After a grueling and extended PLAYERS Championship, the Florida Swing concludes with the Valspar Championship. Located in Palm Harbor, Florida, and played on the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort, it is one of the most complete tests of golf players will face all year.
Featuring narrow pine tree-lined fairways and rolling terrain, combined with the surrounding lakes, proper positioning off the tee is paramount. The increased number of trees and elevation changes make it feel as if one is in the hill country of North Carolina. As course architect, Larry Packard, said himself back in 2012:
When you play Copperhead you don’t even feel like you are in Florida. When you stand on the first hole and look down the fairway you are on an elevated tee and looking down the fairway lined with pine trees on both sides. It feels more like the Carolinas than Florida.
The makeup of the par-71 course is also far from traditional as there are five par-3s along with four par-5s. The course culminates at the infamous “Snake Pit” with two difficult par-4s sandwiched between the challenging par-3 17th.
Check out my entire in-depth course preview here.
With the Masters fast approaching, golfers have limited time left to fine-tune their skills for the first major of the year. Even so, with the PLAYERS event dragging into Monday, numerous players have already withdrawn, including the likes of Paul Casey, Joaquin Niemann, and Maverick McNealy. Nevertheless, the Strength of Field rating of 411 is still above average as Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa, Brooks Koepka, and numerous other highly-ranked players will still be competing at Innisbrook.
DraftKings DFS Strategy
With a three-headed monster on top of the double-digit pricing tier, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, and Collin Morikawa stand a good distance above their peers in this week’s DraftKings contests. Thomas is my favorite in this range, though I will be playing the other two. With a lack of depth and quality options in the value range, playing two of these top golfers leave you with few good choices and very weak overall lineups. My preferred method of attack is either starting lineups with one of the top three and then spreading it out with consistent cut-makers like Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Adam Hadwin, or starting in the $9,000 range with Jason Kokrak and Abraham Ancer and filling with similar “high-safety” options. Unless you have a conviction (which I do) on potential value plays like Vaughn Taylor at $6,700 or Andrew Putnam at $6,600, I would stay far away from the $6,000 range.
Remember, this is a very tough course. Boring “par” golf is good. Fairway finders, long-iron maestros, scramblers, and cut-makers should be our main targets.
Winds appear to increase on Friday afternoon, possibly making a PM/AM wave stack advantageous. As always, monitor the weather right up until that moment when you are putting in your lineups on Wednesday night.
Player Selection
Each week this section will contain three main categories. They are my “Core” plays, my “Price Range” plays and my “Biggest Fades”. For those of you new to some of that DFS verbiage, a core play is a golfer I will include in larger portions of my lineups. They will always be among the handful of my overall top plays for the week. A typical core contains anywhere between 2-4 golfers. After you establish your “pool” of players (the group of players you choose from to build your lineups with at different ownership percentages) for the week, you then surround that core by mixing and matching your other players from varying price ranges. A “fade” is a player you are choosing to either be underweight on compared to the field or not play at all.
In the player picks below, unless otherwise specified, the numbers next to each of the categories or metrics is their ranking in this field out of 144 total golfers over the past six months. The “Core 4” most important stats for the event will always be included among the stats chosen. Own % is referring to the estimated amount each player will be owned in the typical DraftKings contest. For this week, with more bogeys made here than anywhere, my “Safety” ranking is included, which also consists of cut-making %, Fairways Gained, Good Drive %, SG: P from inside ten feet, 3-putt avoidance, and Scrambling/ARG.
Core Plays
Jason Kokrak
- Price: $9,200
- Own: 17%
- Model: 4
- SG: APP: 30
- SG: OTT: 42
- Scoring: 19
- Safety: 4
- Core 4: 9
- Recent Form: 27
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 17
Abraham Ancer
- Price: $9,300
- Own: 17%
- Model: 9
- SG: APP: 44
- SG: OTT: 7
- Scoring: 56
- Safety: 30
- Core 4: 21
- Recent Form: 51
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 98
Adam Hadwin
- Price: $7,700
- Own: 16%
- Model: 6
- SG: APP: 8
- SG: OTT: 34
- Scoring: 30
- Safety: 2
- Core 4: 8
- Recent Form: 28
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 61
Upper-Tier Plays
Justin Thomas
- Price: $11,000
- Own: 18%
- Model: 1
- SG: APP: 4
- SG: OTT: 31
- Scoring: 4
- Safety: 5
- Core 4: 5
- Recent Form: 1
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 1
Viktor Hovland
- Price: $10,800
- Own: 18%
- Model: 2
- SG: APP: 1
- SG: OTT: 3
- Scoring: 2
- Safety: 27
- Core 4: 4
- Recent Form: 2
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 2
Louis Oosthuizen
- Price: $9,000
- Own: 12%
- Model: 7
- SG: APP: 61
- SG: OTT: 13
- Scoring: 8
- Safety: 24
- Core 4: 38
- Recent Form: 15
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 12
Mid-Range Plays
Keegan Bradley
- Price: $8,400
- Own: 19%
- Model: 13
- SG: APP: 3
- SG: OTT: 27
- Scoring: 7
- Safety: 36
- Core 4: 28
- Recent Form: 3
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 14
Gary Woodland
- Price: $8,500
- Own: 13%
- Model: 15
- SG: APP: 9
- SG: OTT: 95
- Scoring: 25
- Safety: 50
- Core 4: 24
- Recent Form: 22
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 15
Alex Noren
- Price: $8,700
- Own: 11%
- Model: 16
- SG: APP: 22
- SG: OTT: 41
- Scoring: 31
- Safety: 7
- Core 4: 1
- Recent Form: 8
- DraftKings Pts Gained: 37
Value Plays
*In order of preference
- Christiaan Bezuidenhout, $7,900
- Aaron Wise, $7,700
- Martin Laird, $7,200
- Mackenzie Hughes, $7,800
- Patton Kizzire, $7,00
- Mito Pereira, $7,200
- Brian Harman, $7,600
- Vaughn Taylor, $6,700
- Andrew Putnam, $6,600
- Denny McCarthy, $7,400
- Lanto Griffin, $7,400
- Pat Perez, $6,900
Biggest Fades
- Dustin Johnson, $10,200
- Brooks Koepka, $9,400
- Jason Day, $8,900
Featured Image Credit: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images