Ryan Noonan
2 years ago
For those who are new, Vivid Picks is a simple fantasy sports game where you pick multiple players to go over or under their assigned line.
Even if you already bet or play other DFS-style pick-em games, Vivid Picks offers a few unique selling points:

Each week, I’ll be posting this free article with a few of my favorite plays for each tournament, some reasons why, and what I would play each leg to. Also, join our Vivid Picks Discord.
This line is a Betsperts Golf Special, boosted for us by our friends at Vivid Picks.
Xander Schauffele is the class of this field, but we’re asking a lot from him to post an opening round 67 (-4) on the heels of an emotional weekend at The PLAYERS.
Two major agronomic changes seem to have been made in response to the 2022 event being the lowest-scoring event 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. Add in a blustery weather forecast, and I’m not expecting a particularly low-scoring round on Thursday.
The first-round pin placements at Copperhead were not kind last year. Only two holes, the Par-5 1st and 14th, had a scoring average below par in last year’s opening round. We know that the Jordan Spieth “strokes gained magic” can happen at any point, but he’s just 46th in this week’s field in birdie or better rate on course with difficult scoring conditions over the past 12 months. He played well here last year but came to Innisbrook in incredible form, which is not the case this season. He missed the cut at last week’s PLAYERS, struggling with both accuracy off the tee and his approach play, which are two critical elements to success this week.
The week-to-week volatility of Min Woo Lee makes him a difficult target because the range of outcomes is so vast. He’s becoming more consistent, but his early career trends show that he’s a form player, routinely putting together a string of strong showings. He’s coming off of two middling performances at API and The PLAYERS, and he’s making his Valspar debut this week. This is routinely one of the most difficult courses on Tour to gain strokes off the tee, which is bad news for MWL since that’s his bread and butter. He’s also struggled to date over a small sample of rounds when the wind gusts kick in, as noted in the Rabbit Hole pick below. Our projections have Min Woo shooting an opening round 72 this week.
