Valspar Championship

Odds to Win Tournament

The PGA continues its Florida swing of the season when they head to Palm Harbor for the Valspar Championship. This is a fairly new event as it was founded back in 2000 and has been held annually since then at the par-71, 7,340-yard Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club. Scores have become increasingly hard to come by here in the past few years with the winner doing worse in each successive season since Gary Woodland posted a 15-under in 2011. Last year it was Aussie John Senden who held off Americans Kevin Na and Scott Langley for the win. He shot a score of 7-under over the four days of the tourney, posted the lowest round of the week with a 64 on Saturday and tamed the “Snake Pit” for two birdies on the final day of competition. Only two players (K.J. Choi and Retief Goosen) have earned the trophy here multiple times and eight of the 14 champions have been from other countries besides the United States. It should be an exciting field to watch as Henrik Stenson and Adam Scott stay in Florida to compete here and join Jim Furyk, Justin Rose and Jordan Spieth to round out players from the top-10 of the Official World Golf Rankings in the field. Besides that just three other golfers (Matt Kuchar, Patrick Reed and Jamie Donaldson) will be competing from the top-25 in the OWGR. Now let’s take a look over some players who could do really well this week and bring home a win come Sunday.

Jim Furyk: The Valspar Championship is one of 16 tournaments that Furyk has won over his tremendous career, doing so with a score of 13-under par in 2010. Since then he has continued to play solid golf at Innisbrook with a top-20 finish each year and also was the runner-up in 2012. Furyk was the best scrambler on tour last year after being successful in 69.3% of his opportunities and he already has a scrambling percentage of 66.7% on the year. He has dotted the top of the leaderboard in each of the first three events he’s played in this year so far, placing no worse than 14th, and seems poised to earn his first win since 2010 in Palm Harbor this week.

Daniel Berger: Berger is the newest phenom on what is becoming a young man’s game with super-athletic newcomers poised to rule the game. He showed his ability on the main stage when he took on Paddy Harrington in a playoff at the Honda Classic, eventually losing, but showing that his first win is not far off. It wasn’t his first solid showing, though, and he has six top-25’s and three top-10’s in 11 events this year. His combination of total driving (93, 8th on tour) and scrambling (62.8%, 53rd on tour) should give the 21-year-old the power and finesse that it takes to win on this course.

Harris English: English missed his last cut at the Honda Classic, but had made it to the weekend in each of the previous six tourneys and included both a third and second-place finish. He’s long off the tee (299.5 yards per, 27th on tour) and has a scrambling percentage of 65.6% (27th on tour) which allowed him to get a seventh-place finish at this event back in 2013. He’s been a consistent competitor on tour over the past three years with a total of 13 top-10’s since the start of 2013 and while he only has two victories, he should always remain a threat to put up some low numbers and this week is no different.

Justin Leonard: Leonard is a long way away from being the player who has won on the tour 12 times in his career and he hasn’t done so since 2008. While he hasn’t played to the top of his game, he’s always put up solid efforts at Innisbrook and has three top-30 finishes in the past four years; including a fourth in 2013. His scrambling (68.5%, 10th on tour) and driving accuracy (67.9%, 22nd on league) show that he is still an extremely talented golfer and could put up his best effort of the year this week.

Boo Weekley: Weekley is having a great start to the year and has already nearly matched his winnings from last year and has three top-10’s in his first eight events after getting just one such finish last year in 24 tourneys. The three-time PGA Tour winner is coming off a solid tie for sixth at the Puerto Rico Open when he shot 69-68 on the weekend. He hasn’t performed particularly well here recently, with a missed cut in 2012 and an 84th-place finish last year, but he showed he can tame Innisbrook with a runner-up performance in 2013 where he shot an amazing 63 on Sunday and nearly overtook Kevin Streelman. His amazing ability to dominate the courses with strokes gained tee-to-green (1.22, 10th on tour) and finesse with a 64.3% success-rate scrambling (30th on tour) will give him every opportunity to string together some nice holes and low scores.