The PGA Tour puts a bow on the Florida swing this week with the Valspar Championship. Located in Palm Harbor, Florida, and played on the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort, Copperhead is often described as one of the Tour’s most trying tracks. Best known for the “Snake Pit,” the three-hole finishing stretch that can alter the scoreboard quickly, Copperhead plays fast and narrow. The elevation changes and tree-lined fairways make it play more like a Carolina course than your prototypical Florida course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scoring opportunities are few and far between here, and each hole can be won or lost from the tee. Finding the small Bermudagrass greens in regulation is a difficult task here and nearly impossible if you’re not in the fairway, so I’m putting a premium on ball striking this week. The unique dispersion of holes on this 7,340-yard Par 71 track is something to factor in as well, with five long Par-3s on tap each round, along with a shorter group of Par 4s, mostly in the 400-450 yardage range. I’m putting a premium on long iron play, focusing on golfers who thrive in the 200+ yard approach range. They’ve grown the rough out this year as well, so I think we’ll see the winning score closer to -10 than what we’ve seen in years past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more course details, check out Ron’s<\/a> course preview<\/a>. It’s the best in the business, bar none. Here’s an important tidbit about Copperhead at Innisbrook Resort:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two major agronomic changes for this year’s tournament that seem to be in response to last year’s Valspar being the lowest scoring in this tournament’s history. The first is that the PGA has increased the rough height from 3\u2033 to 3.75\u2033. Secondly, the intermediate cut of rough around the greens was decreased from 72\u2033 to 21\u2033 to bring the rough closer to the greens.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Off the tee (OTT), players are only hitting fairways at a rate of 57.3%. With fairways averaging only 28 yards wide, they rank as the fifth-most narrow on Tour. Because of this, along with the numerous doglegs and forced layups that demand positional golf, players are forced to take less than driver. This results in a 34% relative decrease in average Driving Distance all the way down to 276 yards. Pebble Beach and Harbour Town are the only courses with a lower distance off the tee.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n By sacrificing distance for accuracy off the tee, players will have approach shots of greater than 175 yards 52% of the time. They will need to be strong with their mid-to-long irons to have any chance for success. Approach play grades out as massively more important than any other area this week, with the last five winners finishing at an average of sixth overall in that metric. Innisbrook is most definitely a true second-shot course.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n My goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, so I’ll share my opinion on the best way to bet on each golfer in my player pool at this week’s event. When pricing out finishing position bets (T5, T10, T20s, etc.), I’ll often lean towards BetMGM<\/a> even if there’s a better number elsewhere because of MGM’s advantageous dead-heat rules. So know the rules of the books that you’re betting on! <\/p>\n\n\n\n