RADIO
The final stop of the West Coast swing brings us south of the border for the fourth iteration of Mexico's National Open as a part of the PGA Tour schedule. And rather befitting of the country it represents, this week's host venue profiles much more like a luxury resort built for double-digit handicaps than the major championship-caliber tests we've seen on Tour over the last few weeks.
The Swing Season Resort Course comparisons don't end there, however, as the two traditional marquee names who each have earned titles here in Vidanta (Jon Rahm and Tony Finau), will not be returning to Mexico's Pacific coast, and a scheduling spot tucked right between the signature events of the West Coast and Florida Swings results in one of the weaker projected fields of the 2025 campaign. What the field lacks in established stars, however, it makes up for in spades with a collection of exciting debutantes (many being established stars on the DP World/Asian Tours) and many of the game's up-and-coming young talents who would love nothing more than to jump-start their 2025 campaigns as the major season approaches.
Before we get into the odds board on tap for golf bettors Monday morning, this piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I weigh to project a player's viability in the outright market and set you up to make the crucial decisions necessary before the market shifts later in the week. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Vidanta Vallarta and the 2025 Mexico Open!
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The Golf Course
Vidanta Vallarta - Par 71; 7,456 yards
Past Champions
- 2024 - Jake Knapp (-19) over Sami Valimaki
- 2023 - Tony Finau (-24) over Jon Rahm
- 2022 - Jon Rahm (-17) over Finau/Kitayama/B. Wu
Vidanta Vallarta by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):
- Average Fairway Width -- 41.0 yards; Fourth-widest on the PGA Tour
- Driving Accuracy -- 64.6%; 10th-highest on Tour
- Average Driving Distance -- 298.9 yards; Third-highest on Tour
- Missed Fairway Penalty -- 0.32; Seventh-lowest on Tour
- Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: +0.031; Sixth-easiest on Tour
In direct opposition to most of this West Coast swing, Vidanta Vallarta doesn't feature the same driving perils as we've seen recently at TPC Scottsdale or Torrey Pines.
In fact, when you combine the 41-yard wide landing areas available to players in the fairway with a rough penalty of just 0.20 strokes (seventh lowest on Tour), you could make the argument that this week presents one of the more benign overall off-the-tee tests on the PGA Tour.
The lack of true obstacles dissuading players from pulling drivers off every tee box is further pronounced because seven of the nine Par 4s around Vidanta Vallarta measure over 440 yards and five of the nine measure over 475. Add in four Par 5s that measure from 548 to 637 yards, and there aren't a ton of mitigating factors in place to perturb potential bomb-and-gouge tactics.
Looking back through the three previous iterations of the Mexico Open held here, you'll quickly see a strong correlation between driving distance and the top yearly performers off of the tee.
Last year, the 10 best drivers of the ball for the week (per SG: OTT) hit their drives over 10 yards further than the field average (309.88 vs. 299.1), and in 2022, 14 of the top 15 players in SG: OTT for the week rated out above field average in driving distance.
I will say that Vidanta Vallarta does have a few hazards in play for exceptionally wayward tee shots, as its three-year penalty fraction of 6.8% is comparable to notably penal courses like Muirfield Village, TPC Sawgrass, and TPC Twin Cities. However, with landing areas this wide and rough this forgiving, players won't exactly have to possess elite driving precision to avoid these potential pitfalls.
As long as they're not scoring near the bottom of the field driving accuracy, anyone with an above-average distance grade will be well suited to conquer these forgiving confines.
Vidanta Vallarta by the Numbers (Approach):
- Green in Regulation Rate -- 67.7%; 13th-highest on the PGA Tour
- Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: +0.018; Eighth-easiest on Tour
- Key Proximity Ranges:
- 175-200 yards (accounts for 21.4% of historical approach shots)
- 200-225 yards (18.6%)
- 250+ yards (16.7%)
Carrying on with what I alluded to in the driving section, the extremely distance-biased layout of Vidanta Vallarta also plays a significant factor when projecting what clubs players will be hitting with on their second shots. Only one Par 4 along this routing plays between 350-440 yards, and all five of Vidanta's Par 3s play over 170.
This incessant emphasis on length leads us to one of the most dramatically skewed approach distributions we'll see all year. Over the last two seasons at Vidanta Vallarta, we've seen 62% of approach shots come from 175 yards and beyond (a 53% increase from the average course on Tour). In that time, none of the 25-yard proximity ranges below 175 yards come close to matching their season-long baselines.
From a modeling standpoint, this sort of unique significance placed on one particular proximity range makes things a lot easier when projecting the players with the best chance of separating themselves with their approach play this week.
When you take a look at long-term proximity splits from 175 yards and beyond, it will come as no surprise that we've routinely seen the likes of Jon Rahm, Tony Finau, and Gary Woodland make their way to the top of the SG: APP leaderboards here at Vidanta.
I will be leaning heavily into a player's long-term approach splits from 175+ yards, and when isolating for recent form, I'll be placing a particular emphasis on recent performances at Torrey Pines (both the Farmers and the Genesis) and TPC Scottsdale (both courses which feature a similarly skewed distribution of mid/long irons).
Vidanta Vallarta by the Numbers (Around the Greens):
- Scrambling Percentage -- 58.1%; 0.6% above Tour Average
- Sand Save Difficulty -- +0.018; 12th-easiest on Tour
- SG: Around the Green Difficulty: +0.061; Second-easiest on Tour
If you were a fan of the short-game skill and creativity required to navigate Torrey Pines' greenside surrounds, I'm sad to say that we will not be seeing the same mastery asked of players this week. In two seasons on Tour, Vidanta Vallarta has ranked 38th and 42nd (out of 42 courses) in Around the Green Difficulty, and top-five finishers have gained just 6% of their total shots from around the greens.
As we've discussed at some of the Tour's other preeminent birdie parties, players who are continually having to scramble for pars aren't likely to be in contention in the first place with projected scores this low.
I will be using Par 5 scoring as a key stat, which does tend to naturally isolate players with above-average scrambling acumen, but we will not be placing any emphasis on traditional ARG stats like Sand Saves, Bogey Avoidance, etc.
Vidanta Vallarta by the Numbers (Putting):
- Agronomy -- Paspalum
- 3-Putt Percentage: 2.87%
- Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: +0.003; 13th-easiest on Tour
We've talked a lot about the overall increase in forgiveness from tee-to-green here at Vidanta compared to the previous few Tour stops, and that sentiment only continues to gain steam as we move into the green complexes themselves. Like many of the other tropical venues we visit every year (Puerto Rico, Corales, El Cardonal, etc.), Vidanta Vallarta's greens are seeded with paspalum.
This coastal grass is commonly used in warmer coastal climates due to its high heat/salinity resistance, and it will present a much different feel to a group of players who have recently dealt with the maddening poa annua surfaces of California.
In general, paspalum is a wider-bladed grass that runs slower than a typical bent/bermudagrass surface, and with the limited exposure we have to it in the United States, it can provide a wildly different feel depending on the surfaces you're used to at home.
For this reason, players who have found repeated success on other Paspalum Courses (Cocoa Beach, Puntacana, El Cardonal, Mayakoba, etc.) will receive a boost in my modeling this week. However, I don't expect these greens to provide nearly the same difficulties as the aforementioned poa annua of Torrey Pines, Riviera, etc.
In fact, there's a compelling case to be made that these slower, flatter surfaces will serve to prop up some of the Tour's more deficient putters.
Through the years, we've seen the likes of Finau, Cameron Champ, Emiliano Grillo, Chez Reavie, and Akshay Bhatia find repeated success on this surface -- five names who, if you've ever spent time tracking their rounds with a vested interest, aren't exactly the most reliable entities with the flat stick.
As things stand in our third iteration of the Mexico Open at Vidanta, it is difficult to differentiate between whether or not this paspalum correlation is rooted in substance or the fallacy of a small sample size. I'd advise you not to live and die by a few rounds of hot putting on this surface and instead lean more into long-term putting baselines with positive paspalum history acting as a tiebreaker.
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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
The Sunday Shortlist
Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.
Kurt Kitayama
With no finish better than 37th through four appearances, it hasn't exactly been the start we expected to the year after a blistering finish to his 2024 campaign, but Vidanta Vallarta profiles as the perfect get-right spot for Kurt Kitayama.
He recorded a runner-up finish to Rahm in his only start here on Mexico's western coast, and by the numbers, it's hard to find anyone in this year's field that profiles as a better course fit.
In a group of enticing yet unproven talents, the UNLV alum has every possible tool you could hope for around this 7,500-yard venue. He ranks inside the top 10 in not only driving distance, but also both of my key proximity ranges (175-200; 200+).
Although Kitayama did record a missed cut at my main comp. course to Vidanta (Torrey Pines), much of that was due to an unfavorable weather draw that saw him plummet from inside the top 25 in true strokes gained after round one to four shots off the cutline after a five-over afternoon on a windswept Torrey Pines North.
It's worth noting as well that Kitayama gained nearly two strokes to the field with his ball-striking in his one round at Torrey Pines South and followed it up by gaining 3.8 shots from tee-to-green around TPC Scottsdale.
I think his current form is very misleading based on results alone, and the last time he teed it up at Vidanta Vallarta, Kurt recorded the third-best putting performance of his entire career (+5.0 strokes gained).
With the lack of quality at the top of this oddsboard, I understand the difficulty of paying a premium price tag for a player of Kitayama's profile, but it should be noted as well that each of the first three Mexico Open champions at Vidanta has opened below 40-1 on the odds board. We can debate price all we want, but at least from a statistical standpoint, I have no holes to pick in the 32-year-old Californian.
Niklas Norgaard
If you've followed my content for any amount of time, you'll know just how trigger-happy I get when enticing talents come to the PGA Tour from overseas, and since Niklas Norgaard earned his way onto the American stage last fall, I've been searching for the perfect spot to deploy this big-hitting Dane.
"Big-hitting" even feels like an understatement in this case, as Norgaard possesses truly world-class speed. Last year on the DP World Tour, he averaged over 322 yards in Driving Distance (second on the Circuit) and led the entire Tour in Strokes Gained per round off of the tee (+0.88).
Unlike many of the Tour's biggest hitters, though, Norgaard also possesses an elite touch on the greens as well. He's gained strokes putting in 10 of his last 12 starts dating back to August's Danish Golf Championship, and on six of those occasions, he gained at least four shots to the field with his flat stick.
This kind of putting upside is rare amongst players who possess the elite skills Norgaard does from tee to green and is particularly valuable at a venue where we'd expect winning scores to balloon into the high teens/low twenties.
Similar to Kitayama, Norgaard had his recent form sheet tainted by a bad weather draw at Torrey Pines, but before a Friday 78 at the North Course blew him out of contention at the Farmers, he'd gained a whopping 2.8 strokes with his iron play on Torrey Pines South (third in the field that day).
This week, the Dane will have a similar distribution of long-iron approach shots, plus added width to fully utilize his immense power.
With a win at last fall's British Masters, a result of seventh three weeks later at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, a fourth-place finish earlier this year at the Dubai Desert Classic, and three other top-20s sprinkled in within the last four months, I don't think his course fit and current run of play has been priced incorrectly in this field of unproven entities. I'm more than willing to take a shot at 50-1.
