Séamus Power’s first ever visit to the Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort in Florida saw him shoot an opening-round 66 back in 2017, and he matched that in the final round in 2025 to surge up the leaderboard and secure his first top-10 finish of the season.
“Yeah, I’ve always really liked it,” he said of the Copperhead Course that has a brutal three-hole closing stretch known as ‘The Snakepit’. “It’s tough, but it’s one of those tough courses that even if you hit good shots you can give yourself chances, and I think that’s a nice combo. Some courses are just brutally hard and even from the fairway you can’t get at pins. Here it’s not particularly long, but it forces you to hit shots and you have to be on fairways and then you try to get after pins but if you miss it’s big trouble. Yeah, I really like the course, got it going today and almost a really good one.”
Teeing off a full three hours before the final group, the Waterford man had a chance to make early headway and came racing from the traps, birdieing one, four, five, and six to make the turn at -4, and added another on the 10th to move to -6 and within one shot of the lead.
A wayward drive on the par-5 11th and a resulting bogey put a major dent in his hopes of posting a number that wouldn’t be caught, but he responded with a birdie at 12 and another at 14, before signing off with a bogey after finding the fairway bunker on the last. Still, it was a very encouraging final two rounds and provides the shot in the arm that his season required after back-to-back missed cuts at the Cognizant Classic and Players Championship.
“Yesterday and today was good,” he explained. “A little loose. But the first two days was tough because it was very difficult. We played, I felt like that, what did we get, the late/early draw was kind of difficult. It was just tough to get much going. Over the weekend a little bit more consistent with the wind and a little bit with warmer. All in all a lot of good stuff and a step in the right direction.
“I’m not sure where I’m going to end up — but hopefully I’ll sneak a top 10 or top 15 or something, you got to play good golf, and that’s a good sign. It was slow coming out of the blocks with a little injury in the off-season, but had some good little runs. The Florida Swing has always been tougher for me, so to get some decent points here is going to be nice and a step in the right direction heading to Houston next week.”
Often in golf, one good round or one good week can spark an extended bright spell and that’s what he’s hoping for as we come into the meatiest four months of the golfing calendar.
“Absolutely,” he declared when asked if he felt that this week would do wonders for his confidence. “Golf’s funny like that. You get a lot of points in only a handful of your weeks, so maybe this is a start of a good run for me. Even if it isn’t, it’s nice to see the work you’re putting in show up on the golf course, and that’s also the most encouraging and can remove some of that frustration quickly.”
Power had slipped to 125th in the World Rankings coming into the Valspar Championship, and to play his way into the Masters, he’ll likely need a victory in next week’s Texas Children’s Houston Open or the Valero Texas Open the following week.
“Right now I’m going to play the next two and from there obviously I don’t know,” he explained. “Hopefully I can play my way into Augusta, but right now I would play the Dominican the week after Augusta and then go from there. We’ll see. Things can change fast in golf, so that’s going to be the plan.”
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