Spieth is part of a big field at Valspar. That’s a big opportunity for players not in the Masters
PALM HARBOR, Fla. (AP) — Innisbrook and Bay Hill are separated by 100 miles (160 kilometers) on the road, two weeks on the PGA Tour calendar and $11.6 million in prize money. Another big difference might be the size of the field. The Valspar Championship begins Thursday with 154 players. That’s the most ever for the Copperhead course at Innisbrook, meaning there most certainly won’t be enough daylight to finish weekday rounds in one day, rain or shine.
That’s quite a difference from two weeks ago at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a signature event with a $20 million purse that had only 69 players and made Bay Hill feel like a ghost town during early practice. “It is incredibly less efficient practicing here than it was at Bay Hill, is probably the biggest difference I see,” Jordan Spieth said Wednesday with a grin, his golf bag squeezed between two others on the range at Innisbrook.
“Part of that being that I was out of the country and then had a photo shoot the next morning,” he said. “And part of it being 155 players and a small range.” Spieth was among the six player directors on the PGA Tour Enterprises board who met Monday in the Bahamas with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia that pays for LIV Golf.
