Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – Sanderson Farms Championship

2019 Sanderson Farms Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

These are halcyon days for players on the PGA TOUR who aspirations of landing themselves a nice new trophy, a handsome paycheck and lots of FedExCup points that could well prove to be all-important come the end of the season.

Exhibit A is Joaquin Niemann, who finally cashed in on his promise shown last season to land his maiden PGA TOUR title at last week’s A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier.

The Chilean had shown plenty of clues last season that he was a champion-in-the-making, but at just 20-years-old you never quite know if a player has the maturity and calm under pressure to take care of business.

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Well, now we know that Niemann is very much the man for the job, and this will surely be the first of many PGA TOUR titles to come his way over the next decade or so.

The young gun will head to Jackson, Mississippi this week for what is the second event of the Tour’s Fall campaign: the Sanderson Farms Championship.

This is a tournament that has ever really enjoyed any prominence in the PGA TOUR schedule, and for years it was an alternate event to other more high-profile affairs.

But as of 2019, it has been given its own chance to shine as a standalone competition, although nobody seems to have told any of world golf’s stars – many of whom are off trying their luck at Wentworth at the BMW PGA Championship. 

So the field is rather sparse at the Country Club of Jackson this week, with the likes of Brandt Snedeker, Lucas Glover and Brian Harman headlining alongside a myriad of Korn Ferry Tour graduates and PGA TOUR journeymen.

So what awaits them in MS? Well, the Country Club of Jackson is not what we might call premium golfing real estate, and its traditional parklands look and feel ensures the course does not stand out for any particular reason.

It’s a Par 72 measuring around 7,400 yards, with a quartet of Par 5s offering plenty of scoring potential. The average winning score here in the last four years has been -20, which gives you an idea of what the players can expect.

There are trees and water hazards but they don’t offer too much peril off the tee, although the rough should be avoided such is its thickness. The Bermuda greens are, by and large, a generous size that run reasonably quickly, and with no complexity from tee-to-green this is your archetypal putting contest.

With that in mind, who makes our list of Sanderson Farms Championship sleepers?

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A Sanderson Farms Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

Austin Cook – 50/1 – A talented youngster who won the RSM Classic in 2017, Austin Cook has really struggled to follow up that career highlight.

Indeed, the 2018-19 season was one he’d be inclined to forget, but there were some green shoots of recovery towards the end of the campaign.

His T4 at the Barbasol indicated he still has the game to get into the mix of weak-field tournaments, while last week’s T14 at the Greenbrier suggested that hard work on the range is paying off.

Cook putted very nicely, so if he is feeling good about his game then why can’t he contend this week?

Denny McCarthy – 50/1 – We can call Denny McCarthy the best putter in world golf; he did rank number one for Strokes Gained: Putting on the PGA TOUR last season, after all.

That highlights both the strength and weaknesses of his game: if McCarthy is so good at putting, how come he hasn’t performed better on the PGA TOUR?

It’s a fair question, and the answer is simple enough: his lack of length off the tee, and relative mediocrity with his irons, prevents him from compiling a winning score.

So, we won’t be backing him in a higher quality event than the Sanderson Farms, make no mistake, but a player with a T7 finish here 12 months ago – who ranked tenth in the season-long rankings for Birdie Average – has to be respected.

Wyndham Clark – 70/1 – There is something of the Cameron Champ, our defending champion, about Wyndham Clark.

Incredibly long off the tee but with a surprisingly deft hand on the greens, Clark didn’t match up to the exploits of Champ last season but still enjoyed a decent enough debut campaign on the PGA TOUR.

A trio of top-10 finishes, headlined by T5 at the 3M Open, highlights what the 25-year-old is capable of, and he himself will be hoping for more forays into the business end of events in the 2020 campaign.

The icing on the cake is that Clark finished second at Victoria National, our correlating course, in 2018.

Richy Werenski – 100/1 – When a player’s best performances on the PGA TOUR have come in the Barracuda Championship, the Barbasol and the CareerBuilder Challenge, you know they look forward to and thrive in weak-field events.

Richy Werenski has recorded top-10s in all of those, including a play-off defeat in the Barracuda back in 2017.

He’s a former Korn Ferry Tour winner who has been in good touch of late, following up his T7 in the KF TOUR Championship with an excellent T3 at the Greenbrier last week, where he excelled on the greens in particular – a handy primer for success this time around too.

Mark Hubbard – 125/1 – There’s a couple of good reasons why Mark Hubbard can fly this week.

First of all, he’s in excellent form: T10 at the Greenbrier (+0.97 on the greens) following solo fourth in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Albertsons Boise Open.

Then there’s his record in the south: T3 in the Nashville Open last season follows T19 in the Houston Open – still one of his best paydays from a past stint on the main Tour.

And then there’s his T2 finish at Victoria National back in 2014; it’s all very handy evidence indeed.

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

Sleeper Report Predictions This Season (2019-2020)

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Cover photo via Instagram