Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2022 Fortinet Championship

2022 Fortinet Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

Let’s get at it – the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season is here.

We start, in traditional fashion, with the Fortinet Championship – the artist formerly known as the Safeway Open, played annually on the North Course at the Silverado resort in Napa.

It’s an event habitually won by bomb-and-wedge merchants, with Max Homa (who arguably has more strings to his bow than that) joining Stewart Cink, Cameron Champ and Kevin Tway in the winner’s circle here. 

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The reasons for that are obvious. The North Course is quite narrow in places, but with the rough so agreeable there really is no harm in letting fly off the tee, and then hitting some fluffy short irons and wedges into receptive Poa Annua greens. It’s a strategy that has yielded silverware for the aforementioned quartet at this venue.

Another point of order is that nine of the ten Par 4s play at 450 yards or shorter, and two of them – the eighth and the seventeenth – are drivable with a helping wind. Last year, the Par 5s, of which two are in the closing three holes, were taken to pieces.

The early going of a new season is the perfect time and place for long-odds backers to strike, and the chain of winning prices at the sportsbooks for the Fortinet Championship in recent years – 66/1, 200/1, 100/1 and 50/1 – should alone be enough to get the juices racing.

The history books suggest we can swerve the favorites like Homa, Hideki Matsuyama and Corey Conners, and while that trio is clearly of an elite quality, perhaps a lack of competitive golf will count against them and reduce their edge just enough to make this an open and unpredictable affair.

Those words are music to the ears of longshot backers, and so without further ado let’s dive into our sleeper shortlist for the 2022 Fortinet Championship. 

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Denny McCarthy – 50/1 – There were times towards the end of the season when you really thought Denny McCarthy was going to win on TOUR.

T5 and T7 finishes back-to-back at the Memorial Tournament and US Open should have provided the springboard, and while he triumphed at the John Deere Classic – eventually finishing T6 – that was as good as it got.

But perhaps a new season will bring the ultimate reward for one of the best putters around, because his ball-striking improved immeasurably last term and he has plenty of prior form in correlating events like Shriners, Pebble Beach and the RSM Classic.

Brendan Steele – 50/1 – You get the feeling that golfers are, as a rule, a sentimental bunch, and that’s partly why course form is a thing – the good vibes of returning to a happy hunting ground bringing the best out of a player.

So step forward Brendan Steele, a back-to-back winner of this tournament whose putting is normally so bad it should come with a health warning for his backers.

Evidently, something just clicks for the Californian on these Poa Annua greens, and that’s good news because we really do believe he’s one of the very best ball-strikers in this field.

But can he get it done with the flat stick this week? There’s only one way to find out….

Chez Reavie – 75/1 – Normally we’d prefer longer hitters at Silverado, but Chez Reavie’s formline here – 28-3-33-33-13-22-17 – suggests he’s not a million miles from contending.

It’s probably because he’s so good at approaching from the 150-200 yard range, where he’ll spend a lot of his time this week, and an improvement towards the end of last season – T8 at the Travelers Championship followed by his win at the Barracuda – suggests that Reavie heads to Napa full of confidence.

Taylor Moore – 75/1 – There’s a few players heading into their sophomore season on the PGA TOUR who will be hoping to make a breakthrough, and Taylor Moore is very much in that camp.

The Texan delivered four top-ten finishes in his rookie year, and the fact that two of them came in the dying embers of the campaign – in quality company at the Wyndham Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic, no less, suggests here is a high ceiling to Moore’s game right now.

Another with form at the correlating Sea Island and Pebble Beach, Moore is particularly good with wedges in hand, and that should stand him in good stead at Silverado.

Matthew NeSmith – 120/1 – We’ve done all the hard work so you don’t have to, and in the past three years few players in this field have served up surprisingly-adept form at correlating courses as Matthew NeSmith. 

He has put together solid showings in the Shriners, RSM Classic, Pebble Beach and Phoenix Open, and whether by accident or design that is hard to ignore at odds of 120/1.

Consistently good (20 made cuts from 28 starts last term) without hitting the booster switch, maybe 2022-23 is the season where the penny will drop for NeSmith. 

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the Fortinet Championship here.

Sleeper Report Predictions Last Season (2021-2022)

[skill_bar heading=”Total Top 3s” percent=”2.92%” bar_text=”6 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 10s” percent= “13.65%” bar_text=”28 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 25s” percent=”20.00%” bar_text=”41 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Winners Picked” percent=”7.31%” bar_text=”3 out of 43 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Runners-Up Picked” percent=”2.44%” bar_text=”1 out of 43 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Made Cuts (Includes Sleepers)” percent=”50.73%” bar_text=”104 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″]

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Cover photo via Instagram