Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson

2023 AT&T Byron Nelson Fantasy Sleeper Report

It takes an extraordinary amount of character to get your round on track after shanking your opening tee shot miles wide of the mark – any golfer, professional or hacker, can tell you that.

So a huge amount of credit should go to Wyndham Clark, an 80/1 winner for this column at the Wells Fargo Championship who suffered the indignity of a first tee yank.

It wouldn’t take long before Xander Schauffele would overtake him at the summit of the leaderboard, but he isn’t always the tidiest of closers and Clark dug deep, found a bit of mental toughness and got back to work.

This was a performance of incredible poise and no little skill, and four birdies after the turn powered Clark back to the top as Schauffele got in his own way.

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A maiden victory is always a sweet one, but the manner in which Clark righted himself after his early error shows tremendous character – more titles will follow, you suspect.

But not this week. Clark will sit out the AT&T Byron Nelson, as will many of the big names in world golf with the PGA Championship just around the corner. Notables in the field include Scottie Scheffler, who might want to get some more feel in his approach play after disappointments of late, and Jordan Spieth, who rarely misses an opportunity to tee it up in his home state of Texas.

They will be the favorites to overcome K.H. Lee, a somewhat unlikely back-to-back winner of this event at TPC Craig Ranch. The Korean is a perfectly serviceable player, but he is not one that screams multiple-time champion – there must be something in the Dallas air….

TPC Craig Ranch is a golf course that does very little to promote the interests of the best in the business, with its wide-open fairways and huge greens taking away some of the skill element at the top of the game.

It is, as you’ve probably guessed, the host of the veritable putting contest, with those able to make hay on the Bentgrass surfaces the most likely to prevail.

There’s plenty of sand, Rowlett Creek that runs across 13 holes and a challenging Texan weather forecast that features wind and rain. But even so, winning scores of -25 and -26 at this venue in the past two years reveals all.

So who will outgun the field and make the most birdies at the 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson?

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Seamus Power – 50/1 – After going quiet since the start of March, Seamus Power followed an okay T46 at The Masters with a much better T18 at the Wells Fargo Championship.

That improvement has come about largely thanks to improvements on approach and on the greens, which are both welcome at TPC Craig Ranch, and ironically his main weakness of late – driving, having lost strokes to the field off the tee in four of his last five starts – won’t be such a hindrance in Dallas.

With a penchant for Bentgrass greens, Power’s record at TPC Craig Ranch – 17-9 – is indicative of his suitability for this assignment. 

Byeong-Hun An – 50/1 – It’s a long running joke – that Byeong Hun-An is on in, incidentally – that he’s a terrible putter.

And so it only takes an okay performance on the greens for him to thrive, thanks to the quality of his ball-striking – even with -0.22 putting at the Texas Open he was able to finish T6.

The irony is that he seems to be improving on the putting surfaces, ranking inside the top-20 on TOUR for Approach Putt Performance, One-Putt Percentage and Putts Per Round, so we can have some confidence in a player whose tee-to-green game remains very good indeed.

Taylor Montgomery – 50/1 – One of the more interesting stats on the PGA TOUR is Birdie Average, a rudimentary metric that reveals the best players in the world based upon how many birdies they make per round.

Nestled in amongst that group is Taylor Montgomery, who has a fondness for breaking par that is driven – pun intended – by long hitting and precise putting, with very little of quality in between.

He should therefore feel at home at TPC Craig Ranch given his skillset, and while his form of late hasn’t been great, a picture has emerged of Montgomery being able to succeed at very specific, i.e. easy, golf courses like that faced this week.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout – 66/1 – It really is eye-catching when a player makes improvements in a department they have previously struggled with.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout has had a sharp short game ever since his days on the DPM World Tour, but his approach play is really on the up as well now – he’s put up green numbers with iron and wedge in each of his last four starts.

The first of those was a very impressive T13 at the PLAYERS Championship, which was followed by a T19 turn in a classy rendition of the RBC Heritage. 

If Bezuidenhout continues to putt well to go with ball-striking gains, he could become a live contender on the PGA TOUR.

Chad Ramey – 300/1 – To be able to back a player who ranked second for SG: Approach in his last outing, amongst quality opposition, at 300/1 seems to be something of a gift no matter how Chad Ramey performs.

The strange thing is that his form has been good of late. Top-30s in the Valspar and PLAYERS Championship are perfectly acceptable when you consider the quality of the company he was keeping, and so too is T35 at the Wells Fargo.

Generally very solid on the greens, Ramey’s recent approach play ascendance really is of interest.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the AT&T Byron Nelson here.

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