Tour Guide: Teeth of the Snake

Welcome to Tampa, land of knockoff theme parks, humidity, and statistically speaking at least a few of your grandparents.

At Least There’s Elevation Change?

By Joseph LaMagna

This week, the PGA Tour heads to the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook. When I talk about golf courses on the PGA Tour that I’m not particularly fond of, the three courses I probably get the most pushback on are Bay Hill, Quail Hollow, and Copperhead. I appreciate some things about Copperhead, it’s just that overall I find it to be pretty bland.

One thing I appreciate about Copperhead is that there is much more elevation change on this golf course than you’ll find on many other golf courses, especially in Florida. I also like that wind often plays a significant role in this tournament. Starting Friday, we could see some gnarly conditions this week.

I suppose my biggest qualm with this style of golf course is that it’s quintessential target golf, without a ton of variety. I feel like we throw around the term “target golf” quite a bit, but what do I actually mean when invoking that phrase? I mostly mean that there isn’t much need to control the ball on the ground. The greens at Copperhead are relatively small, and the fairways are narrow with thick rough or a water hazard surrounding each fairway. I find pro golf much more compelling when players have to navigate wide, firm conditions in which misstruck shots find their ways into penal areas. Hitting tee shots into a narrow fairway followed by a short or mid-iron into a small green surrounded by bunkers and thick rough just isn’t the most compelling test of professional golf, at least from my perspective.

Target golf, illustrated by Innisbrook

I’m keeping an open mind with Copperhead. I just tend to think most of the holes play pretty similarly. Am I being unfair?

In terms of players to watch this week, Sam Burns is going to be the name you see & hear all over social media, gambling podcasts, and the telecast. The Sam Burns hype is for good reason. He enters in solid form, with four top-10 finishes in seven starts on the PGA Tour so far this season. In his last three appearances at the Valspar, he’s racked up two wins and a solo sixth-place finish. A strong course fit with positive memories of this golf course, Burns is well-positioned to have a successful week.

However, the player I’m most interested in watching this week is Daniel Berger. After a year and a half away from the sport nursing a back injury, Berger returned to action on the PGA Tour this January. He’s made two of five cuts since returning to the game. Despite the lackluster overall results, Berger’s ball-striking has been impressive. In the four tournaments he’s played with ShotLink data, Berger has gained strokes off the tee in all four events, and he’s gained strokes on approach in three of those tournaments. His struggles have come on and around the greens, pieces of the game that can flip quickly once he’s knocked off the rust.

Once ranked the 12th player in the world, a healthy Daniel Berger isn’t a player to sleep on. Moreover, he pops for me in the data as a very strong course fit for Copperhead. I don’t know exactly what to expect from Berger as he gets his feet back under him in a competitive setting, but I hope we see him competing on leaderboards at some point in 2024. This is a week in which he could show some flashes.

Hindsight is 20/04

By Will Knights

In looking through the history of the Valspar Championship, one name immediately stood out: Carl Pettersson. Yes, I’m sick in the head because I’ve listened to too much Shotgun Start, but seeing the Swede’s name as the 2005 winner and realizing that victory was his first of the five in what would eventually be known as “The Pancake Zone,” it was clear that I needed to write about 2005 for this here Tour Guide.

But then I found this article by Bob Harig in the Tampa Bay Times. And oh boy, is it a doozy.

The article is titled “All due respect, of course” and is Harig’s recap of the 2004 Chrysler Championship at Innisbrook. The tournament was won by Vijay Singh, his ninth and final win in a historic 2004 season. But what Harig’s article focuses on, and what many on the ground that week took notice of, was the record scoring. Singh won the event by five shots at -18, and had many looking around wondering how he had gone that low. “The best players in the world can take it to double digits (under par) and that’s fine,” Innisbrook director of golf Jay Overton told Harig. “But if you get to 18, 20 under, you question if the course is set up properly.”

The article goes on to effectively explain away the scoring. It notes that Singh finished well ahead of the pack, that Jeff Sluman’s course-record 62 was somewhat of a fluke because he never broke 70 again, and that many players didn’t break 80 in the final round. Overton is even quoted as saying, “Do I think 18 under was a total accident? You betcha.”

What makes this article so funny in hindsight is that -18 is basically expected as a winning score in professional golf these days. Courses can’t keep up with the lengths of PGA Tour players and no amount of monkeying with a course’s design can change that. 11 of the Tour’s 12 events in 2024 have had a winning score of -15 or better, including the Players Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The kicker of the Tampa Bay Times article is this last quote from Overton: “Length isn’t everything. Character, undulation. You get fooled on a shot to the greens here. There is more going on here than just length and severity of the rough.”

There really isn’t. The Copperhead Course is fine, but the scoring is kept in check because it’s extremely narrow and there are penalties all over the place. So while I appreciate Harig’s effort to stick up for his paper’s hometown Tour event, it makes for a rather amusing read in 2024.

One Shot from Last Week

By Will Knights

There are any number of shots we could choose from Scottie Scheffler’s incredible final round at the Players. But we aren’t going to overthink it.

SCHEFFFFF! pic.twitter.com/A3iOOoqBNi

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 17, 2024

After three pars to start his day, Scheffler needed to get on his horse. He pushed the issue with his tee shot on No. 4, leaving himself just 92 yards for this wedge shot. The shot would have been more difficult on Thursday morning, as softer conditions would have made spin control more of a priority. But with the firmer weekend setup, Scottie was able to put the ball slightly back in his stance and take a pretty good rip without fear of the ball zipping back down below. He needed to get the distance right in order for this shot to work, which he clearly did, but you still need to have a lot of confidence to fly the ball all the way back to that top tier without going long. It was one of many examples of incredible distance control from the back-to-back Players champion.