Sleeper Picks: THE PLAYERS Championship

Joel Dahmen (+500 Top 20) … The darling of the fourth episode of “Full Swing” has scuffled since the holiday break. Perhaps it was the anxiety of his promise to make a splash on Netflix, or perhaps that’s just how he rolls on the PGA TOUR. He was one of the hottest on the circuit in the fall, and now he gets a great fit in TPC Sawgrass where he’s 2-for-3 with a T12 in his debut in 2019. Keeping his ball on the shortest grass has yielded success time and again on the hardest tracks.

Adam Hadwin (+350 Top 20) … He finished T9 here last year, so this is a fair target, but he’s been dynamite since, so another top 20 would serve as the convergence of trends. On second thought, that’s an insult because it suggests that he needs some sort of cosmic combination to keep the finely-tuned machine humming down the highway. He remains one of the most underrated ball-strikers because the putter is his primary weapon, but he feasts on par 5s of which there are four at TPC Sawgrass.

Brandon Wu … The PGA TOUR sophomore is enjoying the opposite of a slump this season with a co-runner-up finish at Pebble Beach among 10 paydays to sit 42nd in the FedExCup. He finished T14 in his last start at PGA National where he slotted third in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and seventh in proximity. He’s making his first appearance at TPC Sawgrass where the tallest hurdle will be learning the nuance of the greens, but ball-strikers like the 26-year-old can plug and play pretty much everywhere. His pedigree increases our confidence in him to make noise despite the inexperience.

Robby Shelton … The 27-year-old has been a popular middle-tier go-to basically all season, so he’s been paying off the renewed hype as the only multiple winner on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2022. Still shy of the midpoint of the 2022-23 PGA TOUR campaign, he’s already only one or two solid performances from matching or surpassing career bests across the board. Where he wows is in capitalizing in the opportunities he generates. He’s wringing out every stroke he can on most occasions, but make no mistake, his strength is on approach, which is why he deserves a unit for a top-30 or -40 finish where available.

Ben Martin … Had he stuck with his commitment in Puerto Rico last week, he may have been the favorite to win. The 35-year-old has reignited a sizable fragment of old form this season, and especially of late with a T13 at Pebble Beach and a T5 at PGA National in his last two starts. In his best season on the PGA TOUR, he placed T4 in what also was his debut at TPC Sawgrass in 2015. Currently 13th in greens in regulation and T28 in proximity to the hole.

Odds were sourced on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. For live odds, visit BetMGM.

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