Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Valspar Championship preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: Valspar Championship

4pts win Justin Thomas at 16/1 (bet365 - 18.5 on Betfair Exchange)

1.5pts e.w. Keegan Bradley at 45/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1.5pts e.w. Adam Hadwin at 45/1 (William Hill, 888sport 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Keith Mitchell at 50/1 (Sky Bet, 888sport 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Sepp Straka at 50/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)

0.5pt e.w. Fred Biondi at 750/1 (Betfred, BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

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The Valspar Championship at Innisbrook's Copperhead Course is something of a hidden gem; Florida Swing for the purist, maybe, and a tournament which has almost always delivered drama if not always the sort of big names who helped to produce it on Sunday.

Much of the appeal is to be found in the course, which is quite different from those we've seen over the past few weeks. Copperhead is tree-lined and almost always turning, and its threat doesn't necessarily come in the form of severe punishment. This is more about the lack of gifts and that fearsome, famed-among-the-fanatics closing stretch, dubbed the Snake Pit.

For punters, the appeal might be as much to do with who isn't here. Scottie Scheffler, having found the key to getting the ball in the hole again, is now as short as 5/1 for the Masters following back-to-back wins. For now, whenever he's in the field, we have to accept that finishing runner-up to him, as Brian Harman did, is always a strong possibility.

Harman has form here and continues to stripe it so he's an obvious candidate, but at 20/1 he only helps to underline why I simply have to give JUSTIN THOMAS another chance at just a few points shorter.

Perhaps you could say I'm getting it out of my system with Augusta looming, but Thomas is currently 16/1 in places and 18.5 on the exchanges. Just a week ago, he was among my selections at 22/1, with Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and a dozen or more players who would be strong candidates to take this title. Harman was 66s.

And while he missed the cut at Sawgrass, his performance was not without promise. In fact, for the two rounds he played this was Thomas back to something close to his best with his irons, which had still been just a fraction below that level despite his resurgence over the past six to nine months.

Gaining almost five strokes in two rounds, more of the same for two more and he'd have led the field in strokes-gained approach. On a per-round basis, this was more like the Thomas of five years ago, when few could argue with the notion that he was the premiere iron player in the sport.

The roll-of-honour here shows a bit of everything, and at times I've been swayed by the names Paul Casey and Sam Burns to believe that driving it well is paramount. Ultimately though we're now at four of the last seven champions who lost strokes off the tee, and as you go back through the almost quarter-century of the event, strong iron play is the constant.

That's true of Casey, it was the thing Burns improved to break through, and it remains perhaps the underrated part of Luke Donald's game. Kevin Streelman and John Senden both relied on it, and so did Taylor Moore in winning here thanks to a classically excellent ball-striking display.

So I can worry less about Thomas's driving and hope that the putter improves. It will need to, but I could see him winning this ranking 30th, as he did at Bay Hill, or even a slightly-above-average 47th, as he did in Phoenix. If that seems unlikely, consider that he has ranked first, first and fifth in strokes-gained tee-to-green on his last three starts at Copperhead.

Indeed the course is just as suitable as Sawgrass, as evidenced by five top-20s in six appearances, and as this is far weaker, and his form prior to last week was encouraging, it looks a fantastic place for him to returning to winning ways and add another layer of intrigue to the Masters.

Xander Schauffele will do well to bounce back from Sunday's characteristically tame finishing effort and many will see Burns as the most likely champion. I can find few negatives in his profile, even if he did make three double-bogeys late on in The PLAYERS, but with nothing between him and Thomas it's the latter who gets the vote.

Former winner Jordan Spieth was no more or less disappointing than Thomas last week and their respective course records are virtually identical so he too is respected among a solid quartet, but again it comes down to price. I don't believe they merit the same odds, not quite, so the decision is made simple.

Beyond these four there isn't a great deal of strength so while I did consider Min Woo Lee, who has more classical-course form than you might expect, it's KEEGAN BRADLEY next.

Like Thomas, he's going to have to improve with the putter but this version of the former PGA champion can do that at the drop of a hat. As awful as he was last week, he'd been 15th at Bay Hill, and as awful as he was at Riviera he'd been 25th at Pebble Beach.

Also 10th in putting when runner-up in the Sony Open, few players on the PGA Tour are as well-versed in dusting themselves down following a shocker with that club than Bradley, and he now returns to a course where he was runner-up in 2021 and has always looked at home.

Five times in seven appearances he's made a flying start to this event and while only once has he stuck around all week, when runner-up to Burns in 2021, he's done all things to a high standard in isolation. Last time he played Copperhead he even putted well, and I'm hopeful we can expect significant improvement on Sawgrass.

Note that Bradley produced his best driving of the year last week and improved with his irons, so the long-game looks back where he needs it to be. These traditional, tree-lined courses suit a player who won the ZOZO for us in 2022 and the correlating Travelers Championship last summer, and 40/1-plus in this field appeals.

Hadwin to ignite Presidents Cup bid

I also find myself inclined to believe that ADAM HADWIN can put right the wrongs of Sawgrass, where he, like Bradley and Thomas, missed the cut.

Hadwin had a rare off week off the tee when it comes to finding fairways and at a soft Stadium Course, that was always likely to prove insurmountable.

The good news is that he'd hit under 50% of fairways three times in his previous 50 starts, and followed each performance with a return to the sort of figures we'd expect of a player who has ranked in the top 50 for driving accuracy in four of the last five seasons.

Not since 2015 has he produced two wayward displays in a row and if Hadwin can get the ball in the fairway, he can do some damage at the site of his previous PGA Tour win, a course where he's produced three top-10 tee-to-green performances in his last six visits.

Typically an excellent putter, that bodes really well for the Canadian, who is bound to feel like he needs to press on now if he's to play a Presidents Cup on home soil later this year.

Further encouragement can be taken from the fact that he tends to pop up at the same courses, including PGA West, Summerlin and Detroit, and having bounced back from missed cuts with a top-10 finish twice already in 2024, he can do the same again and perhaps double his tally at last.

At risk of losing an audience who want to feel that their selections arrive in red-hot form, I'm adding the man who finished last of those who played all four rounds at Sawgrass, KEITH MITCHELL.

As I wrote when siding with him in Mexico, where an awful start might have cost him a chance to win given how he played over the final three days, Mitchell has been a bit of an eye-catcher lately.

Primarily that's down to improvements with his approach play, so often his weakness. As we've seen with Burns, Wyndham Clark and a few others lately, strong drivers who start to dial in their wedges are always worth keeping close.

Mitchell has been one of the most reliable drivers around throughout his PGA Tour career and while his putting comes and goes, some of the very best numbers of his career came in this event back in 2017.

Having finished 11th then, his long-game not at the standard we've since grown used to, Mitchell has only played the Valspar once subsequently, and was doing OK until a final-round 82 which featured the standout worst putting numbers of his career.

But rather than sum up the volatile nature of putting, Mitchell's performance that day was the result of a bent putter. He responded pretty emphatically next time by contending for the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow, which by the way is far from the worst guide to this event, either.

The two I like best, however, are Riviera and River Highlands, and it's the fact that Mitchell hit the frame on his latest start at each of these courses which seals the deal as far as I'm concerned, both in much stronger company than this.

With his sole win to date here in Florida under the tougher conditions we know suit, if he can stretch out these signs of improvement with his irons over 72 holes, he can most certainly go close in an event like this one.

Wind bodes well for Open second

I should mention as well that strong winds are forecast for Friday onwards, not considered a negative for any of my selections and perhaps a positive for Open contender and another former Honda champion, SEPP STRAKA.

The day-one leader here in 2019, his rookie season, I'm surprised Straka hasn't been back since but if he can putt as he did then (ranked eighth), then he may well make up for lost time.

Bermuda-based greens offer hope in that regard as he's also produced strong performances elsewhere in Florida, most notably at PGA National, while he putted really well when narrowly missing out in the Sanderson Farms Championship 18 or so months ago.

A Georgia resident since his teenage years, the Austrian certainly has a level of comfort in the southern and southeastern states and over the past three weeks his long-game seems to have clicked, with his approach play at Sawgrass as good as it's been since he was runner-up at Hoylake.

Typically one who strings performances together when it clicks, something we saw most starkly in 2022 when he ended a long run of missed cuts with three top-sixes in four starts or when he followed his John Deere win with second in the Open, Straka looks a big player to my eye.

He has a touch of class versus most of those around him in the betting and is a bet down to 40s.

Among those at bigger prices, I doubt I was alone in wondering whether Joel Dahmen's improvement last week had anything to do with the recent release of Full Swing, which featured some honest and moving conversations with his friends and family as his game fell off a cliff just as his profile took off following season one of the Netflix documentary.

He has the right kind of course to kick on from 10th place and is a winner in the wind, but what Full Swing didn't address was his putting, and the fact that unless he finds a fix, his results will have a ceiling. Unlike some of my selections, it's hard to find real encouragement when it comes to landing on that top-30 performance he might require if he's to hit the frame.

Jimmy Stanger and Matthew NeSmith both made some appeal at around the 125/1 mark, but I was more interested in Adrien Dumont de Chassart and FRED BIONDI at enormous odds.

The former found something in Puerto Rico and could kick on from that admittedly low base, but Biondi wasn't too far behind there and has the benefit of having finished runner-up in a junior event at Copperhead, a course he's played a number of times.

We've seen that benefit one or two players in the past and this Florida resident showed flashes in breezy conditions late last year, finishing 13th in Bermuda and 23rd in the RSM Classic.

It wouldn't take much more to threaten the frame in this and having further demonstrated how comfortable he appears to be in the wind when seventh in the Bahamas back in January, I can't resist the smallest of wagers at odds as big as 750 (eight places) or even 1000/1.

Note that selections such as this are guaranteed to be cut in price, and highly unlikely to result in a return. If you can't get 500/1 or greater I'd advise saving your money, or perhaps looking for a first-round leader bet on Fred instead.

Posted at 1100 GMT on 19/03/24

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