Returning from injury is seldom straightforward, and when the injury comes when you’re at the tail end of the richest vein of form of your career, it’s even more difficult.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that Seamus Power’s 2024 PGA Tour season has been a bit of a slow burner, but the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines is the only cut he’s missed and four of his last five starts have come in the PGA Tour’s Signature Events with all the big dogs hanging out.
This week, it’s a different story and the Valspar Championship on the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook will be the weakest field in which Power’s competed since the Sony Open in Hawaii back in January, his second event after returning from the hip injury that curtailed the latter half of 2023.
Not that he’s got particularly fond memories of Copperhead, missing the cut in 2018 and 2019, after a T27 finish on debut in 2017, but he’s a different player than the one who was still finding his feet on the PGA Tour as recently as five years ago, and a 31st place finish at the Genesis Invitational and 21st at the Arnold Palmer Invitational were serious grounds for encouragement, and were it not for a third-round 78 at TPC Sawgrass – he rebounded to shoot 69 in round four – he’d be trending very much in the right direction.
The Copperhead Course is also a vast departure from the flatland golf we saw at Bay Hill, PGA National and TPC Sawgrass, as it goes up-and-down, left-and-right, with trees heavily lining each fairway, and putting the ball in play and hitting good iron approaches pay dividends. That might sound a little “no sh*t Sherlock”, but it’s a formula that’s more valuable here than elsewhere.
And that’s reflected in the betting, with Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Sam Burns, Jordan Spieth and Brian Harman leading the market. Burns in particular is a horse for the course with back-to-back wins here in 2021 and 2022, a sixth-place finish in 2023 and has yet to be outside the top 30 in five starts.
Spieth won here in 2015 prior to winning the Masters, Taylor Moore is the defending champion, and Adam Hadwin, Kevin Streelman and Luke Donald complete the lineup of former winners in the field. All of whom are further evidence that this is a course to plot your way around, not just overpower.
Seamus Power, however, is a man who can do both as his victories in Bermuda – on a strategic course where wind is a decisive factor – and at the Barbasol where the Kentucky golf course plays long and wide, encouraging bombs away.
While a third PGA Tour win is, as always, a big ask, Power knows that a tournament victory is likely the only way he’ll play his way into a third consecutive Masters.
And the Masters is looming large. Spieth, Thomas and Tony Finau are just three of the bigger names whose 2024s have yet to really catch fire and winning prior to arriving at Augusta National is a characteristic most subsequent Green Jacket winners have on their CVs.
Power begins his tournament in Thursday’s morning wave alongside J.J. Spaun and Scott Stallings, starting on the first hole at 12:30 (Irish time).
Shortly before, Burns, Thomas and Sungjae Im form the marquee early grouping starting on number 10 at 12:13, while defending champion Moore, Schauffele and Harman are followed by Spieth, Nick Taylor and Keegan Bradley in the later starting groups.
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