The Valspar Championship concludes the PGA Tour’s Florida swing, following THE PLAYERS Championship. This is a look at the best first-round leader bet to make for the event at DraftKings Sportsbook.
The Valspar Championship
The Valspar Championship is played at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort. The Copperhead Course is a par-71 golf course and ranges 7,209 yards. The greens are Bermudagrass, overseeded with Poa Trivialis. The course features the iconic “Snake Pit,” which is the name for the wildly difficult last three holes of the course. The Valspar field will feature 156 golfers and there is a standard 36-hole cut with the top-65 and ties making the weekend. The field is mixed, following THE PLAYERS. 24 of the top 50 players in the world are in the field so it is a competitive tournament but not nearly as stacked as THE PLAYERS field was.
Here is a look at my picks to lead after the first round of The Valspar Championship:
Jordan Spieth FRL (+8000)
Jordan Spieth put on the full Spieth experience last week at THE PLAYERS. He was incredibly up and down the first two days and then struggled on Sunday to drop down the leaderboard. However, he showed flashes of the old Jordan Spieth, who can still hit incredible golf shots and score well on tough courses. Spieth has had a decent start to this season, finishing T4 at the WM Phoenix Open and T9 at the Cognizant Classic in two of his five starts. Against a weaker field than last week, Spieth will hope to contend at a course where he has previous success.
Spieth was the 2015 Valspar champion and has been successful overall in his career at Innisbrook. In seven career trips to the Cooperhead Course, Spieth has a win, three top 10s, and five top 20s. As recently as the 2023 Valspar Championship, Spieth finished in 7th place thanks to a phenomenal first-round 67. Not only does Spieth have a great history here, but his game is a perfect course fit. These greens are similar to the Cognizant Classic, where Spieth putted great and had a great T9 finish just a couple of weeks ago. Spieth has also been gaining strokes off the tee in each of his past four tournaments. He finished last season 15th in strokes gained off the tee and 14th in putting average. If he can add his great approach game of old to those two skills, he should be able to compete every week on Tour.
Jordan Spieth might not be the same player that he was a few years ago, but he has shown flashes of getting back to that form. If there is one place he could rise above the rest of the field and announce his return as one of the best players in the world, it would be here at the Valspar. He should be very comfortable and come out of the gates on fire. It can be hard to trust Spieth over the course of an entire tournament, but I will take the value on him at 80/1 to be the first-round leader at the Valspar Championship.
