Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – WM Phoenix Open

2024 WM Phoenix Open Fantasy Sleeper Report

Even if it gets forgotten in the annals of time, you’ll never take Wyndham Clark’s round of 60 at Pebble Beach away from him.

It’s the best score ever recorded at one of America’s most storied venues, and it was enough to catapult Clark to victory after tournament officials deemed it too unsafe to finish the event on Sunday or Monday in strong winds and heavy downpours.

It was a bad luck for the PGA TOUR given the fanfare they have made over their Signature Events, and begs the question why they weren’t more agile on Saturday when the weather was fair – given the smaller field, they could have easily played 36 holes with a shotgun start.

Embed from Getty Images

That’s not ideal, by any means, but it’s perhaps better than the alternative of a 54-hole tournament. Clark won’t care, by the way – he’s delighted to get his hands on a third title in less than a year.

Onwards we march. Even though the Waste Management Phoenix Open isn’t a Signature Event, it sure feels like one with a quality field and a host course, TPC Scottsdale, that is the closest golf will ever get (Ryder Cup aside) to a ball game atmosphere.

This is the most attended golf tournament in the world – more than 250,000 patrons pass through the door of the Arizona venue, with 20,000 or so seated in The Coliseum; the infamous stadium that bedecks the sixteenth hole. There is, for better or worse, no ambience quite like it in golf.

The sixteenth is the meat in a tasty sandwich for fans of tough closing stretches. The fifteenth at TPC Scottsdale is a risk-and-reward Par 5, while the seventeenth is golf’s answer to a siren on the rocks – a drivable Par 4, but one where the water hazard is so in-play that it has literally ended the title dreams of a handful of players in the past decade alone.

The eighteenth requires two quality shots to make GIR, and that is the overriding them at TPC Scottsdale: quality.

Five of the last six winners of this event have been major champions, with a healthy smattering of US Open and Masters victors in that group – you might argue that those are the two toughest majors to win.

Many of the past Phoenix Open champions share a similar trait: they are immaculate ball-strikers and metronomic from tee to green, with the Bermuda greens running so smooth as to give everybody a fair shot with the flat stick.

It takes a classy operator to get the job done at TPC Scottsdale, and this is a field packed with them. That’s not usually a recipe for success for longshot backers, although Nick Taylor – the closest to Scottie Scheffler at the top of the leaderboard 12 months ago – was available at 150/1, so there’s hope.

Scheffler will be looking for a three-peat having also prevailed in 2022, so can any of our sleeper plays dethrone the champion? Let’s find out who we’re backing in our 2024 Waste Management Phoenix Open sleeper shortlist.

You must be a Premium Member to view our exclusive fantasy golf picks.

Already a member?  Sign in Here.

Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the WM Phoenix Open here.

Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2024)

Cover photo via Instagram