Sleepers: Travelers Championship

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The Travelers Championship will take place at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn., this week. Here's how the PGATOUR.COM experts sized up the top contenders:

SLEEPER PICKS How it works: Our 10 experts from PGATOUR.COM select any player who isn't ranked in the top 30 of the FedExCup rankings, the Official World Golf Ranking and the Race to Dubai. The player also must not have won in 2008 or 2009. By using a draft process, no two picks can be the same. EXPERT PICKS Who do our experts think will capture the Travelers Championship title? Here's who they've picked to win. Click here

Sleeper picks: Travelers Championship

Expert   Pick order Player selected   Ryan Smithson RICKY BARNES. He nearly became the very first player ever to win a major title while wearing a painter's hat. He handled defeat with as much class as anyone on Monday. Mark Spoor BRAD ADAMONIS. He's coming off his second top-25 finish of the year a couple weeks back in Memphis, plus he tied for sixth in this event last year on the strength of an opening-round 64. John Swantek BRINY BAIRD. He has to win one of these weeks, doesn't he? If Baird can stiff a 9-iron to 15 feet from the roof of a skyscraper, he can handle a 6,800 yard course. Lauren Deason WOODY AUSTIN. Austin won at TPC River Highlands in 2004, so he knows what it takes to win the Travelers. Plus, he's finished T22-T6-T27-9th in his last four starts. Past winner with momentum? That's a scary combination for the rest of the field. Helen Ross MATT BETTENCOURT. Sometimes it just takes a little time to get warmed up, and that seems to be the case for the '08 Nationwide Tour money winner. Bettencourt has tied for fifth and 10th in his last two starts -- the latter at Bethpage. Ceri Mobley J.J. HENRY. The '06 Travelers champ has two other top-25s here, and he's not having a bad season; he has three top-25s as well as a runner-up finish in Mexico. He missed the cut at Bethpage Black, but I'll give him some slack because, well, it wasn't easy. Win McMurry NICHOLAS THOMPSON. Thompson shot all four rounds in the 60s at TPC River Highlands last year, and he's had a whole lot more TOUR experience since then. He struggled in May, but he got back to making cuts at Memorial, so he should have his confidence back. T.J. Auclair PETER LONARD. It's been a rough season for the Aussie with 12 missed cuts in 18 starts. Something's got to give eventually, though, so it's just a hunch that he can get his dismal season turned around this week in Hartford. Brian Wacker JAMES DRISCOLL. I'm riding the former-amateur-stars wave here -- Ricky Barnes' final-round struggles notwithstanding. Driscoll seems to have turned the corner on his career, and Hartford would be a logical place to succeed for the New England native. Mike McAllister JUSTIN ROSE. He's missed the cut in four of his last six TOUR starts, but his track record here is solid -- two top-10s in his last five starts. Of his last eight rounds at TPC River Highlands, he's a collective 17 under. Time to break through with that first TOUR win?

LAST WEEK: Ryan Smithson had the strongest sleeper finish with a tie for sixth out of Hunter Mahan, but Helen Ross also added to her lead with a top-20 from Bubba Watson. Each week, we'll update the standings based on the FedExCup points accumulated by the players selected by our experts. Here's how it stands after Week 24: