Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2023 PLAYERS Championship

2023 PLAYERS Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

The reserves of talent on the PGA TOUR are so deep that nobody should fear golf becoming a closed shop at the top table.

It’s true that Jay Monaghan and co would like it that way – hence the increase of elevated events and the introduction of more no-cut fare, but players like Kurt Kitayama will continue to come along and spoil the party.

In fairness, Kitayama was already elite in the sense that he was ranked inside the world’s top-50 prior to winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but the manner in which he saw off the likes of Rory and Scottie – even accounting for a treble bogey on Sunday – shows that even the less celebrated types can win the most prestigious tournaments on the PGA TOUR rotation.

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Speaking of….it’s off to TPC Sawgrass this week for the PLAYERS Championship. A total prize pool of $25 million will concentrate the minds of the great and good once more.

It’s an elite field playing at an elite golf course. Regular readers of this column will have heard the name Pete Dye mentioned many times, but it’s at TPC Sawgrass where his legacy in the sport has been forged.

It’s a layout that bears many of his trademarks. Tree lined, doglegging fairways are tough enough to negotiate, and then there’s smaller-than-average greens – fast and pure with Bermuda overseeded with Poa – which are well protected by sand and water. 

Indeed, TPC Sawgrass features more water hazards than the vast majority of other PGA TOUR courses – is it any wonder that those capable of hitting the straightest approaches thrive the most here?

Cameron Smith scrambled, chipped and putted his way to glory here 12 months ago, but don’t forget that he ranked fifth for SG: Approach too – a metric that the two previous winners at Sawgrass, Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy, also thrived in.

Hitting accurate approaches from fairway and rough – the PLAYERS typically has a lower-than-average driving accuracy count – is one weapon that the winner will have to have in their armory, as well as quality from 100 yards and in; that’s a yardage of shot that is hit more often at Sawgrass than the majority of PGA TOUR layouts. 

So we know what it will take to win the PLAYERS, but who will go out and do it? The list of winners at Sawgrass reads like a who’s who of the sport, but if the wind does pick up here then the door opens for a shock, long-odds champion.

With all that in mind, who has made the cut for our PLAYERS Championship sleeper shortlist?

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Rickie Fowler – 55/1 – Hitting his approach shots so purely right now, Rickie Fowler is simply too hard to resist at these odds.

Yes, he regressed off the tee at Bay Hill last week, but Smith, Thomas and McIlroy have all shown that you can miss fairways at Sawgrass and still thrive.

Fowler knows where to miss, crucially, having won here in 2015, and while his overall record at Sawgrass is a mixed bag, it’s been a while since he travelled to Ponte Vedra hitting the ball as well as he is right now.

Sahith Theegala – 66/1 – Showing quality in all departments of late, it would be fair to describe Sahith Theegala as being on a par with – or perhaps better than – Kurt Kitayama.

Comparing individuals seems like a strange endeavor in golf, but the point is that if Kitayama can win an elevated event in a quality field, Theegala certainly has the quality to do likewise.

T4 at the Farmers and T6 at the Genesis are just two examples of his class, and with Theegala showing a fondness for slick Bermuda greens he has to be of interest this week.

Tommy Fleetwood – 75/1 – Ball strikers don’t come much purer than Tommy Fleetwood, and he has found enough in the last few weeks to suggest he can be a factor at Sawgrass.

He lost strokes on the greens at Bay Hill, which is a surprise for somebody who tends to be so comfortable on Bermuda, but Fleetwood’s long irons and short game are classy enough to circumnavigate some of those issues.

A return to the putting feel of the Genesis, where he gained +1.00 strokes on the field with the flat stick, would make the Brit a dangerous customer this week.

Wyndham Clark – 150/1 – If bombing off the tee worked for Thomas and McIlroy here, it could be the recipe for Wyndham Clark too.

Of course, he’s not in their class, but he has shown marked improvements in his approach game over the past few months, culminating in a whopping +1.90 gained on the field at Bay Hill.

Generally reliable around the greens too, Clark is another for whom a better week with the flat stick could see him net significant gains.

Davis Riley – 150/1 – There’s just something about these sets of conditions that speaks to Davis Riley.

T8 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational despite a lack of recent form, the challenge of approaching hard-to-hold greens seems to bring the best out of him.

Riley has banked top-10s at the Valspar Championship and Charles Schwab too – doglegs, small greens etc, and his ball-striking improvements, allied to a whopping +1.51 strokes gained putting last week on slick Bermuda greens, suggests he can go very nicely for his backers once more.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for THE PLAYERS Championship here.

Sleeper Report Predictions This Season (2022-2023)

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