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Hello PGA DFS family and welcome back to Horse For The Course! A wild and windy Bermuda Championship threw some serious curveballs at us last week, with gusts up to 40mph making it basically impossible to break par Thursday morning. However, things settled down as the week progressed and scoring conditions provided a true sprint to the finish line. It was young Australian, Lucas Herbert, that emerged from the pack to notch his first career victory on the PGA Tour. Just 25-years-old, Herbert is also a two-time winner on the Euro Tour and is certainly a a young player that we should keep an eye on going forward.
We trade one paradise-like setting for another, as we head to beautiful Riviera Maya, Mexico for the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba!
Horse For The Course is an article that highlights players in this week's field with elite course history and is part of our free PGA DFS content here at RotoBaller. For my favorite DFS plays of the week check out my Core Four article here at RotoBaller every Wednesday. It's part of our amazing PGA Premium package that includes an all-new PGA Research Station, Lineup Builder & Optimizer, and some of the best articles in the PGA DFS industry! You can sign up now using Promo Code: NICE for an extra discount at checkout!
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2022 World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba
As the PGA Tour's Swing Season winds down, this week's Mayakoba event represents the best field that we'll see before the calendar flips over to 2022. After last week's glorified Korn Ferry Tour event in Bermuda, Mayakoba represents a breath of fresh air and a nice way for PGA DFS grinders to basically close out the year.
After initially struggling to establish itself on the schedule, Mayakoba has become one of the stalwarts of the Swing Season and has even morphed into something of a "destination" tournament over the last few years, with players often bringing the WAGS and/or family down to enjoy the resort. The tournament has found a new title sponsor in World Wide Technology and once again presents us with some very solid PGA DFS options in this year's edition.
Mayakoba has an elite defending champion in Viktor Hovland. The rising superstar will be back at El Camaleon to defend his title fresh off the first Ryder Cup appearance of his promising career. Hovland will be joined by a host of other Ryder Cuppers, with Justin Thomas, Tony Finau, Brooks Koepka, Tyrrell Hatton, Scottie Scheffler, Shane Lowry, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Sergio Garcia all slated to tee it up. Told you this was a good field! Let's go!
You can also find out who the smart money is on by checking out Spencer Aguiar's PGA DFS: Vegas Report every week. And be sure to read all of our other top-notch weekly PGA DFS articles to help you win big!
The Course: El Camaleon GC
Par 71 - 7,017 Yards, Greens: Paspalum, Architect: Greg Norman
First things first...distance doesn't matter on this golf course. Yes, players can go low here, but they will need to consistently hit fairways and greens to do it. In other words, it's something of a "plodders paradise", as you'll notice when looking at the list of recent champions below.
A 2006 Greg Norman design, El Camaleon is a unique course that takes advantage of a beautiful and interesting natural landscape. It is perhaps most famous for its "sinkholes" that can give golfers fits. This is a short course by modern standards, but not one that can be easily overpowered. Accuracy off the tee is crucial and we will see lots of players hitting less than driver this week. Ball striking will also be at a premium at El Camaleon in order to find fairways and greens in what is typically windy coastline conditions. A hot putter never hurts and that is again the case this week on a Seashore Paspalum putting surface that we rarely see on the PGA Tour. I'll be targeting accurate ball strikers who are capable of working their way around this course with precision and getting in a groove with the flatstick.
Check out RotoBaller's PGA Premium Course Breakdown by Josh Bennett for an in-depth breakdown of this week's golf course!
Recent Bermuda Championship Winners
- Viktor Hovland (-20)
- Brendon Todd (-20)
- Matt Kuchar (-22)
- Patton Kizzire (-19)
- Pat Perez (-21)
The Horse
Abraham Ancer
Notable Course History: T12 (2021 Season), T8 ('20), T21 ('19), T9 ('18)
DraftKings Price: $10,700 FanDuel Price: $11,400
There will be lots of native-of-Mexico narratives tossed around with Abraham Ancer this week, especially after we saw Hideki Matsuyama win on his home turf at the ZOZO a few weeks ago. While that's all well and good for the player that was raised in Reynoso, Mexico, I'm more focused on just how well this week's El Camaleon layout suits his game.
Ancer has three top-12 finishes over his last four Mayakoba starts. According to the golf world's resident stat guru, Justin Ray, Ancer is a cumulative 41-under par at Mayakoba over the last three years! We can attribute that success to a golf course that fits his strengths and hides his weaknesses, as El Camaleon is extremely manageable for him at just over 7,000 yards and he's been able to thrive on a layout that demands precision both off the tee and on approach. Ancer grades out first in this field in Good Drives Gained and seventh in Fairways Gained, which means he should once again give himself plenty of opportunities from the fairway this week. He did kick off the new season with a disappointing missed cut at the Shriners in what amounted to a knock-the-rust-off outing but bounced back to put himself in contention at the CJ Cup, an event where he gained three strokes with the irons.
The Ponies
Billy Horschel
Notable Course History: T5 ('21), T8 ('20), T21 ('19)
DraftKings Price: $10,100 FanDuel Price: $10,400
Full disclosure: I'm not a big Billy Horschel fan. I tend to have a thing against Florida Gators (Go Vols!) that constantly run their mouths, two boxes that the ol' Town Crier certainly checks. Putting my personal feelings aside, I can't really argue with what Horschel has been able to accomplish at Mayakoba in the past. He's a hard-to-fathom 43-under par cumulatively over the last three years (shoutout Justin Ray again) in this event...a mark that is the best in this week's field. In addition to the elite course history, the former FedEx Cup champion heads to Mexico with a full head of steam. Horschel nabbed a huge victory at the BMW PGA Championship in September and followed up with a solid performance at the Dunhill Links Championship. The veteran has always been a streaky player and good play seems to beget good play with him. The DK price tag is undoubtedly gross, but it's worth keeping an eye on his ownership projections as the week progresses, as he could be a nice GPP option.
Aaron Wise
Notable Course History: 2nd ('21), MC ('20), T10 ('19)
DraftKings Price: $9,600 FanDuel Price: $10,600
Another player that causes a bit of sticker shock on DraftKings, Aaron Wise heads into the week with an elite combination of course history and current form. Wise notched a runner-up finish to Viktor Hovland last year at Mayakoba and also recorded a T10 in the 2019 edition. In addition to his obvious comfortability on this El Camaleon, the former NCAA champion is nothing less than absolutely dialed in at the moment. Wise comes in on the heels of top-eight finishes in each of his last two starts at the Shriners and CJ Cup. He's performed beautifully from T2G and is gaining an average of +6.3 strokes T2G over his three starts of the new season. We can even stretch back to the tail end of the 2020-21 season and see that Wise was trending in the right direction with top-10s against elite fields at the Wells Fargo and Memorial, as well as a T17 result in the PGA Championship. All told, he's gained strokes T2G in 10 of his last 12 starts and ranks number one in this field in DK Points scored over the last 24 rounds.
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Emiliano Grillo
Notable Course History: T8 ('21), T41 ('20), 15th ('19), T9 ('18), T10 ('17)
DraftKings Price: $7,500 FanDuel Price: $9,100
Emiliano Grillo is just the grossest of the gross. A true PGA DFS sicko, Grillo is the poor man's Keegan Bradley in that he always grades out to elite levels in ball-striking metrics, while his short game numbers resemble those of an 18-handicapper. Perhaps it's El Camaleon's Paspalum greens, but for whatever reason, Mayakoba has been a haven for Grillo, as he's logged top-10 finishes in three of his last five starts in this event and has posted a MASSIVE +37.64 SG: Total at Mayakoba. A bet on him this week is simply a bet on course history, as he's - unsurprisingly - been erratic in recent months and is coming off an abysmal performance at the ZOZO.
Russell Knox
Notable Course History: T23 ('21), T33 ('20), T9 ('18), 3rd ('17)
DraftKings Price: $7,300 FanDuel Price: $8,900
Russell Knox was featured in this article last week and it's not a huge surprise that he's here again, as there are some noticeable similarities between last week's Port Royal layout and this week's El Camaleon track. The most obvious crossover is the lack of length and demand for accuracy off the tee, which is likely why Knox has played well on both golf courses. He heads to Mayakoba fresh off a T12 in Bermuda last week, a tournament in which he played the last 54 holes in 11-under par. He'll bring that positive momentum to a track where he's historically smashed and holds a 68.38 career scoring average. Knox lost in a playoff at Mayakoba back in 2015, posted a solo third in '17, and has never missed a cut in eight career starts. There's only maybe half-a-dozen times a year that I'm going to target him, but this is undoubtedly one of the spots I want to get my money in on Knox.
Adam Long
Notable Course History: T3 ('21), T2 ('20)
DraftKings Price: $7,000 FanDuel Price: $8,600
Course history is sometimes weird and you never really know where the research is going to lead. Needless to say, I was surprised to land on Adam Long this week, a journeyman that miraculously won the Desert Classic a few years ago and has handled himself surprisingly well on the PGA Tour in subsequent years. One of his most bankable tournaments has been Mayakoba, where - short of a win - he's played about as well as possible with a T3 last year and a runner-up finish to Brendon Todd in the 2020 edition. We can usually figure out why a guy repeatedly has success at a certain golf course, but it has been something of a fool's errand for me trying to crack the code on Long at Mayakoba. He just likes the place, guys.
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