Valspar Championship: Trend Table
The last of the Florida Swing
After a thrilling come from behind victory from no-namer Scottie Scheffler at The Players Championship, we head to Palm Harbor, FL and the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort to wrap up the events in Florida this year.
Copperhead is a challenging course, not long by any measure, and is a course that demands elite accuracy and approach skills. Going into the player pool, we’ll be looking for strong approach/ball strikers with high end accuracy and go from there.
But, as always, we must take a peek at who is trending with their games, who isn’t, and Luke List (still catching strays even though he isn’t in the field this week).
Bronson Burgoon! Always a good sign that I know what I’m doing when he tops yet another trend table. He let us down in Mexico, but he is pretty solid accuracy wise and has solid approach and ball striking numbers.
I’ll be interested to see where Brice Garnett comes in click wise. He’s $6,200, just won the Puerto Rico Open and logged a T-35 on Sunday at The Players which was actually tracking for a T-26 if not for a water ball on 17. If it’s anything under 5%, probably should be a name we stay on top of.
Jimmy Stanger played well at Puerto Rico and should have likely been in the playoff against Garnett & Barnes.
Zach Johnson is $6,000 and has quietly made 3 cuts this year out of 4 events. He’s elite accuracy wise, ranking 21st on Tour this year in Driving Accuracy (per PGA Tour) and has decent course history, albeit missing the past two cuts.
Lee Hodges is another bargain bin player - $6,600 - that’s had a mixed bag this year, missing a couple of cuts, some by a large margin, but also placing T-24 at Genesis, T-12 at Arnold Palmer & T-35 at the Players. That his putting is coming back to life is an excellent sign & if he can keep the ball in the fairway, he gives himself an opportunity.
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Nico, Ghim, and Chan Kim are three names that jumped out at me as players I know have been playing well.
Sam Ryder performed well here last year, but has middling history otherwise.
Alexander Bjork has been… so-so at best this year, but is second on Tour in accuracy.
Glover creeping up is interesting as I thought pretty immediately that he’d be a good course fit here.
I wonder if Joel Dahmen gets some steam being ultra popular among fans and golf folk with the Full Swing success (and a top 11 finish last week at The Players).
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Lord, won’t you please release me from my Greyson Sigg addiction
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I think Carson Young is a good course fit here and no one in this section really scares me away based on where they sit.
Here is where it starts to get dicier.
Keith Mitchell is interesting because he’s such a good driver of the ball. Completely ejected himself on Sunday last week.
If you haven’t seen the video of Adam Hadwin just losing his mind and chucking his club into the water last week, it’s absolutely hysterical and you should watch it. Been there, bud.
Rai is deadly accurate, so again - course fit. We’ll see how the rest shakes out, though, as the surrounding numbers give pause.
Sungjae, again, is creeping closer and closer to positive trends. His patented game is finding him again and he rose 38 spots in accuracy rating this past week alone with a strong showing at Sawgrass.
Justin Thomas - are we starting to lose you again, sir?
Well this is a nice old bucket of slop.
A little surprised to see Kevin Yu & Sepp Straka down here. We’ll have to see what the player pool spits out.
Zac Blair is the most accurate player on Tour, but no idea if he has enough game anywhere else to be seriously considered.
I wonder if people are going to continue to chase Eric Cole & Adam Svensson.
More to come this week.