The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the 2016 TOUR Championship
The 2016 TOUR Championship Fantasy Sleeper Preview
The PGA TOUR season has slowly trimmed away the fat of some great golfers to get to the true elite of the 2016 campaign as the Top 30 from the FedExCup standings hit up East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia for their version of the Super Bowl. While there are plenty of top-notch golfers out there not attending due to a limited PGA TOUR schedule this year, the best of the best are setting their sites at the $10 million prize and will only get there if they are able to top the standings come Sunday evening. This course has been the host of this prestigious event since 2004 and features a long 7,154 yards of par-70 golf, which will be a test even for this group of players. The venue settles just outside of Atlanta after being first established in 1904 and was the preferred course of nine-time TOUR winner Bobby Jones.
The eventual winner of the FedExCup tends to go to the man who sees his name at the top of the leaderboard following four days in East Lake. This has been the case in each of the past six seasons, as the points amassed through positive play during these playoffs earns golfers a ton of points, and usually one of the top golfers going in ends up taking home the trophy in the Tour Championship. The last player to come away as the overall champion without conquering East Lake was Tiger Woods in 2009, but he still did very well that week, with a runner-up showing behind Phil Mickelson. With the points being reset at the end of the BMW Championship, each player has a mathematical chance of winning the overall prize, but the odds of someone like No. 30 Charl Schwartzl doing so are astronomical, as they not only need to win against such a difficult field, but they would also need the likes of Dustin Johnson and the rest of the Top 5 to have a poor tournament. Since the inception of the FedExCup playoffs in 2007, seven of the nine winners in the Tour Championship have called the United States home, and most of them saw a healthy margin of strokes between them and the nearest competitor. Both Bill Haas (2012) and Camilo Villegas (2008) needed extra holes, while Jim Furyk (2010) came away with a one stroke win, and the other six victors averaged a margin of four shots better than the next best score.
Last year, Jordan Spieth rounded out his fantastic season with a four shot trumping of the field to capture the illustrious prize, fending off a trio of Danny Lee, Justin Rose, and Henrik Stenson in the runner-up spot. A win here again would not guarantee Spieth a spot next to Woods as the only two players to win the FedExCup twice, but he does have a good chance for that to happen, as he’s currently sitting in seventh. Joining him in a similar situation is No. 6 Rory McIlroy, who won his third FedExCup event at the Deutsche Bank Championship a few weeks ago. The players who do control their own destiny are an impressive group, with No. 1 Dustin Johnson leading the pack followed by Patrick Reed, Adam Scott, Jason Day, and Paul Casey. After you get past that group, the math behind winning becomes extensive, as Johnson would need to basically finish in last place, on top of a plethora of other scenarios, for the likes of Schwartzl to be crowned. Schwartzl was one of four players to come from outside of the Top 30 at the BMW Championship to compete here. The other three are No. 21 Roberto Castro, No. 26 Daniel Berger, and No. 28 J.B. Holmes.
With such a diminished field, we are going to highlight three players from the bottom half of the odds who have a solid chance at taking on golf’s darlings and bringing home a big win. Given the strength of this week’s small field it’s hard to consider any of the names below “sleepers,” but they will earn that title this week thanks to others, such as Johnson, Spieth, Day, and McIlroy, chomping at the bit to proclaim themselves champions of the golf world.
The 2016 TOUR Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report
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Cover photo via Instagram.