Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – Safeway Open

2018 Safeway Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

Good luck to all involved at the Safeway Open in replicating the drama of the Ryder Cup!

Of course, this Fall Season is designed to act as a wraparound for more exciting fare in the New Year, but punters enjoy weak field events as they tend to serve up opportunities for some big wins.

At roughly this time during the last season we saw Ryan Armour, Patrick Cantlay, Austin Cook and Patton Kizzire all win at odds of 50/1; indeed, Armour was top-side of 150/1!

Chances for a big winner abound then, it’s merely a question of ploughing through this Safeway Open field and seeing if we can uncover any betting value.

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What are we looking for? Players who have shown a little bit of form heading into the culmination of the 2017/18 campaign. Even if they didn’t battle through to the TOUR Championship, we would still expect those who are confident to enjoy playing at a fairly benign Silverado Resort course in Napa, California.

That said, the weather forecast is a bit fruity, with rain anticipated in the build-up and some strong winds expected to pepper the players throughout the week.

You probably know the drill with West Coast by now, but those winds are often a factor as are the Poa Annua greens, which the pros reliably inform us have a completely different feel to Bermuda and even, to some extent, the more comparative Bentgrass.

It’s not a particularly long layout, with some tight-ish fairways and a handful of dog-legging holes. But really, this is Fall Season golf, so the players won’t be expecting anything too taxing.

A couple of guys who clearly like it around here are Brendan Steele and Emiliano Grillo. The former is a dual champion here, having first won in 2016 and successfully defended 12 months later. Grillo, the 2015 winner, was in the mix after 54 holes last year too, so it would be fair to say that Silverado is a track that some have the pin in the map for all year round.

Long, straight hitters tend to thrive here, but all sorts of players have succeeded. Last year we saw an abysmal tee-to-green week from Phil Mickelson (not unlike his Ryder Cup efforts last week, some might say), and yet his putting was so good he still got into the mix with a T3 finish.

On the other hand, Steele delivered a ball striking masterclass, and simply had the job of nudging in some short distance putts, such was his mastery.

As we say, this Silverado course is a tough one to dissect, but we’re happy enough to be backing long hitters who can take advantage of the four Par 5s to compile a winning total in the mid-teens.

Easy, right? Let’s find out with our fantasy sleeper picks for the Safeway Open.

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The Safeway OpenFantasy Sleeper Report

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The Safeway Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

Sangmoon Bae – Vegas Odds 50/1 – Our first play is a guy you may had forgotten even existed.

Bae burst onto the scene in 2012-13, where he made a playoff at the Transitions Championship before winning the Byron Nelson Championship. He followed up a year later by winning this event too, then known as the Frys.com Open.

Unfortunately, mandatory military service in his South Korean homeland scuppered his plans for world domination, but the 32-year-old returned to full time golf in 2017 and has found his mojo once more, winning the Web.com Tour’s Albertson Boise Open.

The reason we’re sweet on Bae is that he is a prolific winner. He’s got 14 titles to his name in Asia and three in the US, and that’s a pedigree that few in this field can match.

Peter Uihlein – Vegas Odds 55/1 – Followers of the European Tour may remember Peter Uihlein as the ‘nearly man’ who banked stacks of top-10 finishes but couldn’t get over the finishing line.

He remedied that, to some extent, by winning the Web.com Tour’s Nationwide Children’s Hospital Open last year, and that marked the 29-year-old as one to watch.

A consistent debut season on the PGA TOUR took him all the way to the BMW Championship, where he nearly forced his way into the TOUR Championship reckoning, and the fact that six of his last twelve rounds have been 68 or lower is eye-catching given that all have been made in FedExCup events.

As horse racing punters know, often a step down in class – which is what this is for Uihlein – can yield results.

Chris Kirk – Vegas Odds 55/1 – Brendan Steele has turned the Safeway Open into an event where classy ball strikers, who struggle to get the job done elsewhere, can get their hands on a trophy.

You might argue that Chris Kirk is cut from a similar cloth, and the four-time PGA TOUR winner will be desperate to end a title drought that spans more than three years.

Keegan Bradley showed the way for the slightly older guard at the BMW Championship, and you wonder if Kirk’s time is nigh given that he hasn’t missed a cut since April!

He’s just a really solid player, and if that putter hots up – as it did for Bradley – then you have one serious contender on your hands.

Cameron Davis – Vegas Odds 66/1 – The Class of 2018 from the Web.com Tour will reveal themselves in more detail in the coming weeks.

Some will fade into obscurity, but you can rest assured that others will follow the likes of Schauffele, Cook, Wise and Murray into the PGA TOUR rollcall of winners in good time.

Possibly one young man who will make that leap is Cameron Davis, a supremely gifted Australian who should thrive in windier events given his southern hemisphere upbringing and prodigious length off the tee.

He’s won the prestigious Australian Open – a huge deal for Aussie players, and took the spoils at the Nashville Open in May.

A finish of T39 on debut at the British Open confirms the fact that Davis one to keep an eye on this season.

Ollie Schneiderjans – Vegas Odds 66/1 – Long touted as one of the next big talents off the US golf production line, things haven’t quite gone too plan for Schneiderjans.

That sounds quite harsh, given that he’s made plenty of cash and played some sublime stuff in the past couple of years, but historians only remember trophy-winners and that is something that eludes the 25-year-old.

But he could be an ace in the pack this week if the wind gets up. He’s got plenty of prior California form here and in both the Genesis Open and Farmers Insurance Open, and earlier in the 2017-18 campaign he banked top-10s at the notoriously breezy Sony Open and Phoenix Open.

His low stinging drive, which shapes from right to left, could be a real advantage at Silverado.

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

Sleeper Report Predictions Last Season (2017-2018)

[skill_bar heading=”Total Top 3s” percent=”2.33%” bar_text=”5 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 10s” percent=”9.77%” bar_text=”21 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 25s” percent=”26.51%” bar_text=”57 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Winners Picked” percent=”2.32%” bar_text=”1 out of 43 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Runners-Up Picked” percent=”4.65%” bar_text=”2 out of 43 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Made Cuts (Includes Sleepers)” percent=”67.91″ bar_text=”146 out of 215 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″]

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