Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report

2023 Valspar Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

For a while there, it looked as though long-odds bettors might have something to celebrate as outsider Min Woo Lee bit at Scottie Scheffler’s heels at the PLAYERS Championship.

Very little separated them heading into the final round, but as so often happens on a PGA TOUR Sunday experience player a part – Scheffler has bags of it now despite being a relatively young man, while Lee is still making his way in the sport.

So perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that Min Woo fell away and Scheffler accelerated to the finishing line, continuing the long-stretch of short odds players winning.

But we might have good news on that front….

The Valspar Championship, this week’s final fling on the Florida Swing, is played at a tricky golf course (Copperhead at Innisbrook) and has a pretty weak field to boot, with even those at the head of the betting market having questions to answer.

Sam Burns was priced at 75/1 with the bookmakers when he won his first title here in 2021, while the likes of Adam Hadwin (80/1) and Kevin Streelman (200/1) have also obliged at lengthy odds. We can but hope for a repeat….

It’s easy to like the Copperhead Course, a classical tree-lined, doglegging design with the rough left up and small Bermuda greens. It takes a strong performance to win here.

Burns has done exactly that twice now, following up his maiden triumph with victory in a playoff over Davis Riley last year, while Paul Casey is another recent-enough double champion here.

The key is taming both ends of the scorebook. There’s five Par 3s at Copperhead, and four of them can be described as challenging – hitting approaches into small greens from 200+ yards is rarely a doozie.

At the other end of the scale, the four Par 5s are there for the taking, so again hitting quality approaches from 200+ yards – if laying up has been ruled out – is the order of the day.

Burns, bizarrely, took completely contrasting routes in his two victories here. In 2021 he simply bombed and gouged his way to the W, recording just 58% GIR, whereas last year his ball-striking was exemplary.

Since the pandemic year of 2020, when the Valspar wasn’t played, the two winning scores here have been -17 – much lower than Copperhead usually allows for. We’ll have to see if that trend continues this week.

Either way, we’ve armed ourselves with a handful of ball-striking beauties for our Valspar Championship sleeper shortlist.

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