Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2017 Valspar Championship

The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the Valspar Championship

The 2017 Valspar Championship Sleeper Preview

With a firm ‘thank-you, see you next year’ paid to all involved in the hugely successful WGC-Mexico Championship last week, the PGA TOUR returns to Florida for the Valspar Championship, a tournament that has been notoriously-difficult for bettors and fantasy gamers alike.

Former winners here since 2013 include the reigning champion Charl Schwartzel, who picked up his first win on U.S. soil in more than five years, as well as John Senden and Kevin Streelman, with winning scores ranging from -7 to -10.  Finding a successful sleeper to bet on is going to be tricky given that eclectic mix of champions.

With its ideal location in the schedule, it’s a shame that the field here isn’t stronger.  We’re just a matter of weeks away from The Masters, and the Florida Swing has proven very fruitful for a number of players down the years.  This time around, we have Henrik Stenson and Justin Thomas headlining, with Schwartzel accompanied by a fellow former champion here, Gary Woodland, and a litany of other hopefuls including Bubba, Berger, Billy Haas, Patrick Reed, and Ryan Moore, among others.  For the first time in weeks, picking a winner is a real head-scratcher, and this might be the time to give those talented youngsters you’ve been keeping an eye on your backing.

That task is not helped by the difficulty presented by this Copperhead course, situated at the Innisbrook Resort at Palm Harbour, Florida.  The standard holes play beastly – Schwartzel went round the Par 3s and 4s in +2 in his winning effort – so making the most of the Par 5s is key.  At 7,340 yards for its Par 71 this isn’t the longest track in the world, and with strategic hazards and tree-lined fairways plotting your way around is better than hitting it as far as you can off the peg and hoping for the best.

The weather is set to be fair, and that should at least help the players as they enter ‘the Snake Pit’; holes 16-18 which play as one of the hardest trios on the PGA TOUR; nerves will be shredded around here come Sunday.  The Par 4 16th is the hardest hole on the course with water left and trees right off the tee, the 17th is a Par 3 with a severely ‘shelved’ and undulating green, while a small landing area on the 18th fairway will test the bottle of anybody with one hand on the trophy.

So who has got the guts and the game to handle this extreme test of ball striking?  Let’s take a look at a few fantasy sleepers who can get it done this week.

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The Valspar Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

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The Valspar 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.

Byeong-Hun An – Vegas Odds 66/1 – A number of esteemed judges have been suitably impressed by An’s turns on the PGA TOUR this season, and what many don’t know is that while he is Korean by birth and spent his formative golfing years on the Asian and European Tours, he was actually schooled in California, so West Coast golf is nothing new to him.

His last three outings have yielded a sixth-place finish at the WM Phoenix Open, a cut made at Riviera, and T48 in Mexico which was blighted by a final round of 76.  But An’s tee to green game is excellent – he ranks 29th on Tour for SG: T2G and 12th for SG: Approach – and that’s not bad at all for a young guy still making his way in the game.

The Korean is a prodigious talent, and having witnessed his friend Jeung-Hun Wang win a couple of times over on the European Tour, he must be itching to get his hands on some silverware himself.

Sean O’Hair – Vegas Odds 70/1 – O’Hair hasn’t missed a trip to Innisbrook in 12 years, even allowing for his withdrawal last year.  The old-stager is a former winner of this event in 2008 and lost out on a playoff in 2015, so clearly it is a stretch he enjoys playing.

He’s gone a perfect seven-for-seven this season, with four of those yielding top-12 finishes at a handy ratio of 50%.  T9 and T11 back to back at the Sony Open and CareerBuilder Challenge caught the eye, as does a T11 at the Honda Classic, while a lowly finish in Mexico last week was going absolutely fine until a weekend of 75-76.

There is enough form here from O’Hair to suggest that another good Copperhead turn is in the near future.

J.J Spaun – Vegas Odds 80/1 – So many of the Web.com Tour graduates have impressed with their mature displays this season, but of all of them it is the fantastic all-round game of J.J Spaun that has really caught the eye.

The numbers stack up: 7/11 cuts made, two top-10s (Phoenix Open and Farmers), and a T21 return from the Honda Classic offer plenty of encouragement.  Cody Gribble and Mackenzie Hughes have already won this season, and Spaun may well be the next cab off the rank.

Statistically he’s not a player who blows the mind, but those finishes in his first full season on Tour speak for themselves.

Charley Hoffman – Vegas Odds 80/1 – It’s always nice to see prolific winners return to form and Charley Hoffman – a four-time PGA TOUR title holder – is bubbling up quite nicely at the moment.

Three missed cuts in a row at the start of the season have skewed his formline, but nuggets of encouragement – T17 at the Tournament of Champions and a T24 at the Phoenix Open – have retained our interest.

His best outing of the campaign came in his last start at the Genesis Open, where he carded a T4 finish at the ever-testing Riviera.

Innisbrook is similar, in some respects, and having gone 11-MC-25-75-14 here in his last five trips we’re hoping for a decent showing from the Hoff this week.

Jamie Lovemark – Vegas Odds 150/1 – We do like to support Lovemark in a wind-affected tee-to-green test, and at this kind of price we cannot afford to miss out.

He’s a Californian born and bred, so windy coastal golf is nothing new, and that is reflected in top-10s this season at the RSM Classic and the Sony Open.

His form since January has been largely disappointing, but a player who ranks top-75 for SG: Tee-to-Green and top-40 for GIR has to be worthy of consideration this week.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the 2017 Valspar Championship here.

Cover photo via Instagram