Fantasy Golf: Sleeper Picks for the Farmers Insurance Open

Harris English … If we’re keeping it real, the seven-year TOUR member should be beyond Sleeper status by now. It was only 20 months ago when he eked inside the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking. Alas, prior to last week’s T11 at the CareerBuilder Challenge, he had sunk to 287th. Now slotted 252nd, he’s positioned to marry four strong rounds in the Coachella Valley with a perfect record in five trips to the Farmers Insurance Open. His record here includes a playoff loss in 2015 and a T14 last year, which was his second-best finish in all of 2017. Ollie Schniederjans … Speaking of talents who don’t project to cheat as Sleepers for long, the Georgia Tech product is looking to build off both a T9 at last year’s Farmers and a T7 at the Sony Open in Hawaii two weeks ago. He led the field at Waialae in fewest putts per GIR and co-led in par breakers. Piggybacking course success and solid current form is a potentially intriguing sub-narrative of where he’s deciding to compete. The 24-year-old has four top 25s this season and he’s already withdrawn early from two commitments, both at sites where he struggled previously in his brief career (Mayakoba, CareerBuilder). Each may have been for different reasons, but possessing the intelligence and patience to pick and choose layouts that best suit his game is as invaluable as the rest those decisions yield. Michael Thompson … The 32-year-old is competing with the safety net of conditional status if he doesn’t collect a little over 37 FedExCup points in his next three starts via a medical extension (in the Web.com Tour graduate reshuffle category), but those starts are still precious, so choosing where to burn the next one is critical in terms of leveraging playing time for the remainder of the season. Considering he needs no worse than a two-way T23 to get the job done, he’s made a great decision in showing at Torrey Pines where he’s 5-for-6 with top-15 finishes in 2015 and 2017. Corey Conners … He hasn’t missed yet – cuts, that is. The rookie has finished no better than T30 at the season-opening Safeway Open in northern California, but he’s 7-for-7 upon arrival for his latest tournament debut, so the former standout from Canada is figuring out how to survive. Torrey Pines will give him all he can handle, but he’s equipped with the proper skill set to make noise. Currently T34 on TOUR in total driving, T48 in greens hit and 29th in strokes gained: off-the-tee. Julian Suri … If you’re not familiar with him, that will change. A year ago at this time, he sat 1,125th in the Official World Golf Ranking. Today, he’s 62nd. That’s what happens following a pair of European Tour victories, a trio of T8s and a co-runner-up finish in his last start in Hong Kong two months ago. He finished sixth in scoring average on the European Tour in 2017, ahead of the likes of Jon Rahm (seventh), Peter Uihlein (eighth), Henrik Stenson (ninth) and Matthew Fitzpatrick (11th). Now 26 years of age, the Duke product will barnstorm the next three stops on the West Coast Swing.

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