friendly conditions in late April, a winning mark of around -10 is the sort of ballpark you’d expect.
How will the champion go about their business? We’re making some assumptions that Copperhead will play softer than normal, which isn’t a surprise given how much rain has fallen in Florida of late. If that is true, the players should be able to hold the fairways and greens better – should being the key word – and so the Valspar will become a ball-striking contest if so.
Hitting quality long-range irons – we’re talking 200+ yards – is vital this week, as is stacking up red numbers on the Par 5s….both Burns and Paul Casey, the 2019 champion here, played the longer holes in -15 across their four rounds.
There’s no doubt that plenty in THE PLAYERS Championship field will have gone for a lie down in a dark room following their efforts at Sawgrass, and there is a question of how much it will have taken out of those involved in the business end of the tournament.
It’s a bizarre question, but would missing the cut at Sawgrass actually be advantageous to a player’s chances in the Valspar?
Only time will tell, but we’ve opted for a sort of half and half approach to our long odds picks – sometimes you have to, quite literally, hedge your bets in golf. With that in mind, here’s our sleeper shortlist for the 2022 Valspar Championship.
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Valspar Championship Open Fantasy Sleeper Report
Gary Woodland – 50/1 – In our view, missing the cut at THE PLAYERS is no great disaster when it comes to success this week.
You didn’t even need to play badly to miss the final two rounds at Sawgrass, you just had to be out on the course at the wrong time.
So there’s no alarms for Gary Woodland, who is in a positive frame of mind having previously posted back-to-back top-five finishes – one of which came at a correlating Bay Hill layout.
He boasts a pretty mediocre record at the Copperhead Course, but you will find a top-10 if you look hard enough – besides, Woodland heads to Palm Harbour in the best form he’s been in for quite some time.
Kevin Kisner – 55/1 – As befitting a Georgia Bulldog, Kevin Kisner sunk his teeth into TPC Sawgrass and refused to let go.
Two rounds of 68 were fantastic given the conditions, and his battling qualities – unsurprising from a WGC Match Play champion – were in evidence throughout.
He’ll probably need some more of that steel at Innisbrook, but this reliable green finder has a knack for putting well on Bermuda greens and so there’s no reason why he can’t contend this week as well.
Adam Hadwin – 80/1 – Ordinarily, Adam Hadwin is a reliable fairway finder that putts well on all surfaces – it’s the bit in-between that’s the problem.
But the Canadian showed plenty of good stuff with his irons at Sawgrass, and that’s the kind of improvement you want to see from a guy that has previously won at the venue he’s heading to next time out.
Hadwin, the 2017 Valspar champion, had been in reasonable form prior to THE PLAYERS, with T16 at Pebble Beach and T26 at the Phoenix Open, but a player with a catalogue of top-five finishes on the PGA TOUR has more in the tank….surely a happy hunting ground will be where that potential becomes reality?
Mackenzie Hughes – 90/1 – The wait goes on for a prolonged return to form for Mackenzie Hughes.
A missed cut at Sawgrass is another black mark against his name, but the Canadian is a much better player than his recent results suggest and he should head to Innisbrook feeling energized after a weekend off.
This is a guy that ranks top 25 on TOUR for Scoring Average, Birdie Average and SG: Putting, 42nd for Scrambling, 62nd for Greens in Regulation and so on. If he can stop leaking shots off the tee, Hughes has the game to win titles, make no mistake.
J.T. Poston – 200/1 – One of the reasons why J.T. Poston’s form has tailed off in recent times is that his putter has gone ice cold – his ranking of 2nd on the PGA TOUR in 2020/21 has dropped to just 183rd this term.
But he has shown some signs of improvement in this department lately, and given that he is driving the ball much better too there is a chance of a renaissance in the near future.
A proven performer on Bermuda greens, Poston is in the midst of a slump in form but his ability is undoubted – had he not lost in a playoff to Seamus Power at the Barbasol Championship, he’s had two PGA TOUR titles to his name by now.
At 200/1, you generally get what you pay for, but Poston is a far better than these odds imply.
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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for The Valspar Championship here.
Sleeper Report Predictions This Season (2021-2022)
Cover photo via Instagram
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