After an exciting (and for some, heartbreaking) conclusion to the PLAYERS Championship, the Florida swing comes to an end on the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour transitions to the 2024 Valspar Championship on the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort. As always, here is your early deep dive on the 2024 Valspar Championship and a preview of how to bet.
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2024 Valspar Championship Preview
The Field
Highlighting the field is Xander Schauffele. Xander is fresh off another blown lead late on Sunday at the PLAYERS Championship. Xander had a sloppy two-hole stretch at the worst possible time, carding two bogeys in a row to fall one shot short of Scottie Scheffler. However, Innisbrook is a ball-striker’s golf course, and he’s hitting the ball great. If he can shake off the loss quickly, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t lap the field at the 2024 Valspar Championship.
Other notables in the field include Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Tony Finau, Sungjae Im, Brian Harman, and Cameron Young.
For the full field, click here.
The Golf Course
The Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club opened in 1970 just north of Tampa, FL. The club has four golf courses on the property, with the most famous being the Copperhead Course. All four golf courses were designed by a man named Larry Packard. He may not be the most recognizable architect in the United States, but he has a remarkable story.
During the Great Depression, Larry Packard became passionate about agronomy and landscape architecture. One of his first jobs was planting grass along a two-mile runway at the Westover Field Air Base. The precision and care he took in planting it were noticed by the U.S. Government, and soon enough, he was contracted to plant grass at several of their military bases.
He was also very influential in devising breakthrough camouflaged techniques for the air bases during World War II to prevent enemy attacks. He did such a good job that pilots often admitted they had trouble finding the runways to land. It seemed as though Packard was destined for a career role in the United States Military.
After the war ended, however, Packard launched himself into golf architecture under the tutelage of Robert Bruce Harris. Over the next 50 years, Packard built over 350 golf courses, with a significant concentration in Chicago and the surrounding Midwest.
But of all the golf courses he designed, the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort is by far the most famous and his crowning achievement:
One of the most interesting features of the golf course is its hilliness and elevation changes to it. That’s not something you typically expect from a Florida resort course. But the Copperhead Course offers some pretty good elevation changes tee-to-green, both uphill and downhill. It’s not dramatic by any means, but it certainly differentiates itself from most other flat golf courses in the state.
The golf course also utilizes doglegs very well. Only one hole on the golf course (#10) doesn’t have some semblance of a dogleg characteristic in it. Packard also did a very nice job utilizing water hazards, tree lines, and bunkers around these doglegs to make for a challenging tee shot that demands accuracy.
In addition, Packard’s hallmark signature on a golf course is the double dogleg, which is on full display on the Par 5 14th hole:
The double dogleg is now a popular feature in golf architecture, many of which are seen on Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. For most, the double dogleg turns the Par 5 into a three-shot hole. But for those looking to take on more risk, there is an opportunity to shorten it up by hitting two precise shots over the trees.
For most of the last decade, the Valspar Championship was one of the toughest-scoring tournaments on the PGA Tour. From 2013-2019, the winning score only eclipsed past -10 once. But in 2021 and 2022, Sam Burns won the Valspar Championship with a winning score of -17. And what once was a tournament with the field average score over par, it has played under par in those two events.
In 2023, though the tournament wanted to get back to its tough roots. There were a few changes made to the golf course in order to beef it up. First, the rough was lengthened to 3.75″, which is 0.75″ longer than before. In addition, the intermediate cut around the green has shrunk from 6 feet in width to just under 2 feet to bring the rough closer to the greens.
That, along with some tough weather conditions, seemed to do the trick. Taylor Moore won the 2023 Valspar Championship at -10, and the scoring average on the week was +0.92. With some gusty conditions in the forecast again for 2024, expect similar results in terms of scoring at the 2024 Valspar Championship.
Betting Strategies
To begin the betting strategies for the 2024 Valspar Championship, here is general information about the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook.
Yardage: 7,340 Yards
Par: 71
- There are five Par 3’s and four Par 5’s on the Copperhead Course, yielding a par of 71.
Fairway Width: 25-30 yards
- Several landing areas are pinched in with bunkers and water hazards to make the hole play even narrower.
Average Green Size: ~5,822 sq. feet
- The greens are a little smaller than PGA Tour average. There’s a decent mix between flattish greens and heavily contoured ones. Some greens might play much smaller due to its contouring (for example, Holes 17 & 18)
Agronomy
- Greens: Poa Trivialis Overseed
- Fairways & Collars: Ryegrass Overseed
- Rough: Ryegrass Overseed – 3.75″
As mentioned earlier, this will be the second year of higher rough at the Valspar. In addition, the cool and wet weather has been great for thick ryegrass growth.
Past Champions
- 2023: Taylor Moore (-10)
- 2022: Sam Burns (-17, Playoff)
- 2021: Sam Burns (-17)
- 2020: COVID 19 (Death and Destruction)
- 2019: Paul Casey (-8)
Average Scoring
- 2023: +0.92
- 2022: -0.76
- 2021: -0.06
- 2020: N/A
- 2019: +0.91
The changes to the golf course, along with some windy and rainy weather, seem to have restored the difficult nature of the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook.
Strokes Gained Difficulty Rankings
Here are the difficulty rankings of each stroke gained category at Innisbrook of all golf courses played (including majors) since 2015. There have been 88 golf courses played during that period.
- Off-The-Tee: 4th
- Approach: 21st
- Around-the-Green: 70th
- Putting: 27th
The biggest takeaway from these statistics is how difficult a driving course Innisbrook is. It has ranked as one of the three toughest driving courses on the PGA Tour every year since 2015.
The utilization of dog legs and narrow fairways pinched in by bottlenecks, bunkers, and water hazards make this a very difficult golf course off the tee. As such, target golf reigns supreme on the tee box. A longer hitter can attempt to hit over the dog legs on a couple of holes, but overall, everyone plays tee shots to the middle of the dog leg.
In order to accomplish that goal, players typically club down to ensure they’re in the best position off the tee. Since 2015, the average driving distance is only 276.9 on all tee shots. That’s the 7th shortest average of all golf courses played since 2015. While the average drive has crept up a couple yards since 2015, Innisbrook is definitively a less than driver golf course.
Even though players often club down, players miss fairways at a high rate. The average driving accuracy rate since 2015 at Innisbrook is only about 57%. That is well below the PGA Tour average.
The approach shots are also difficult. Players are hitting into small greens, sometimes significantly contoured to shrink the targets even more. And they’re often from long range (more on that below) and a significant amount of time from the rough.
And because of all that, there actually isn’t as big of a penalty for missing a fairway at Innisbrook as there is at other golf courses. There’s only about a 0.38 stroke difference on a hole between hitting approach shots from the fairway and not. That’s only the 48th most penal golf course for missing a fairway since 2015.
That’s a reason why the historical green in regulation rate is only 57%, 10th lowest since 2015. Shots from both under 150 and over 150 yards are harder than the average PGA Tour venue. Overall, Innisbrook is a tough ball-striking golf course.
It’s also not a golf course that’s easy to putt on. While some greens are relatively flat, others are significantly contoured. They’ll run around 12 on the stimpmeter, which is about PGA Tour average. But if the golf course gets a little bit of wind, it’ll be tricky to putt on the greens at Innisbrook this week.
Predictive Skillsets
Here is the relative skillset chart of the characteristics that are most predictive of success at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook (per DataGolf). This chart previews the types of players one would expect to do well at the 2024 Valspar Championship.
The Copperhead Course is a ball-striker’s golf course. Players who are not hitting the ball well are quickly weeded out. The golf course commands precision and great ball-striking to get around it well. That’s why players who either are great ball-strikers or are trending up with their ball-striking ahead of the tournament have done so well.
It also isn’t a golf course that favors power. As discussed earlier, there are several holes that players are forced to club down and play target golf. While recent winners like Taylor Moore and Sam Burns possess a lot of pop off the tee, other shorter hitters who rely more on consistent ball-striking were hot on their heels.
In Tournament Success
Here is a chart showing how players have separated themselves from the field at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook when compared to the average PGA Tour golf course over the last three years (per DataGolf).
This shows what skill sets are more rewarded in the tournament in order to fare better or worse than the field. And it’s a preview of what to expect at the 2024 Valspar Championship.
2023
2022
2021
Last week at the PLAYERS Championship there was a stark difference in how golfers were able to separate themselves in the field when the golf course had shorter rough and when they grew it out. With longer rough, TPC Sawgrass heavily favored consistent and accurate ball-striking much heavier than prior years.
But at the Valspar, the change of growing out the rough from 3 inches to 3.75 inches didn’t appear to have a big effect on how golfers separated themselves from the pack.
While there was a huge deemphasis in distance last year, that was consistent with prior Valspar Championships. Surprisingly, there was a lack of correlation overall between how well players did tee-to-green and what the predictive skillset charts suggest.
Overall, it seems as if before the tournament, golfers who are great ball-strikers and efficient tee-to-green players are expected to play the best at Innisbrook. But in the tournament, it is typically decided through one’s putting. How do we square this?
One theory is that golfers who are hitting it quite well will rise to the top of the leaderboard. However, the outcome of each shot they hit is relatively the same as the players they’re competing against.
Everyone is generally hitting it to the same spots off the tee, which means players aren’t separating themselves as much from others. It can be difficult to get the ball close to the hole with approach shots, and they often time miss greens. And getting up and down greenside isn’t all that difficult.
As such, bettors should trust the predictive skillset chart to create a pool of players who are striking the ball well. After that, narrow down the list to players who are capable of making clutch putts. Because based on prior years’ data in the charts above, making more putts than rivals who are also striking the ball well in tournament is the only way to separate oneself from the pack.
Approach Shot Proximity
Here are the approach shot proximity buckets for the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook (per DataGolf). This will preview what types of approach shots players are expected to hit at the 2024 Valspar Championship.
The 2024 Valspar Championship is a long iron contest. Over 50% of approach shots will come from over 175 yards this week. Because all five Par 5’s play at about 200 yards or more, there is a significantly higher concentration of shots from over 200 yards at Innisbrook than the typical PGA Tour venue. As such, target players who do well from this range on your betting card or DFS lineup.
Follow the tips in this preview, and one should put together a solid DFS lineup or betting card for the 2024 Valspar Championship.
