The Valspar Championship was founded as the Tampa Bay Classic in 2000. Originally, the tournament was a fall event but moved to the spring portion of the season in 2007. Valspar Corporation, a manufacturer of paint and coatings now owned by Sherwin-Williams Company, took over as the title sponsor in 2014. Four players have been multiple winners of this event — K.J. Choi (2002, 2006), Retief Goosen (2003, 2009), Paul Casey (2018, 2019) and Sam Burns (2021, 2022). Other previous winners include former major champions such as Jordan Spieth, Charl Schwartzel, Gary Woodland, Jim Furyk, Mark Calcavecchia and Vijay Singh.

Ten of the Top 30 OWGR players are in the Valspar field this week. Here are the 155 players for the Valspar Championship

Field notes:

Tom Kim withdrew from the field on Saturday.

Trace Crowe (first alternate list) is IN.

Patrick Cantlay withdrew from the field on Sunday. Bronson Burgoon and Raul Pereda (sponsor exemptions) and Blaine Hale Jr. (second alternate list) are IN.

Braden Shattuck withdrew from the field on Monday.

Richy Werenski, Kevin Aylwin, Kevin Tway and David S. Bradshaw were the Monday Open qualifiers.

The Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club plays host to the Valspar Championship. The track is in Palm Harbor, Fla., about 22 miles north of downtown St. Petersburg and west of Tampa.

Innisbrook Resort (Copperhead) is a treelined, positional golf course located on the Pinellas Peninsula only minutes from the Gulf of Mexico. It forces many layups off the tee and asks players to work the ball in both directions. It’s a shot-maker’s course with some significant elevation changes that will open the playing field to bombers and short plotters alike.

The 1974 Larry Packard design, with a 2015 redesign from Wadsworth Golf, is atypical of most Florida courses. The par-71 of 7,340 yards is tight off the tee (sixth-narrowest fairways on tour — 27.5 yards on average) and encompasses tree-lined fairways, many elevation changes, dog-leg holes and even double dog-legs, a Packard specialty.

Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course has more of a Carolina feel to it rather than a typical Florida layout. Water is in play on six of the 18 holes and the course has 74 bunkers. There are five par-3s here, which is unusual for a par-71 layout, four par-5s, and nine par-4s.

The five par-3s have an average length of 212 yards, three of five play longer than that.

The nine par-4s have an average length of 441 yards, one short one (380) drags down the average a bit with the majority measuring 445+ yards.

The three toughest holes on this course are all par-4s (holes 3-6-16), all of which carry a bogey-or-worse rate of nearly 25% or worse.

The four par-5s have an average length of 582.5 yards, a number that is boosted by the 605-yard fifth hole.

These are the easiest four holes on the course, and the three shortest ones had a birdie rate that was more than three times the bogey rate.

The “Snake Pit” is the signature stretch of closing holes here at holes 16-18. Pars are good scores all four days here. On average, players have made birdie here only around 10% of the time and have made bogeys around 22% of the time. No Valspar winner in the tournament’s history has played the “Snake Pit” at under par. The 16th hole is a long par-4 with an extremely narrow fairway and water on one side. Following that is the 215-yard, par-3 17th that has a tiny green surrounded by bunkers and trees on both sides. The stretch concludes with the par-4 18th, which has one of the most difficult elevated sloping greens anywhere. All three holes feature over an 18% bogey rate and under a 10% birdie rate.

The fairways and rough are a Ryegrass overseed. The green complexes were changed to TifEagle Bermudagrass in 2016. However, the Bermudagrass is more dormant in March than in late April (when the event was played last year). The slightly less than 6,000-average-square-foot greens are mostly Poa Trivialis overseed on average speed (12 stimpmeter) greens.

Eight of the past 10 years, scoring at Innisbrook has been 10 under par or lower, but the winning score had been 17 under in 2021 and 2022.

In response, the course superintendents have increased the ryegrass rough from 3 inches to 3.75 and moved the rough with an intermediate cut from 72 inches to 21 to bring the rough 51 inches closer to the greens. These changes definitely toughened the course as 10 under was the winning score last year.

Correlated courses here include TPC Sawgrass, Harbour Town, Riviera, Colonial, TPC Southwind, TPC River Highlands and TPC San Antonio.

Tournament Trends

15 of the last 16 winners had at least one previous top-10 finish that season before winning the Valspar Championship.

13 of the last 16 winners had played in at least two previous Valspar Championships.

11 of the last 13 winners finished top 45 or better in their last start before the Valspar Championship.

11 of the last 16 winners had at least one previous career win.

Tony Finau (28-1, Bet365)

Finau finished just 45th last week at The Players but did gain strokes putting on the Poa Triv greens last week.

He elected to skip the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and targeted this event instead despite three missed cuts in four appearances, although he did finish top-5 in 2017.

Finau leads this field for Strokes Gained: Approach over the last 24 rounds.

Sepp Straka (44-1, Circa Sports)

Straka finished 16th at The Players last week.

His lone appearance here was a 46th in 2019; however, he was the first-round leader in that event.

The Austrian is always one to look for on a ball-strikers paradise type of course.

Doug Ghim (45-1, FanDuel)

This number has been shattered from its opener and rightfully so.

Ghim has finished in the top 16 or better in his last five starts.

In the last 24 rounds, Ghim ranks eighth for Strokes Gained: Approach and fifth for Strokes Gained: Ball Striking.

Keegan Bradley (46-1, Circa Sports)

Bradley was the runner-up to Burns here in 2021.

He badly missed the cut last week because he was a horror show on the greens at Sawgrass.

Valspar Championship betting at BetMGM

Favorites
▪️ Xander Schauffele +700
▪️ Sam Burns +1200
▪️ Justhin Thomas +1400

Highest Ticket%
▪️ Schauffele 11.4%
▪️ Brian Harman 9.2%
▪️ Burns 6.4%

Highest Handle%
▪️ Schauffele 19.4%
▪️ JT 10.9%
▪️ Harman 9.2%