PGA Tour’s Keith Mitchell looks to rebound from 2024 Valspar meltdown

• Keith Mitchell, Jacob Bridgeman, and Stephan Jaeger share the early lead at the 2025 Valspar Championship with a score of 4-under 67.
• Mitchell, who led the tournament in 2024 before faltering in the final round, is looking to draw on both positive and negative past experiences at Innisbrook Resort.
• After a slow start, Bridgeman recovered to eagle one hole and birdie six others.
• Ryan Fox, who also shot a 68, emphasized the importance of patience and consistency at the challenging Copperhead Course.

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Keith Mitchell has some unfinished business at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort. He’s off to a good start at the 2025 Valspar Championship, making seven birdies, including four in a row, on Thursday to share the first-round lead at 4-under 67 with Jacob Bridgeman, Stephan Jaeger, Ricky Castillo and Sami Valimaki.

“I wish I could use today’s round as Sunday’s last year, that’d be nice,” Mitchell joked. “I have a lot of good memories here and just to have one bad round where I was nervous or wanted it too badly, it’s nice to get back here and have a fresh start.”

Mitchell, 33, was referring to a year ago when he was the 54-hole leader at the tournament but shot a final-round 77 and tumbled to T-17.

“I still think about it,” he said. “It’s still definitely in the back of my mind and I want it to stay there hopefully for the rest of my career to just motivate me to remember what it feels like when you let those kind of nerves get in your way.”

He called last year’s failure to close the deal something he wants to keep in the memory banks as a reminder of “what not to do,” he said.

But Mitchell also has experienced some of his highest highs at the course best known for its treacherous three-hole finish dubbed “the Snake Pit.”

Eight years ago, Mitchell was plying his trade on the Korn Ferry Tour when he was one of four qualifiers into the Valspar Championship. He made about a 50-footer at the last and finished T-11 in his PGA Tour debut and it spring-boarded him to play well the rest of the year.

“It let me know I could play out here if I had my best stuff. I’d put it up there with the most memorable weeks I’ve ever had,” he said. “Man, it feels like yesterday, but it was a long time ago.”

Last year, during the third round, he became the first player to play the Snake Pit in 4-under par. Fond memories that Mitchell said remain top of mind when he steps on the property.

“I think those are equally important as the bad ones, because you got to remember what you did in the good and remember what you did in the bad and try to lean toward the good,” he said.

Mitchell is seeking his first victory in more than six years. He took advantage of benign conditions in the morning before the wind picked up and began howling in the afternoon. 

“I feel bad for the guys out there because we got lucky and barely had any wind,” he said.

Starting on the back nine, he made seven birdies in his first 13 holes, including a string of four in a row, beginning at No. 17.

Mitchell missed his first cut of the season last week at the Players Championship but has yet to record so much as a top-20 finish. He made a minor change in his setup but said the bigger change was his mental approach.

“I was thinking too much so today I tried to think about absolutely nothing. I was very pleased with my ability to kind of shed a bunch of stuff. I pretty much threw everything I’d been thinking in the trash,” he said. “My goal was to try to be as honed in on the shot as possible, whether it’s the wind, whether it’s the lie, the break, the speed whatever, just think about only those things and not anything about what I’m thinking about.”

It worked until the eighth hole when he took three putts from 48 feet, and a poor drive at No. 9 resulted in another bogey. “It is what it is,” he said. “I played great. It stinks to bogey your last two but you’re going to make mistakes out here.”

Bridgeman, 25, opened with bogeys on the first two holes and was “hitting it kind of everywhere,” but settled down to make an eagle and six birdies en route to his 67. Jaeger strung together four of his six birdies in a row, Castillo took just 20 putts, the lowest total in a round on Tour this season, while Valimaki was the lone co-leader to play in the more difficult afternoon wave. New Zealand’s Ryan Fox had a bogey-free round and a share of the lead until he decided to three-putt from 12 feet at the last and settled for 68. But he knows he didn’t hurt his chances to be in the trophy hunt on Sunday at a course with some venom in its bite.

“I don’t think it’s sneaky tough, it’s just tough,” Fox said. “Patience is key. You don’t have to go out there and shoot 20-under, if you get to double digits around here you’re going to have a really good chance over the weekend.”