Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2016 WGC-HSBC Champions

The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the 2016 WGC-HSBC Champions

The 2016 WGC-HSBC Champions Fantasy Sleeper Preview

The PGA TOUR will stay outside of the country again this week as they feature some of the best golfers in the world for the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghi, China.  The nearly 80-man field will be teeing it up at Sheshan Golf Club for the 11^th time in what is the 12^th installment of the event with 2012 being the only one played elsewhere.  The par-72, 7,266-yard course will take the players on a multitude of elevation changes and should present a nice challenge for the first World Golf Championship event of the new campaign.

As usual, the field will be strong with the invite list featuring only the top golfers in the Official World Golf Rankings as well as winners in the previous year’s majors and current top performers in the FedExCup, Race to Dubai, Asian Tour, Japan Golf Tour, PGA TOUR of Australia, and Sunshine Tour.  With that said, the group will be missing a huge name with OWGR No. 1 golfer Jason Day nursing a back injury while No. 4 Jordan Spieth will also not attend this tourney.

The the rest of the top-10; including recent FedExCup champion Rory Mcilroy, will be attempting to take an early season lead in the standings with a big win. There will be plenty of representation out of the local crop with six players from China joining the field, but it hasn’t been since Yang Yong-eun’s victory in 2007 that a golfer out of Asia took home the trophy here.

Last year, Russell Knox made some noise with his first career PGA TOUR win, kicking off what turned out to be a huge year for the 31-year-old out of Scotland as he distanced himself from runner-up Kevin Kisner and the rest of the field by two strokes.  His score of 20-under marked the fourth time in the past five years that the winner here reached 20-under or better, so there is plenty of scoring out there for these athletes.

With so much talent it would be no surprise if it took extra holes to determine a final winner, and in the first 11 years of this event this has been the case three times.  Bubba Watson was the last to do so in 2014 when an oddly poor score of 11-under was enough to get the job done after 72 holes and a one-hole playoff with Tim Clark.

The talent is always strong in an WGC outing and this week will be no different, so to call the following group of players, “sleepers,” seems unfair, but regardless the names below are getting less than stellar odds as they take on the elite of the game.  Each of these fantasy sleeper selections is working off of 50/1 or worse Vegas odds, but we feel that they should have a nice week and outperform their expectations.

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The 2016 WGC-HSBC Champions Fantasy Sleeper Report

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The WGC-HSBC Champions Fantasy Sleeper Report

Mix and match these players with your usual rosters (or play them separately) to get the most out of your picks this week.

Tyrrell Hatton – Vegas Odds 66/1 – Hatton is one of the newer faces in these big name tournaments, but he should not be underestimated with the current tear he is on.  He primarily plays overseas, where he is currently in fifth in the Race to Dubai after getting into the top-17 six times in his last 10 starts; including his first win at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.  The victory was no surprise as he had already proven himself in his last three major tournament appearances, tying for 25^th at the 2015 PGA Championship before finishing in the top-10 of both the 2016 Open and PGA Championship this past season.  In Europe, he’s ranked third with a scoring average of 69.91 in part to an all-around game which has him in the top-50 in GIR (71%, 35^th on TOUR), putts per GIR (1.75, 27^th on TOUR), and putts per round (29.2, 50^th on TOUR).  He came in 54^th here last year, but is almost a guarantee to have a better performance in the coming week.

Scott Piercy – Vegas Odds 66/1 – Piercy has scattered three PGA TOUR victories across his career and could have had a monumental 2015-16 campaign if not for Dustin Johnson.  DJ, the No. 2 golfer in the world, won both the U.S. Open and WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and in each of those tournaments—a mere two weeks apart—Piercy came in as the runner-up.  Scott eventually finished the year 37^th in the standings with just under $3 million in earnings over 24 events.  He has a long drive which went for an average of 297.9 yards last year (37^th on TOUR) and that has helped him in another great start in the new season.  The first two tourneys have each resulted in a top-10 with a third at the Safeway Open and 10^th at the CIMB Classic.  The fields at those outings were certainly not as strong as they will be t his week in Shanghai, but to shoot a combined 29 strokes under par in any two week stretch is impressive.  Piercy has averaged a finish of 28^th here over the past two seasons, but should be feeling confident to play well and notch a high finish in this WGC tournament.

Jimmy Walker – Vegas Odds 66/1 – Walker is always tough to figure out, and even though he took home the 2016 PGA Championship, he missed seven cuts over 25 events played.  The major win was his sixth PGA TOUR victory, so experience is certainly no issue, and he has visited this course twice recently, coming in 46^th in 2013 and 35^th in 2014.  The 37-year-old continues to get plenty of length off the tee (301.3 yards per, 24^th on TOUR) and can make his next shots count as evidenced by ranking 15^th in strokes gained in his approach to the green (0.580).  By no means is he a safe pick with a rather rocky track record overall, but he knows how to take down trophies in big events and will have the itch to win again after his trip to the winner’s circle at Baltusrol.

Lee Westwood – Vegas Odds 80/1 – Westwood’s career path has been quite an interesting ride and he is likely the most talented player out there who has not been able to grab a major win.  At 43-years-old and with 18 top-10s in the big events, he seems to be once again playing at a high level and currently ranks 10^th in the Race to Dubai while making 6-of-7 cuts—one being a runner-up in The Masters—in PGA TOUR events last year.  He is coming off a recent third in the British Open overseas where he has earned five top-10s in 20 tournaments and seems to be near the top of the favorites each and every week.  Westwood has been able to adjust well to a change in his game as he gets a little older and should still have the talent to compete in events such as this one.

Richard Bland – Vegas Odds 125/1 – Bland has played exclusively on the European Tour for the entirety of his professional career and up until this point has not made much of a splash since joining as a full-time member in 2002.  His best career finish in the Race to Dubai before 2016 was 65^th back in 2010 when he had two top-10s in 28 events, but he has seemingly improved something in his stroke and is tearing up the circuit.  He is currently in 25^th in the European Tour’s version of the FedExCup and has an average finish of 13.6 with three top-fives over his past seven tournaments.  Bland has missed a mere three cuts in 26 events this year and is 10^th in scoring average (70.29) because of his lethal putter (1.734 putts per GIR, 11^th on TOUR) and will likely go undervalued this week at Sheshan Golf Club.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the 2016 WGC-HSBC Champions here.

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