Valspar Championship Cheatsheet: Bets, Picks, Weather, DraftKings Notes
VALSPAR QUICK BETS
Conners +2500
Burns +3500
M. Kim +4500
N. Hojgaard +9000 (With 5 Places)
Riley +11000 (With 8 Places)
K. Yu +11000 (With 8 Places)
FIRST ROUND LEADER
Riley +8000 (With 5 Places)
Yu +11000 (With 5 Places)
Phillips +14000 (With 5 Places)
Valspar Championship Final Bets, One and Done & Weather
Corey Conners +2500 — I ended up up with a bad number because I fired before seeing the tee times. It happens. And look, he likely won’t make enough putts to win, BUT WHAT IF HE DOES???? As long as you miss in the proper spots, Copperhead is actually quite easy to scramble from green side, so that’s a bonus for him. After showing inconsistent irons to start the year, heading to Florida solved all those problems, and he’s averaging 9.5 SG: T2G over this two starts. And maybe it helps him there are so many missed short putts at this course. He was probably going to miss them anyway. Now others will too.
Sam Burns +3300 — Don’t look at his stat page, I beg you, it’s so bad it may cause Bonus Eruptus. A terrible disorder, where the skeleton tries to leap out the mouth, and escape the body. Don’t want that. Burns’ irons have been pathetic for a while now. Call it a gut thing. He’s got the better tee draw, is still driving it great very other weeks and his putting from scoring range (5’-15’) has been the best in the field in 2025. He’s gained on approach in his past 4 visits to Copperhead so maybe he can maybe he can resuscitate his irons at a happy place. Fortunately, bad irons have had a lot of success (ie. Taylor Moore) since Valspar can end up becoming a scramblefest.
Michael Kim +4500 — If not now, when? MK has the preferred weather draw and enters second the field T2G over the past 24 rounds. He’s already sniffed a win in Florida twice, against a slightly weaker field this week, it’s his time.
Nicolai Hojgaard +9000 (With 5 Places) — Prior to the PLAYERS Nicolai was lapping the competition on approach and his putting. If he can get back there and not drive it into the wood every second hole he’s super live.
Kevin Yu +11000 (8 Places) — There’s been a direct correlation between success at Sanderson Farms and Valspar over the years, and it goes beyond Sam Burns and Peter Malnati who have won both events. So let’s ride with long shot Kevin Yu who hoisted the Rooster trophy during the swing season, has the preferred weather wave, and enters gaining with his irons in 8 straight events to open 2025.
Davis Riley +11000 (8 Places) — A former playoff loser to Burns here, last year’s Colonial winner (another place Burns has won btw) is actually playing some consistently good golf entering Tampa. That’s not normal for Riley so ride the wave. A good luck for Houston next week too.
Sam Ryder +17500 (8 Places) — Two of Ryder’s best third career putting performances have come that this course the past two years (+10.6 in ’24/+8.1 in ’23). He hasn’t done much with it, but he enters with very solid iron from in 2025 and actually figured out his driver at Sawgrass en route to a T14. He’s the long shot I like at Valspar.
HOT LINKS
Valspar Championship Picks, Bets, One and Done + PLAYERS Recap
MARCH MADDNESS BRACKET PICKS
Valspar Championship Picks, Research, Course Preview, Guess The Odds
MAJORS-ONLY PGA Best Ball Draft Strategy & Major Eligibility List
SCHEDULE NOTE: Houston Open Picks with Fienberg won’t be out until Tuesday next week. Monday will be a Majors Preview with Geoff and Cust. Which I’ve already filmed and am pretty sure is the best show of the year.
WEATHER
There’s a pretty distinctive tee time split at Valspar, at least that’s what the forecast shows. Currently the AM/PM times shock receive a big advantage as the wind seems to die midday Friday allowing the afternoon Friday group to go take target practice on a wet course. Even the books are taking this super seriously. Betting odds immediately shifted the moment the tee times came out. I can’t recall such a dramatic shift, made ever.
But I do there are outs for the weather to flip, or potentially be very little advantage. First, there’s a ton of wind all day Thursday. The morning gets lower sustained, but still gusts over 20mph, it’s not like it’ll be easy for them. Secondly, there’s rain forecasted through out the day. While it doesn’t seem like a lot, any sort of delay can potentially flip the wave advantage. I point you to the 2022 PLAYERS Championship as exhibit A. Lastly, the one I think is most important, you’re fading the PM/AM guys because the cold/wind Friday morning. What if — and I know it’s impossible because a weather forecast two days out is always correct — the worst of the wind just moves up three hours into overnight/very early morning and all of Friday is an eve playing field? I do think it’s more likely it doesn’t, but calling it a certainty is crazy. Below I’ll talk about my DraftKings strategy to try and leverage this theory.
WIND TOWER: Tarpon Springs / Rolling Oaks
DRAFTKINGS
I build 50 lineups this week: 30 AM/PM; 20 PM/AM. If you’re not prepared to light some money on fire then maybe don’t try this out. But I’m going hard at the bad wave in hopes the splits aren’t as dramatic as it would indicate. We’re already seeing a complete ownership shift to all the AM guys leaving some very good players wildly under owned. If the PM wave is able to tread water and not get blown up, your lineups will have a substantial advantage vs a large fields on the weekend since so many will have similar AM/PM lineups you’ll be rolling dice with a 3v3 (at best) in all your good lineups.
Sia and I discussed all of this at length on the show Wednesday…
Valspar Championship DraftKings Picks, Lineups, Weather
Here’s who I used in my player pool for the bad side stack in case you want to know which players will miss the cut by 10 strokes.
GET 20% OFF FANTASY NATIONAL STATS/TOOLS TODAY!!!!!
For AM/PM lineups you need to find creative ways to get different. For me, I just full faded Xander/Tommy and started most lineups with Straka and Burns. Stupid? Probably. But I feel like that’s a better path to the top if it’s those guys who hit. Tommy, Straka and Michael Kim are shaping up to be the most owned, so I need to push someone to the side or else I’m going to have exactly the same lineups as everyone else. I’m also using goobers like Matt Wallace for this reason in the low 7s too.
