2025 Valspar Championship Predictions

The PGA Tour carries on this week as it visits the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort for the 2025 Valspar Championship. Designed by Larry Packard, the Copperhead Course will play as a Par 71, 7,532 yard layout this week. The Copperhead Course lives up to its name each and every year, with tight fairways, thick rough and bunkers and water hazards aplenty to challenge those who are struggling with control of their game. The course features several doglegs, which takes a bite into those players who survive in bomb and gouge settings. This difficult layout rewards the accurate hitters from the tee, those who are solid with the longer irons and those with a deft touch around the green. Hitting greens is always a must, but with longer than usual approach shots, the truly adept ball strikers will be rewarded. Otherwise, you’ll be relying on a solid short game to stay in the hunt, which is not a great game plan for long-term success. This event is not typically a birdie fest on tour, as 10 of the last 17 winners have finished at -10 or worse for the week and only three of those have finished at -15 or better for the week. At a course like this, maximizing your scoring opportunities on the par 5’s, grinding out pars on some of the more difficult par 3’s and 4’s and ultimately, just minimizing the mistakes, will be the keys to a rewarding finish. A bad situation can quickly become so much worse if you have a mental lapse and get sloppy when put in a precarious situation. Just taking what the course gives you, controlling the variables that you can and avoiding the big numbers will ultimately separate the best from the rest come Sunday.

The field for this year’s Valspar Championship is surprisingly strong, with 23 of the top 50 players in the Official World Golf Ranking set to tee it up. The studs of the field include Sam Burns, Corey Conners, Tommy Fleetwood, Xander Schauffele, Sepp Straka and Justin Thomas, while there are plenty of up and comers taking to the course as well, including Jacobs Bridgeman, Ben Griffin, Harry Hall, Stephen Jaeger, Jake Knapp and Cameron Young, just to name a few.

THE Valspar Championship has been a fixture on the PGA Tour since 2000 and,has produced a varied list of winners, with up and comers, studs and veterans alike taking the victory here through the years. Four players hold the record for most wins in this tournament, with Sam Burns, Paul Casey, K. J. Choi and Retief Goosen each hoisting the trophy here twice in their career.

Last year’s edition was won by Peter Malnati, who came from two strokes behind on the final day to win by two strokes over Cameron Young and end an eight year winless streak in the process. Mackenzie Hughes and Chandler Phillips finished T-3, three strokes back, while Adam Hadwin, Ryan Moore, Xander Schauffele and Carl Yuan all finished T-5, four strokes behind.

Player to Fade:

2025 got off to a solid start for Cam Davis, picking up three top 20 finishes in his first four starts, capped off by a T-5 finish at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Since then, nothing but pure pain. Three straight missed cuts, where he finished a combined +25. Most of the struggles Davis has faced of late can be placed squarely on the tee, where he has lost 0.65 or more strokes in each of his last three starts. He’s been steadily losing strokes on approach, around the green and on the green in those starts as well, which doesn’t bode well as he tees it up at a difficult course like the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook. Davis missed the cut in both of his previous Valspar starts and I have no doubt he will miss the cut again this week.

Dark Horse:

Rico Hoey is an enigma. He often stays out there in the weeds, lighting up leaderboards early on in tournaments, before fading as the tournament goes on. Hoey has had four tournaments this season where he opened with a pair of rounds in the 60’s. How many of those translated into top 25’s? Just one. Hoey may not be the first player to think of in finding success on a difficult layout, but the man is a ball striking machine, ranking 1st on tour in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, 8th in Tee-to-Green and 27th in Approach the Green, not to mention 6th in Greens In Regulation Percentage and 22nd in Driving Accuracy Percentage. Most importantly, Hoey is lethal with the long irons, ranking inside the top 25 on both Approaches from 175-200 yards and Approaches from 200-225 yards. Hoey finished T-54 in this event last season, but we predict much bigger things for him if he can put together four solid rounds. A win is unlikely, but lock in Hoey for his second top 25 of the campaign.

Top 10:

The pride of Listowel, Canada, Corey Conners is quickly rounding into form. After a T-5 finish at The Sentry, Conners struggled for a bit, logging just one top 25 finish over his next four starts. Since entering the state of Florida, it’s been lights out, as Conners finished 3rd at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and T-6 at THE PLAYERS Championship. Conners is solid through the bag this season, gaining strokes in all six of the major Strokes Gained categories. Conners is also in great control of his ball striking, ranking inside the top 35 in both Driving Accuracy Percentage and Greens in Regulation Percentage. Much like Hoey, Conners is also great with the long irons, ranking inside the top 40 in both Approaches from 175-200 yards and Approaches from 200-225 yards. Conners has not been lights out in this event, but has logged solid top 25 finishes in both of his previous Valspar starts. A win is certainly close at hand, given Conners’ recent form, but we predict that Conners will log a third straight top 10 finish to close out the Florida swing.

Winner:

Really not feeling any of the studs this week, so buckle up for this one. The 113th ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking, Alex Smalley is having arguably the best season of his career in 2025, logging six top 25 finishes in seven starts. T16-11-MC-T21-T10-T18-T14. Not too shabby for a man who has only logged five top five finishes in 106 career starts on tour. Smalley’s stat sheet this season holds strong with any one of the tour’s best players, ranking inside the top five in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, Total and Tee-to-Green and 18th in Off-the-Tee. Ranking inside the top 50 in Driving Accuracy Percentage and Greens in Regulation Percentage and inside the top 10 in both Scrambling and Sand Save Percentage, Smalley has shown that not only does he have great control of his game, but he can make a swift recovery if he accidentally goes awry. That being said, Smalley doesn’t have the best track record in this event, finishing T-27 in 2023 and missing the cut in his other two starts. Even so, Smalley is in prime form and has a game that should really bring the Copperhead Course to its knees. Give me the upset, with Alex Smalley picking up his maiden PGA Tour victory at the Valspar Championship!