Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2015 TOUR Championship

The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the 2015 TOUR Championship from East Lake GC

2015 TOUR Championship Fantasy Sleeper Preview

Going into the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, GA, the big question is whether anyone can catch the FedExCup leader and now World No. 1 golfer Jason Day.  The points will be reset going into this week, allowing anybody in the field to mathematically have a chance at grabbing the crown, but the top five players (Day, Spieth, Fowler, Stenson, Watson) can all still seal up the victory if they finish atop the leaderboard at East Lake.

Day has flown up to the top spot thanks to a recent tear in which he has won an amazing four times in his last six outings, one of which was the PGA Championship and two others which were FedExCup playoff matches.  He also finished in the top-10 at both the U.S Open and Open Championship over the summer.

The OWGR’s top golfer will be joined by 29 of the best players from this year’s PGA TOUR season each of who will be playing on the 7,307-yard, par-70 course for the 12th consecutive year dating back to 2004.  Since becoming the final event of the TOUR season, there has not been a single player to take down the trophy twice, with both Tiger Woods (1999, 2007) and Phil Mickelson (2000, 2009) being the only players to have won the FedExCup event on two separate occasions.  Both of those once elite players will not be in attendance as Jim Furyk, who is questionable to play at the time of this article, could surpass “Lefty” for the most consecutive starts here with 18 straight.

Last year it was a streaky player in Billy Horschel who was able to win for the second consecutive week when he grabbed the $10 million check after a three-shot victory over the likes of runners-up Furyk and McIlroy.  He used a score of 69 or better each day and won with a score of 11-under-par to be the third consecutive winner with a double-digit under par score after the victors from 2008-2011 failed to get out of single digits.

With the point reset there is a very likely chance that the person who wins this week will take home the ultimate crown, a feat that has been done so by the TOUR Championship winner at each of the past five installments.  It is not always the case, though, as evidenced by the last man that did it, Tiger Woods, with his runner-up finish in 2009, but it is a difficult task to complete.  In that scenario a player outside of the top-five would need all of the top guys to finish outside of the top-five, and with so much talent that will be tough.

Now let’s look at a few less popular names who could give a good run at completing this seemingly impossible task this week.

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2015 TOUR Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

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2015 TOUR Championship 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.

Brooks Koepka – Vegas Odds 50/1: The names on the list this week are not considered at most venues, but with sticking to the 50/1 or worse benchmark as our sleepers, American Brooks Koepka fits the bill.  He has little to no chance at winning the whole thing while sitting in 25th place and needing a win on top of a failure by Jason Day to finish 19th or better, but he has the skill set and talent to at least get the win over the four days.  The FSU graduate has spent plenty of this year at the top of leaderboards with eight top-10s in 22 attempts (36%), but has struggled lately with a missed cut in two of the three playoff events.  That should all change in his first visit to the TOUR Championship as the 25-year-old can rebound thanks to his ability to crush the ball an average of 308.7 yards (8th on TOUR) and is in the top-20 at GIR (69.77%, 16th on TOUR), stokes-gained putting (0.476, 18th on TOUR) and scoring average (69.790, 8th on TOUR).  With this skill set, he will not be held down for long and he has the chops to perform well in Atlanta this week.

Daniel Berger – Vegas Odds 66/1: Berger is the last rookie standing heading into the TOUR Championship and flew up to ninth in the rankings after a 12th place finish in the Deutsche Bank Championship and a runner-up performance last week in the BMW Championship.  He has not been as consistent this year as some of the others in the top-10, but has a total of 12 top-25s in 30 events despite missing the cut seven consecutive weeks heading into the second playoff match.  Berger is an all-or-nothing player right now at the young age of 22, but just like his fellow FSU compatriot, Koepka, this Seminole can crush the ball (302.7 yards per, 17th on TOUR) and hits plenty of GIR (68.88%, 31st on TOUR); allowing him opportunities each week to put up some big numbers.  He is undervalued at these odds with such a small field, despite how many elite talents there are.

Robert Streb – Vegas Odds 66/1: Although he’s not a household name (yet), Streb has been playing on the weekend more often than most other players and has made the cut in an impressive 24-of-29 events played in 2015.  This does not always dictate that a golfer has a huge year, but he has managed to turn more than half of those visits (15) into top-25s and showed he can perform among the best with an 18th place finish at the Open Championship, fifth at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and a 10th at the PGA Championship.  He has one win to date as well when he won a playoff at the McGladrey Classic and should use his batman-like utility belt of skills, which has him ranked in the top-40 in driving distance, strokes-gained putting, and GIR percentage, to get him into the next level of recognition after a solid showing here.

Jimmy Walker – Vegas Odds 80/1: Walker has made his living at the beginning of seasons, and in 2015 he was able to get two victories before April while recording all six of his top-10s before the Summer.  Since that point he has been less than impressive, making the cut in six-of-eight events, but failing to do better than 21st in any of them.  The 36-year-old hit the golf world by storm last year, finishing in seventh in the FedExCup standings, and has the ability to do well with a solid drive (302.0 yards per, 20th on TOUR) and TOUR-best strokes-gained putting mark of 0.767.  His odds warrant dropping a few units on him as he has come away from five tournaments with a win over the past two years.

Kevin Na – Vegas Odds 80/1: Even among a group such as this one, the 80/1 odds that Na is getting seem high as the 31st-ranked player in the Official World Golf Rankings has finished among the top-25 in half (13) of his 26 tournaments.  In the event, his flat iron aided him in putting 1.782 strokes better than the rest of the field as he hit better than 60% of fairways for the third consecutive time.  Of the names on this list he has had the most experience and success at being a consistent competitor on the TOUR and that will give him the edge even though Vegas thinks more highly of him than just two other players (Bae, Bowditch) this week.

Need a few more options to fill up your roster?  Remember to check out our new fantasy predictions stats page for Golficity Predicted Fantasy Points, Price Per Fantasy Point, and more info on every player in this week’s field!

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions?  Check out our full fantasy preview for the 2015 TOUR Championship here.

Cover photo by @bean9_24 on Instagram