2024 Valspar Championship Betting Card Picks and Preview
Ryan Noonan
2 years ago
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.
Scoring opportunities are few and far between here, and each hole can be won or lost from the tee. Finding the small poa trivialis 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, mainly 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 again this year as well, so the winning score will remain closer to -10 than what we’ve seen in the years prior to last year’s change.
For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview. It’s the best in the business, bar none. Here’s an important tidbit about Copperhead at Innisbrook Resort:
There have been two major agronomic changes that seem to be in response to the 2022 event being the lowest scoring in this tournament’s history. The first is that the PGA increased the rough height from 3″ to 3.75″. Secondly, the intermediate cut of rough around the greens was decreased from 72″ to 21″ to bring the rough closer to the greens.
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.
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.
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There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. Remember to check out the Rabbit Hole, our customizable stat database that can help you pair down your player pool each week.
Please take advantage of the Discord feature and community. It’s the best way to get up-to-the-minute lines and advice, and if you need help getting started, please reach out. That’s where my full card will be posted, along with any live in-tournament bets. Betting markets are fluid, but I’ll note the best number available at the time of this writing.
*Betting lines are accurate at the time of publication.