Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – THE PLAYERS Championship

THE PLAYERS Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

It’s amazing how often a 72-hole golf tournament can hinge on a single hole.

At the sixteenth hole on Bay Hill on Sunday, Russell Henley found the fairway, couldn’t find the green with his second shot, but made perfect amends with his third… chipping in for eagle.

Collin Morikawa, top of the Arnold Palmer Invitational leaderboard at the time, made a hash of his long game, recovered well, but then missed his birdie putt to result in a two-shot swing between him and Henley.

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With both making par at 17 and 18, it meant that Henley hoisted the trophy… while Morikawa was left to rue another missed opportunity to win on American soil. His last victory in the United States came way back in 2021, which is a remarkable anomaly for a player of his talent. 

But getting back in the saddle is key, and both Henley and Morikawa will be back at it in Florida this week for the PLAYERS Championship. Known anecdotally as golf’s ‘fifth major’, there won’t be any LIV members in the field at TPC Sawgrass, but otherwise this is as good as it gets from a PGA TOUR perspective.

You’ve got Scottie Scheffler, closing in on an incredible three-peat at the venue – something that has never been achieved before. Then you have another former PLAYERS winner in Rory McIlroy, last year’s runner-up Xander Schauffele, the red-hot Collin Morikawa… and the list goes on.

The challenge that stands before them is TPC Sawgrass, one of the most iconic golf courses on the PGA TOUR rotation and perhaps Pete Dye’s finest hour in a design career packed full of them.

Found in Ponte Vedra, Florida, TPC Sawgrass is a layout that – despite being more than 40 years old – has rarely yielded to out-and-out birdie fests. It’s clever routing, with no two consecutive holes playing in the same direction, ensures the players never get too comfortable in the Floridan trade winds… according to the early forecast, those could be considerable over the weekend.

Doglegging fairways and thick tree lines prevent the field from hitting bombs off the tee, so this is a layout that remains resolutely less-than-driver in nature. That puts a particular focus on approach play in the short iron and wedge department, as well as an ability to chip and scramble well when greens in regulation are missed.

The Bermuda greens are overseeded with Rye to create a pure putting surface, but sunny spells and strong winds could render them rock-hard and super-fast.

The Florida Swing is often predicated on the breeze, and the early forecast suggests that wind speeds could peak at over 20mph at the weekend. If they do, a particular kind of player – the resilient, grinding types will likely come to the fore. And that could change the nature of our bets.

So, with that in mind, who makes the grade in our sleeper shortlist for the ever-challenging PLAYERS Championship?

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Sepp Straka – 50/1 – Silky iron and wedge play do much of the heavy lifting around TPC Sawgrass, and therefore Sepp Straka – one of the best in this department in world golf over the past year – has to be a person of interest.

The Austrian is producing the best numbers of his career in 2025, which has yielded a win at the American Express, a T7 at Pebble Beach, and three other top 20 finishes… and that’s in the space of just seven outings.

Any doubts about his short game can be somewhat assuaged by the fact that he has T9 and T16 finishes to his credit at TPC Sawgrass in just four visits – Straka clearly ‘gets’ this place.

A three-time winner on the PGA TOUR, Straka’s next mission will be to win a Signature Event or a biggie – outside of the majors, they don’t come any bigger than the PLAYERS.

Tony Finau – 60/1 – One of the curiosities of TPC Sawgrass is that it’s such a tough place to conquer year after year. For example, if we told you that Rory McIlroy has as many missed cuts here as top 20 finishes, would that put you off backing him?

Probably not, and so we can somewhat discard the issues that the likes of Tony Finau have faced here.

He’s finished T19 and T22 at this venue, in amongst some missed cuts and other weak performances, but in theory Finau has the right profile for TPC Sawgrass. Putting the driver away helps him to hit more fairways, and his iron and wedge game cannot be questioned.

Finau is clever around the greens too, and while his relationship status with his putter remains complicated, if you track his form on the greens since the summer he has been good more times than he’s been bad.

His performance at Bay Hill, backed by T5 at the Genesis prior to that, suggests that Finau is knocking on the door of golf’s elite once more.

Daniel Berger – 60/1 – Given that he’d only played Bay Hill twice over the past decade, Daniel Berger’s T15 turn was an excellent turn.

It was the fourth outing in a row in which he’d gained strokes on the field in all four of the main departments, which confirms that Berger is somewhere back to his best… and loving the Florida Swing again, as he always has.

His neat and precise game is ideal for the unique stresses and strains of TPC Sawgrass, so it comes as no great surprise that in seven trips to the venue, Berger has finished inside the top ten twice and T13 on another occasion.

Given how well he’s playing right now, he would expect an improvement on that this week.

Jason Day – 60/1 – Of all the players in this field that have made double-figure appearances at TPC Sawgrass, Jason Day has the best scoring average of the lot of them – that includes Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth, Justin Rose and more besides.

The Australian simply loves it here, winning in 2016 and compiling three other top tens and two T19 returns. More curious is that you wouldn’t necessarily say that TPC Sawgrass is the ideal venue for Day’s occasionally wayward ball-striking, so that makes his repeat form here even more eye-catching.

Rarely off the front page of the leaderboard at Bay Hill, Day ranked first for DataGolf’s ‘Great Shots’ metric… and that certainly has to count for something.

Si Woo Kim – 60/1 – In eight trips to TPC Sawgrass, Si Woo Kim has never missed the cut; an extraordinary feat, when you consider that the likes of Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele have missed the weekend on nine occasions between them.

The Korean has managed to parlay that consistency into a win in 2017, plus two other top ten finishes here, which is remarkable given that he remains maddeningly inconsistent elsewhere.

But victories in the correlating Wyndham Championship and Sony Open assert Si Woo’s suitability for these unique conditions, and an uptick in his ball striking of late – which has led to a series of sneaky good finishes – could carry him to yet another strong turn at TPC Sawgrass this week.

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

Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2024-2025)

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