Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2023 RBC Canadian Open

2023 RBC Canadian Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

The sporting world is awash with stats, data and metrics these days, but all those numbers count for nothing if the players/teams involved don’t use them wisely.

For Viktor Hovland, his link-up with fellow pro and esteemed statistician Edoardo Molinari yielded an elephant in the room: the Norwegian is not, it’s fair to say, particularly good at chipping. And so he simply has to stop short-siding himself.

It was that gold nugget that prompted the lightbulb moment that would ultimately win him last week’s Memorial Tournament: he needed to stop attacking pins, particularly those posted on the edges of greens, and instead play the percentages.

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And it worked. With typically excellent ball-striking and an improving putting stroke, Hovland snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after Denny McCarthy failed to make the par at the last hole that would have secured his maiden PGA TOUR title.

Instead, on the first playoff hole, Hovland’s conservatism and superior approach shot would land him a fourth PGA TOUR title and a first at Jack’s Place, Muirfield Village.

We are T-minus nine days or so from the U.S. Open, but the TOUR’s next engagement is a return to Canada for, yep, the Canadian Open.

Sports bettors will be rolling their eyes in frustration that we have a completely new course, Oakdale Golf & Country Club, to contend with. This layout has never hosted a professional tournament of any consequence, so we’re taking a stab in the dark as to what will be required.

At 7,264 yards for its Par 72, we know that Oakdale is short – although some of that is caveated by the fact that there’s just a trio each of Par 3s and Par 5s and some 12 Par 4s. Interestingly, four of five of those will measure shorter than 400 yards, so the strategy and bravery of the players could be tested.

For the most part, we expect the field to club down off the tee – an approach play shootout from around the 75-125 yard will go a long way to determining who wins this week.

Your guys will need to be able to putt well on Bentgrass/Poa mix greens and compete in what are expected to be cool, blustery conditions – other than that, we’ll all be learning as we go.

Rory McIlroy leads the field as he seeks a bizarre three-peat that spans two different decades and a potential three different courses – he won the Canadian Open in 2019 and 2022 (the middle years wiped out by Covid) at Hamilton and St George’s respectively.

Otherwise, Sam Burns is creeping into form, home favorite Corey Conners could be there or thereabouts and a handful of Brits – Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose – will be hoping that they can prep for the U.S. Open in the finest fashion.

But who makes our sleeper shortlist for the 2023 Canadian Open?

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Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2023)

Byeong Hun An – 50/1 – The good times keep on rolling for Byeong Hun An, who you sense is on the cusp of a concerted run at the top of a leaderboard.

The Korean’s results aren’t quite reflecting the quality of his tee-to-green performances, although a run of T6 at the Texas Open, T14 at the Byron Nelson and a pair of top-25s in his last two outings is credible enough.

An ranked tenth in the field tee-to-green at the Memorial Tournament to go with excellence off-the-tee and on approach in recent weeks and months. His game is very much trending in the right direction.

Sam Stevens – 90/1 – One of the longest drivers around, Sam Stevens also has a happy knack of finding fairways too – if Oakdale suits his eye, he could find himself with stacks of birdie opportunities if his wedge game is on point.

Having gained strokes on the field in five of his last seven strokeplay starts, the insinuation is that Stevens is in confident mood with iron and wedge in hand, so he can be picked to contend – remember, this is a player that has solo second and T3 finishes to his name on TOUR this season.

Stevens’ best putting performances this term have come on greens with some Poa content to them, so that’s another feather in his cap.

Aaron Rai – 100/1 – Although he’s had a penchant for missed cuts of late, when everything clicks in his game Aaron Rai is still a formidable character.

T13 at the Charles Schwab Challenge, where he gained more than +2.50 strokes on the field with his ball-striking, is a reminder that short and technical tracks are perhaps where Rai’s main strengths lie.

A player that finished T19 at the PLAYERS Championship in March should feel very comfortable amongst the much lower-grade of company here, and it’s also worth remembering that Rai finished T13 at St George’s last year.

Lee Hodges – 110/1 – Talk about your game clicking.

In his last two starts, Lee Hodges has gained +1.42 and +1.25 on the field on approach – the latter of which, T12 at the Memorial, saw him close out with a round of +4, which indicated how well he was playing up until Sunday.

The plot thickens as we note that Hodges’ best putting performances this season have come on Poa overseeded greens, so here’s a player with plenty of upside at a price that can be described as very agreeable.

Vincent Norrman – 110/1 – Early on in his PGA TOUR career, Vincent Norrman was a bomb-and-gouge merchant with little finesse to his game.

But the 25-year-old is clearly learning his craft and has started to add quality in his approach play too – the Swede has gained strokes on approach on the field in his last four strokeplay starts.

That has led to T8 at the Byron Nelson and T18 at the Mexico Open, with Norrman bringing to mind another big hitter whose all-round game improved: Cameron Champ. He’s won three times on the PGA TOUR now, and Norrman will be hoping to make similar progress.

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

Cover photo via Instagram