Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2017 Safeway Open

The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the 2017 Safeway Open

The 2017 Safeway Open Fantasy Sleeper Preview

The wraparound season can feel like a slightly desolate time, with many of the world’s best players deciding to put their feet up a little bit and reflect on another long and gruelling campaign.

That lets others have their moment to shine, and this time last year some young bucks really made the most of their opportunity. Justin Thomas claimed what would be the first of his five PGA TOUR titles at the CIMB Classic, while Cody Gribble was the first of a hatful of Web.com Tour graduates to land their maiden win last season at the Sanderson Farms Championship.

The Safeway Open is the first event on the calendar, and an eclectic field will be looking to achieve a tasty payday as well as bank some very early FedExCup points at a Silverado course that is there to be tamed.

Paul Casey of England plays his shot out of the bunker on the 16th…

Paul Casey of England plays his shot out of the bunker on the 16th hole during the final round of the Safeway Open at the North Course of the Silverado Resort and Spa on October 16, 2016 in Napa,… Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

It’s short at 7,200 yards for its Par 72, with generous-sized albeit sloped greens offering a welcoming landing zone on approach. With hot weather forecast for Napa Valley, the idea will surely to be to get as close to the green as you can in regulation so that the next iron shot is as short as possible – these greens are going to be hard to stop and hold on.

Last year 12 of the 18 holes played under par for the duration of the week, with the four Par 5s comfortably so. Making hay on the longer holes will be crucial to success at Silverado.

Brendan Steele captured the title 12 months ago with a score of -18, and the story of his week was of all-round excellence: he ranked top-25 for the four most basic metrics of Driving Distance (T23), Driving Accuracy (T5), Greens in Regulation (T21), and Putts per Round (T8), so even though proven quality in this field is thin the 2017 champion will still have to play good golf to get over the line.

This is the kind of event where sleepers and longshots can thrive – Patton Kizzire, Michael Kim, and Johnson Wagner all made it into last year’s top five at 100/1+, so who are we backing for success this week?

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2017 Safeway Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

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The Safeway Open 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.

Martin Laird – Vegas Odds 50/1 – The Scot is excellent off the tee and tends to putt well on Poa Annua – it’s no wonder he’s bagged a pair of top-ten finishes at Silverado in his last trio of visits.

Laird ranks seventh on tour for Total Driving in 2017 and has posted top-10s on the Poa Annua here and at Riviera (the Genesis Open), which is a pair of handy angles in.

He qualified for the FedExCup and made a decent fist of things – a T20 at the Northern Trust propelling him all the way to the BMW Championship, where he just missed out on a place at the TOUR Championship.

Laird hasn’t won since the Texas Open of 2013, but then Brendan Steele ended a trophy-drought dating back some five years here 12 months ago. Could lightning strike twice?

Chez Reavie – Vegas Odds 50/1 – One of the factors that stops Chez Reavie making more waves on the PGA TOUR is a lack of length off the tee, but at courses where accuracy is at a premium he tends to thrive.

So a fair enough chain at Silverado of 22-17-53 will hopefully be bolstered by some outstanding golf in the past four months or so – no coincidence when you consider the number of Par 70s and shorter tracks in the second half of the campaign.

Reavie’s fine form started at the St Jude Classic with T4, and pretty much continued from there. There was a pair of major top-25s to enjoy (T16 at the US Open, T22 at the PGA Championship), as well as fine showings in two of the FedExCup playoffs (T10 at the Northern Trust, T12 at the BMW Championship).

It’s been almost a decade since Reavie won on the PGA TOUR, but he has amassed fourteen top-10s in that time with four of those coming in 2016/17. Perhaps he’s about to reach his peak at the tender age of 35?

Luke List – Vegas Odds 60/1 – Is 2017/18 the season where Luke List goes from being the ‘stat darling’ of the PGA TOUR to a bona fide winner?

How can a guy who ranks fourth for Driving Distance, 13th for SG: Tee to Green, 27th for SG: Approach, 14th for Greens in Regulation, and first for Par 5 Performance not feature more readily at the top of leaderboards?

There is one definite reason – he can’t putt for toffee, and one possible reason – a lack of confidence – for that, but perhaps having the ability to wipe the slate clean and start again during the wraparound will give List the boost he needs.

During the early stages of last season he went 13-13-7-15-2-26, so a streak of quality form is certainly not beyond him, and while he closed out the campaign in rather tame fashion he did actually finish in fine style with a T20 at the BMW Championship.

Harold Varner III – Vegas Odds 80/1 – It was roughly at this time of last season that HVIII claimed the first big title of his career: the Australian PGA Championship, and he’s another player who would have added to that collection if he could just putt a little more consistently.

But as we’ve said countless times before, that little hot streak can come at any time, and with prodigious ability to make birdies HVIII has to come into the reckoning this week. He ranked fifth from tee-to-green here 12 months ago on his way to a T15 finish, so all we’re asking for is a steady week with the short stick and a repeat (or better) of that performance.

He actually ended the season in decent enough fashion with T10 at the Wyndham Championship and T20 at the Northern Trust, before bowing out of the FedExCup with T47 at the Dell Technologies where he posted two rounds of 67.

Aaron Wise – Vegas Odds 150/1 – We couldn’t end this column without backing a Web.com Tour graduate – they have such a rich history of performing well in these wraparound events – and of the bunch Aaron Wise is right up there.

Statistically he was a beast on that particular tour this year, ranking third for Birdie or Better Percentage, fifth for Par 5 Scoring Average and ninth for overall Scoring Average.

That led to a fine campaign which yielded six top-25s from 16 starts, with two top-10s and a first professional title at the Air Capital Classic in June.

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

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