PGA Outrights and Best Bets for the 2025 Valspar Championship

Wrapping up the PGA Tour’s Florida Swing this week at the Valspar Championship, let’s look at the course details and then find the best bets of the week. 

Before we dig too deep, let’s take quick look at the weather because this week’s forecast is looking like a no-brainer at the moment. 

At the moment, it looks like the wind picks up Thursday afternoon and will also be the strongest Friday morning. Friday morning is also showing cold temperature to start the day. It’s too early to call this a concrete advantage but to start the week I definitely want to see tee times before investing. 

Course Fit

The PGA Tour heads to Innisbrook Resort and Spa this week to take on the Copperhead Course. This par 71 layout stretches to roughly 7,350 yards from the tips. 

This treelined classical design is often said to reward “boring golf” as birdies are tough to find around here. It’s a par 71 but untraditional in the sense that it features five par 3s. All of the play over 195 yards so right away you have five holes with tough scoring. What about the short par 4s and the four-pack of par 5s? They aren’t easily accessible for the big hitters with the going-for-green rate being just 43% here while the Tour average sits just under 60% across all courses. 

Right away with that opening course description, we can pluck out notable split stats to target. We want golfers who can handle less-than-driver, treelined layouts with tough scoring.

Lastly, we’ll look at turf and see wall-to-wall overseed. It’s ryegrass from tee-to-green with poa triv on the greens. We want golfers who excel on overseed, which sometimes can show up in short game as scrambling from overseed is generally much easier than bermuda. 

For our split stat search let’s look at top-heavy finish history on those four split stats above, and here are the names that outperform their baseline rates. 

• Bud Cauley
• Chandler Phillips
• Taylor Moore
• Victor Perez*
• Lucas Glover
• Mackenzie Hughes
• Mac Meissner
• Michael Kim
• Byeong Hun An
• Adam Schenk
• Kevin Roy

I usually list 10 names here, but with Victor Perez withdrawing due to injury ahead of the biggest non-major of the year last week, I would be hesitant to jump right back on board. 

Head over to the Split Stats page to see who the top performers are in these split stat categories.

Outright Odds

Here’s what the top of the board looks like on DraftKings Sportsbook:

It’s amazing that Tommy Lad is still searching for his first PGA Tour title. Then I look at his week-to-week variance and see it’s one of the lowest on Tour. Is he not taking enough risks? Does his short game not have enough spike equity? I would never count him out, but his current profile reads like a top-20 machine and not one that is going to be bagging trophies. 

Valspar Championship Free Golf Bets

Billy Horschel Top-20 Finish (+350)

He’s been lost with his irons but is also not that far removed from that being his biggest strength. Horschel has top 20s in seven of his last 25 starts (28%) and finished T12 here last year. With an early tee time Thursday, I like his chances of getting off to the races and setting himself up for a good rebound week. 

Thomas Detry to Win (70-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 places)

He’s hit a two-start rough patch but still grades out top 20 in the field when it comes to weighted baseline performance and also sports one of the 10 highest volatility scores. Vegas has his implied win odds at 1.4% but my model calls for 3x that rate, making him a good each-way value. 

Jacob Bridgeman Top 20 Finish (+300)

He opens with an early tee time Thursday, which is a good place to start. Looking at his lead-in form, he’s locked in right now with positive strokes gained in 11 of 12 possible categories over the last three starts, all in Florida. With him being top 15 in three-month form, I’m going to ride this hot hand and bank on one more top 20 while we’re in the Sunshine State. 

Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays.