PALM HARBOR, Fla. — If you listen closely at the Valspar Championship, you'll hear an oft-repeated theme from the PGA TOUR players in the field: Focus on the driver.

Hitting it in the fairway, avoiding the tree line and hazards and setting yourself up for a good second shot is most important at Innisbrook Resort's Copperhead Course.

But not from Brandt Snedeker.

The 45-year-old is in contention on the PGA TOUR after a third-round 67, where he hit eight of 13 fairways and seven of 18 Greens in Regulation, but converted a perfect 11 for 11 in Scrambling. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting, was first in overall Strokes Gained and heads into Sunday at 9-under, two shots back of Sungjae Im's lead.

"The only thing I really care about when I'm putting is inside 6 feet," said Snedeker. "If I make my putts inside six feet, then I feel like everything else will take care of itself."

Snedeker, who will be captaining the 2026 U.S. Presidents Cup Team, started the day four shots back of the lead and picked up birdies on three of his first holes, including putts from 16 and 17 feet. He added one more birdie on No. 11 and kept a clean card, critically playing the "Snake Pit," the Copperhead Course's final three-hole stretch, in even par on a day where so many fell to its clutches.

All in all, he made 116 feet of putts, the fourth-most in the field.

Snedeker had used the Odyssey Rossie II putter for his entire career on the TOUR but decided to switch to the TaylorMade Spider mallet a few weeks ago, in the midst of missing four straight cuts to start his 2026 season.

"Everybody seems to be going to (the TaylorMade Spider mallet), it has been winning out here," he said. "When I got it, I did a bunch of data, so got on a bunch of putting monitors and saw how the ball rolled, what it did to my stroke, and everything was better. So when you have actual data telling you that the stroke's better, the ball's rolling better, everything is better with this new putter, then it makes the transition easier. It's not a feel thing.

"And the biggest thing is getting used to the speed. Every putter rolls a little bit different, so getting used to how fast it comes off took me a couple weeks to do it, but now I feel like I'm pretty adjusted."

Snedeker's most recent of his nine wins was at the Wyndham Championship in 2018, and he's struggled to reach the same level of golf since returning from surgery for his sternum in 2023, despite feeling like he has all of the pieces to succeed. Now, it's just a matter of putting them together.

"My health is probably the best it's been in 10 years out here," he said. "I feel really good. My energy level's really high. ... I kept having hope, man, I really did. I was doing so much good stuff at home that I knew I wasn't far off from how when I played my best.

"And nobody expects me to be here, to be honest with you, at 45. Nobody expects me to win tomorrow. So I'm going to have the most fun trying to prove people wrong and prove probably myself wrong that I can still do it."