Copperhead Key Fantasy Stats

Valspar Championship

March 8th – 11th, 2018

Innisbrook Resort (Copperhead Course)

Palm Harbor, FL

Par: 71 / Yardage: 7,340

Purse: $6.5 million

with $1,170,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Adam Hadwin

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most important stats for Cooperhead Course, based on data from last years Valspar Championship, and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2018. What we do is take their rank for each stat and then add up the four categories.
The scoring average of the field at Cooperhead in 2017 was 71.51, so with par being 71 that means the average score was a half over par, making Cooperhead the 17th hardest course to score on in 2017 One of the reasons the course played so easy was due to the lack of wind, each day except for Saturday the winds were under 10 mph. In 2016 when each day saw wind average of 20 mph the course played to a 72.62 average making it the 6th hardest course of the year (only five courses played harder). It’s also important to see how weather plays a factor, as the wind also blew in 2015 and the average was 72.88 (3rd hardest), in 2014 the average was 72.59 (10th hardest) and in 2013 it played at 71.91 making it the 12th hardest course on tour. So historically the Copperhead is a challenging course. Now the good news for the week, winds will peak at 14 mph on Thursday, 7mph on Friday, 11 mph on Saturday and the most active day will be Sunday with winds getting into 20 mph.  Sunday is also going to be tough with thunderstorms most of the day.

In looking at the stats for Cooperhead last year, Greens hit, Driving Accuracy and putting from 4 to 8 feet are important. So our first stat is Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green because of the fact that last year the course ranked 20th in driving accuracy and 8th in greens hit. Last year’s champion Adam Hadwin was 5th in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green as he was T-27th in Driving accuracy and T-5th in Greens hit. Showing how important greens hit is, of the players in finishing in the top-five, 4 of them were in the top-five of greens hit with runner-up Patrick Cantlay finishing 1st in greens hit.
So with it important then it’s important to get it close to the hole from the fairway. Last year the Cooperhead course was T-17th in Proximity to the hole while Hadwin was 5th in our second stat.
Our third stat is Strokes Gained-Putting because of the importance of putting well at Innisbrook. The greens are average size and don’t have much undulation, so players can do well on the greens. Last year the field finished 40th in overall putting average meaning that only 10 courses on the PGA Tour had better putting numbers than the Cooperhead course. Last year’s winner Hadwin was T-9th in overall putting average but in Strokes Gained-Putting he was 4th.
Last we have Par Breakers as the course was the 7th hardest course on the PGA Tour to get birdies and eagles. This is one of the reasons the scoring average is high, players just can’t make a lot of birdies or eagles. But that wasn’t a problem for Hadwin as he ranked T-1st with 21 birdies so he was T-1st in Par Breakers.

SO HERE ARE OUR FOUR CHOICES FOR THE MOST CRITICAL STATS FROM PLAYERS TO DO WELL ON THE COOPERHEAD COURSE:

*Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green: This is a good indication on players that do the best at hitting it far, straight and then hitting lot’s of greens to pick up the most strokes by perfecting those combined stats.

*Proximity to the Hole: The average length that a player hits it to the hole from the fairway

*Strokes Gained-Putting: No matter how good your game is, you have to make these putts in order to win. This stat takes into effect everything that happens on the greens and calculates the number of shots either gained or lost.

*Par Breakers: The course is so demanding that making a lot of birdies and eagles aren’t possible. So players that are able to make a lot will do well on this course which ranked 6th in this stat on tour in 2015.

123 of the 144 players from this year’s field with stats from this year:

Click any column title in the table header to sort columns.