Max Homa gave us a nice Sunday sweat, but in the end he came up short against Adam Scott at Riviera.
We now turn our attention to the first WGC event of 2020 — the Mexico Championship.
Club de Golf Chapultepec will host this event for the fourth time. Dustin Johnson has won two of the previous trips here and he is one of two golfers — Justin Thomas is the other — to finish inside the top-10 in all three tournaments at Chapultepec.
Phil Mickelson is the only other winner on this course, but he missed out on qualifying this season.
The Course
Club de Golf Chapultepec is a par 71 that measures at 7,345 yards but because of the altitude in Mexico City, it plays much shorter than that. Think Pebble Beach in terms of length.
Finding the fairway is crucial here and there's plenty of tree trouble looming if the driver is erratic, but most of the longer hitters will simply be able to club down on most of these holes to keep the ball in play.
The winning score has improved in each of the three previous tournaments as the players have figured out better ways to attack this course. Johnson won the first event at 14-under par then two years later, he was able to reach 21-under in his five-shot win.
Barring any extreme weather, I'd expect the winner to land in the high-teens or low-20s.
Odds as of Monday evening and via FanDuel, where Action Network users get a risk-free bet up to $500.
The Favorites
Rory McIlroy (+500) is alone at the top of the board, just edging out Dustin Johnson (+600). McIlroy finished runner-up to DJ at this event last year.
Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas are next in line at +1000. Thomas has those three top-10 finishes and lost a playoff to Mickelson two years ago, while Rahm finished third at the inaugural event but hasn't replicated his early success here.
Next on the board are Webb Simpson and Adam Scott at +1600. This is Simpson's first start since his victory at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. I had some interest in Webb originally, but this price is too low for me. Plus, he's lost around nine strokes off the tee here in eight rounds.
The only player in the +2000 range that catches my eye is Tommy Fleetwood. He hasn't played on the PGA Tour yet in 2020, but he has a win and a pair of second-place finishes in his last four starts on the European Tour. I'll start my card off with Fleetwood at +2200.
The Mid-Tier
The only name that really stood out to me here is Paul Casey at +4000 (PointsBet). While Adam Scott was winning at Riviera, it was actually Paul Casey who led the field in ball striking. The only problem was that Casey was a disaster on, and around, the greens.
The Riviera greens are known to be some of the most difficult on tour, so I'll look past that and focus on how well he hit the ball. He's also improved his result in each of his three starts here, culminating with a third-place finish in 2019.
The Longshots
Not much really catches my eye in this range this week, though a couple of longshots have popped up on the leaderboard at Chapultepec. Fleetwood did so back in 2017 and Shubhankar Sharma gave it a go in 2018, but the bigger names seem to be the ones that succeed here — at least so far.
Players like Jazz Janewattananond (+15000) and Matt Wallace (+15000) will always catch my eye in this range, but neither has shown any form on the European Tour so far in 2020. I may look at a top-20 bet on one of them but I'll likely end up steering clear.
The WGC Mexico Card
- Tommy Fleetwood +2200 (1.5 units)
- Paul Casey +4000 (.83 units)
Total Stake: 2.33 units
