Travelers Championship 2017: Top 5 sleepers at TPC River Highlands

Even with a star-studded field in this year’s Travelers Championship, plenty of talented sleepers can rise up and take home the title.

This year’s edition of the Travelers Championship has been on the radar of PGA TOUR fans for months now. That, of course, is due to the presence of three of golf’s “Big Four” at TPC River Highlands. Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day will all be teeing it up this week, and as usual, drawing the vast majority of attention from the swelling galleries.

However, one would be short-sighted to only look at the top of the world rankings to find a favorite. Sure, Bubba Watson has won the tournament twice (2010, 2015), but let’s look at some of the other names.

J.J. Henry (2006) and Hunter Mahan (2007) won their first tournaments here. So did Fredrik Jacobson (2011 – nearly eight years since his last European Tour win), Marc Leishman (2012) and Ken Duke (2013). And that’s just in the last decade.

So, while this year’s champion could definitely be one of the big-name stars in action, the Travelers Championship doesn’t automatically go to the biggest, longest-hitting star. TPC River Highlands is a short, but very fair, test of a golfer’s entire game.

As usual, all of our sleeper candidates come from outside the Official World Golf Ranking’s top 50 players and none have won in the 2016-17 season. Let’s get into it.