Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2023 Valero Texas Open

2023 Valero Texas Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

We were denied the dream Scheffler vs McIlroy final at the WGC Match Play last week, although it would’ve been hard on Sam Burns and Cameron Young – given how well they’d played all week – if they hadn’t had the chance to battle it out for the trophy.

In the end, Burns handed out something of a demolition job by winning with five holes to spare, but both of those combatants can feel pretty good about their games heading to The Masters.

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Talk about leaving it all on the line….

The winner of this week’s Texas Open will claim one of the final spots in the field at Augusta, which was a path J.J. Spaun took full advantage of with victory in San Antonio 12 months ago.

That was his maiden PGA TOUR title, in which he overcame early final round nerves to become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2008 to win on TOUR with a double-bogey on their final round card.

Spaun then headed to Augusta and proceeded to finish T23 – a dreamy fortnight of golf.

It’s that motivational power that informs our sleeper picks for the Valero Texas Open, with most of the big guns in this field – Hideki Matsuyama, Tyrrell Hatton, Chris Kirk and Si-Woo Kim – assured of their place in the Masters field. As for everyone else, it’s open season.

TPC San Antonio is the kind of layout where opportunity can knock, with three of the last four winners here priced at 175/1, 175/1 and 200/1 with the sportsbooks. That in itself is a guide as to the mayhem that can unfold on this 7,438 yard stretch.

In benign conditions, this layout – like many of Texas’ finest courses – plays pretty easily, with some sizable greens and fewer hazards than have been present on much of the Florida Swing in the past month or so.

But a golf course with few trees that is located in an area famous for its strong wind….well, you can probably guess the rest. The forecast for this week is okay for the weekend, although the action could be rather frantic in the stiff breezes expected on Thursday and Friday.

Approach shots will be tough to keep on-line then, so a solid recovery game and/or putting from long range will be vital – perhaps that in itself is an explainer of why all manner of sleeper plays have prevailed here.

If there was to be any week on the PGA TOUR where you took a chance on a long-odds outsider or two, this is it. We’ve a fairly weak field meeting in Texas of which the better players have already booked their Masters berth, so instead we expect a short game shootout in San Antonio.

In that spirit, who makes the grade in our Valero Texas Open sleeper shortlist?

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Aaron Rai – 55/1 – When horse racing bettors handicap a field, they look at those that might not have necessarily won a race but performed well against a higher-grade opponent than they will face next time out.

It’s in that spirit we look to Aaron Rai this week. T19 at the PLAYERS and T29 at the Genesis are quality efforts given the elite nature of those events, and the assumption is that in weaker company – with a Masters place on the line – he could finish much higher up the leaderboard this week.

The Brit brings a birdie-making, tee-to-green game to Texas – that’s always a handy start – and his best putting performance since November last time out suggests Rai will compete at the Texas Open with renewed confidence.

Sam Ryder – 60/1 – It wasn’t all that long ago that Sam Ryder looked to be on the brink of winning a maiden PGA TOUR title at the Farmers Insurance Open.

A poor final round scuppered those hopes, but he’s since followed up with three top-20 finishes in five starts – Ryder’s form is holding, of that there’s no doubt.

Why? Because he continues to putt the lights out, and while sounder ball-striking is usually the key to success in golf, those that are solid on the greens and make plenty of birdies always have a chance in tournaments played on large putting surfaces.

Ben Martin – 75/1 – It was quite interesting to see that Ben Martin made just five bogeys all week at the Corales Punta Cana, but wasn’t able to get enough going to build on a final T8 finish.

He should build on the positives of another top-10 finish there to go with his T5 at the Honda Classic, and a solid cut made at the PLAYERS confirms the notion that Martin’s game is in a good place right now.

He’s made four straight cuts at TPC San Antonio with a top-10 in there for good measure, too.

Brandon Wu – 80/1 – This is a pick slightly from left-field in the sense that Brandon Wu’s SG data is all over the place right now.

In eight starts in 2023, he has only gained strokes on the field putting twice – but one of them was the mammoth +1.88 recorded at TPC Sawgrass in his penultimate outing.

Wu has gained strokes on approach in 5/8 including three times he was well over the +1.00 mark, and he’s also outperformed the field off the tee in five of them.

T2 at Pebble Beach, Wu banked consecutive top-20s at the Honda Classic and PLAYERS before missing the cut at the Valspar. But his numbers suggest another strong performance – at a venue where he won’t have to worry too much about chipping – could be in the offing.

Patton Kizzire – 90/1 – A fairly wretched start to 2023 for Patton Kizzire has been arrested of late.

Even though he didn’t finish high up the leaderboard at the PLAYERS, he did gain +0.89 strokes on the field on approach at TPC Sawgrass and +1.21 putting, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that he followed up a week later with a T10 turn at the Valspar Championship.

Comfortable on approach from the short grass or the rough, Kizzire is okay around the greens a solid long-range putter, so it comes as no shock to learn that he was T9 at TPC San Antonio in 2021.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the Valero Texas Open here.

Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2023)

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