Only seven of the top 30 players in this season’s current FedExCup points standings will be present for the latest installment of the RBC Canadian Open. As such, there’ll be plenty of dark horses from the field at Glen Abbey Golf Club worth taking a shot at.
Here are three of our select sleepers, each with a compelling case as for why they could emerge victorious from this week’s tournament north of the border.
In another odd-numbered year, Charley Hoffman is given chance to put on a show at Glen Abbey, where he’s secured top-20 finishes in his two starts from 2013 (T16) and 2015 (T7).
There are a few golfers this week that can match Hoffman’s consistency for the season. The 40-year-old veteran has made nine-straight cuts heading into this week’s tournament, and he’s also secured top-25 finishes in all three of this year’s major tournaments. Hoffman’s solo eighth at the U.S. Open and his T20 at the recently concluded British Open, by the way, are personal bests.
Jhonattan Vegas is a golfer who goes on lengthy hot-or-cold streaks. Sadly, the Venezuelan is experiencing the worse end of such streaks, having missed five consecutive cuts leading up to his trip back to Canada.
Then again, it was last year at Glen Abbey where Vegas won his second-career PGA Tour event en route to putting out relatively good results thereafter. In his first 11 starts this current season, Vegas only missed one cut – his very first start of the campaign at the Safeway Open way back in October – and piled up four top-15 finishes along the way, including a superb T4 at the Honda Classic in February.
The PGA Tour’s notable Canucks haven’t been as impressive as one would assume playing on their own home turf, and Graham DeLaet is one of those golfers. The Saskatchewan native only has a career-best T7 finish from 2014 in tournaments held on Canadian soil, whereas his seven other starts on Canadian courses resulted to sub-45 finishes.
Still, DeLaet has five top-10 finishes this season; most recently his T6 finish from Harbour Town in April (another RBC-sponsored event) and his T10 finish at The Memorial early June. Having said that, DeLaet would want nothing else this week to prove that he can win his first tournament on the PGA Tour once and for all, and preferrably in front of his hometown fans all the more.
