Valspar Championship Round 1: Sungjae Im Leads at 7-Under While Spieth Plays Two Different Rounds in One

Sungjae Im opened the 2026 Valspar Championship with a flawless 64 on Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course, while Jordan Spieth reminded everyone what his golf looks like when it’s working — and what it looks like when it isn’t.

There are two versions of Jordan Spieth that showed up at Innisbrook Resort on Thursday. The first version — the front-nine Spieth, the one who seems to materialize fully formed every time he smells an opening — eagled the first hole, ran off three birdies in the next six, and turned at 5-under looking like a man who had specifically come to Tampa to take this golf tournament apart. The second version arrived on the back nine and gave most of it back. Bogey on 16. Bogey on 18. A 69 that he described afterward as “extremely frustrating” in the same way you’d describe almost being on time to your own wedding.

That tension — brilliant early, vulnerable late — is precisely the Spieth experience in 2026, and it makes him simultaneously the most compelling and most maddening player to follow every single week.

While Spieth was busy living inside his own highlight reel and blooper reel simultaneously, Sungjae Im was doing the quiet, methodical, impossibly efficient thing he does. The South Korean made seven birdies against zero bogeys for a 7-under 64 that puts him two clear of Brandt Snedeker and three ahead of Davis Thompson entering Friday at the Copperhead Course.

Im’s 64 Was a Blueprint for How to Play Copperhead

Innisbrook’s Copperhead Course does not hand out low scores. The rough is real, the greens have teeth, and the par-3s punish anything that misses on the wrong side. What it rewards — and Thursday confirmed this for the hundredth time — is precision iron play, disciplined course management, and the kind of putting that stays hot when the greens get firm in the afternoon wind.

Im has all three. His second shots Thursday were almost aggressively accurate, leaving him birdie looks that other players who hit similar tee shots couldn’t convert. He one-putted five of his last nine holes, which tells you everything about both his putting form and his ability to position himself for the easiest possible looks. There was nothing lucky about the 64. It was constructed, methodically, from the first hole to the 18th.

Snedeker’s 65 was the second-best round of the day and a reminder that his short game — always his equalizer against players who outpower him — is as sharp as it’s been in years. He scrambled from situations that would have produced bogeys for most of the field and converted three birdies from outside 15 feet. That’s Snedeker. When the short game is fully operational, the scorecard cooperates in ways the statistics don’t always predict.

The Fitzpatrick Factor

The name to watch coming off last week is Matt Fitzpatrick, who opened with a 68 and sits at 3-under — three shots back of Im but very much in the conversation. Fitzpatrick came to Tampa one week after watching Cameron Young celebrate on the 18th green at TPC Sawgrass, and his demeanor in the first round suggested a player who has converted that feeling into fuel rather than frustration. He made four birdies on the back nine. He hit 14 greens in regulation. He did not make a bogey. On Copperhead, that’s an excellent opening round for a man who came here with something to prove to himself.

Billy Horschel, Pierceson Coody, and Andrew Putnam round out a group at 4-under that represents the kind of mid-leaderboard cluster the Valspar always produces on Thursday. The cut will likely fall around 1-over on a course that makes nothing easy, which means Friday’s second round is going to thin the field significantly and clarify exactly who the real contenders are.

Spieth is six back of Im after 18 holes, which is a gap that gets considerably harder to close once Copperhead tightens up on the weekend. He’s played this course well before. But he needs a Jordan Spieth Friday — the whole Jordan Spieth, not just the front-nine version.