Valspar Championship 2025 Best Bets: Riley’s Redemption Arc Continues
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Craig Edwards
- March 17, 2025
Top Golf Pick: Davis Riley To Win Outright (+12500) at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review)
Our professional golf bettor, Craig Edwards, brings readers his best bets for this week’s Valspar Championship.
Let’s take a look at his analysis before heading to the top-rated sportsbooks.
Valspar Championship 2025
March 20 – March 23
Course Notes:
- Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club
- Copperhead Course
- Palm Harbor, Florida
- Par 71, 7340 yards
Larry Packard, the designer, created one of the most challenging parkland tracks on the circuit and, like last week at the Players Championshp, this event brings a level playing field where the journeyman of the PGA Tour can shine.
Many of the tree-lined fairways are also doglegs with the narrowest landing areas, demanding patient strategic course management. Uniquely for a parkland track, the course can be susceptible to wind given its location near the ocean. Add in that water hazards are in play on 50% of the holes and we have a great week in store like last week’s Players.
The greens are Bermuda with Poa overseeding and course form plays out strongly with several multiple champions in recent years, as illustrated in the champions’ roll below.
Roll of Honour
It’s a life of Riley for Davis
To say Davis Riley’s year to date has been topsy turvy would be an understatement.
He started the year looking all at sea with his game in the most terrible all-round form imaginable but then, three weeks ago, that did a 360-degree turn with a run of form reminiscent of the Davis Riley fans know.
The twenty-eight-year-old has always suffered big fluctuations in form, which suggests the Mississippi player is a golfer who thrives when confident. That rise in hubris has been evident since a change in fortune at the Cognizant Classic, where he started and closed with eye-catching low rounds. He continued the good form in Puerto Rico with a top-10 finish and then, at last week’s flagship Players Championship, he consolidated further with a 38th-place finish.
Interestingly, Riley has previous form here at the Valspar Championship, when he unluckily lost in a sudden-death playoff to Sam Burns a few seasons ago. It is only just under a year since Davis Riley won his long-awaited maiden PGA Tour title, so this week he could be adding a second one.
Golf Pick: Davis Riley To Win Outright (+12500) at Bovada
Golf Pick: Davis Riley To Finish Top 10 (+1000) at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
Golf Pick: Davis Riley To Be First Round Leader (+10000) at BetOnline
Matteo is no small number this week
The diminutive Matteo Manassero might be short in stature but he is no small number these days on the PGA Tour.
There has been plenty of water going under the bridge since Manassero’s win at the DP World Tour flagship event, as the BMW PGA Championship of 2013 gave him starts over here in America a decade ago.
Indeed, on the two occasions he teed it up at Innisbrook, he showed how his neat and tidy game was perfectly suited to the demands this week, with an 8th-place in 2014 and 20th-place two years previous.
However, the water under the bridge has flowed the wrong way after 2014, with a career slump seeing the thirty-one-year-old Italian losing his DP World Tour card. Still, he is a hell of a fighter, and in recent seasons he has climbed his way back up after hitting rock bottom.
Interestingly, his game and best performances correlate with a previous European winner here: Luke Donald, the Ryder Cup captain who, like Manassero, won the BMW PGA.
Golf Pick: Matteo Manassero To Win Outright (+15000) at Bovada
Golf Pick: Matteo Manassero To Finish Top 10 (+1400) at BetOnline
Golf Pick: Matteo Manassero To Finish Top 20 (+650) at BetOnline
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
