The PGA Breakdown offers data-driven analysis for each week’s slate, using the FantasyLabs Tools and metrics to highlight notable golfers.
The El Camaleón course at Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, hosts the OHL Classic for the 11th time. Unlike last week’s event in Vegas, winners of this event tend not to be young first-timers: Eight of the first 10 champions of this event have been 30 or older. Despite the international flair of the event, Graeme McDowell is the only non-American-born player to win here. Oscar Fraustro — who finished 13th last year — leads a group of five Mexican professionals in this year’s field.
The Course
Mayakoba Resort’s El Camaleón Golf Club is a Greg Norman-designed Par 71 course playing at a short 6,987 yards that winds its way through a jungle, mangroves, and oceanfront in the Riviera Maya; it has been the host of this event since 2007. It’s worth noting that the event was moved from February to November in 2013; the weather conditions, particularly the wind, have been calmer since the date change. Because of the vast array of hazards around the course, being smart off the tee and having strong approach and short game skills are typically keys to success down in Mexico.
As always, I backtested all metrics within our PGA Models to find which ones have been valuable at this track. Per the Trends tool, here is how the top-20 percent of golfers in various metrics have done (in Plus/Minus valuation) at El Camaleón. Historically, the course has yielded averages of 57.87 DraftKings points and a +8.04 Plus/Minus with 56.8 percent Consistency to the field.
- Long-Term Adjusted Round Score (LT Adj Rd Score): +10.24
- Long-Term Greens In Regulation (GIR): +17.61
- Long-Term Driving Distance (DD): +7.19
- Long-Term Driving Accuracy (DA): +14.23
- Long-Term Scrambling (SC): +10.16
- Long-Term Adjusted Birdies Per Tournament (Adj Bird Avg): +14.07
- Long-Term Adjusted Bogeys Per Tournament (Adj Bogey Avg): +11.32
- Recent Adj Rd Score: +9.41
- Recent GIR: +10.81
- Recent DD: +8.97
- Recent DA: +7.63
- Recent SC: +10.87
- Recent Adj Bird Avg: +6.80
Holy Greens In Regulation! You might want to focus on LT GIR, LT GIR, and LT GIR with a side of LT DA, folks. Also note that LT DD produces a Plus/Minus lower than the course baseline: Smashing the ball off the tee is not required here.
The Studs
Rickie Fowler ($11,800) will make his debut at Mayakoba this week and will tee it up for the first time since last season’s Tour Championship. This course should set up well for Fowler’s game — his 67.0 LT GIR percentage and 60.7 LT DA percentage are both solid — and based off our LT Adj Rd Score metric he is the best golfer in the field: His 68.4 mark leads everyone by at least half a point. Fowler also has a strong short game: His 63.1 percent LT SC mark ranks seventh, and he is tied for 11th with his 28.8 LT Adjusted Putts Per Round (Adj PPR). Fowler is tied for second in the field with his 14.5 LT Adj Bird Avg, which has translated well in terms of DraftKings points — his 79.0 points per tournament (PPT) over the past calendar year leads the field by nearly five points.
Already a winner this season, Pat Perez ($11,300) arrives at El Camaleón to defend his title as the current FedEx Cup points leader. Perez has started this season on a wicked heater with a win, a fifth-place finish, and a top-25 at the HSBC Champions his last time out. Perez dominated last year: He didn’t shoot a single round worse than 68 and dropped a tournament-best 62 during the third round. Perez’s 68.9 LT Adj Rd Score is second to only Fowler’s, while his stellar 67.5 Recent Adj Rd Score leads the field. Perez is tied for fifth in the field with his 14.1 LT Adj Bird Avg, and his monstrous 19.7 Recent Adj Bird Avg leads the field among golfers with more than one start over the past six weeks.
Despite having a win and a top-five finish in three starts this season, Perez has not been owned at over 10 percent in any tournament, but we have him projected as quite chalky this week. You can check out player exposure and much more with our amazing PGA Contests Dashboard.
The Value Plays
One way to use FantasyLabs to find potential value golfers in our Models is to leverage our LT Adj Rd Score metric. If you sort the field by LT Adj Rd Score, you are looking at a list of players who have been the best golfers over the past 75 weeks. Among these golfers, those who have high Adj Rd Scores and low salaries make great value plays.
This week it’s Emiliano Grillo ($7,600) whose price is wildly disproportionate to his LT Adj Rd Score. Grillo is one of only two golfers with a top-10 LT Adj Rd Score and a salary under $8,000 (Stewart Cink is the other). Grillo is accurate off the tee (64.1 percent LT DA) and hits a solid percentage of greens (67.8 percent GIR), so he should be able to turn in a similar performance to his 10th-place finish here last season.
J.J. Spaun ($7,100) was leading the Shriners Hospital for Children Open on Sunday last week, but ultimately his weekend rounds of 73 and 74 left him in 10th-place after opening the tournament with two rounds of 66 and 65. Spaun’s LT GIR percentage (69.8 percent) ranks 10th overall, and his LT DA (65.1 percent) and LT SC (60.5 percent) marks both rank inside the top-25 this week. Spaun finished 28th here last year and has a streak of two straight top-35 finishes.
Corey Conners ($6,900) is 3/3 in cuts made this season, leads the field with an impressive 73.7 percent LT GIR percentage, and ranks seventh overall with his 68.9 LT DA percentage. At a track like El Camaleón, those skills should keep him around for another weekend if not help him make a run at a top-25 finish.
Hump loves Stephan Jaeger ($6,700). Not just because his name reminds me of the weird drink (Jägermeister) that caused me to black out several times in college, but because the little fella knows how to score on the golf course (he shot a 58 on the Web.com Tour last year). Jaegar ranks inside the top-10 of this field in both LT GIR percentage (70.1 percent) and LT DA (67.6 percent). He also can scramble on the few occasions he misses greens: His 61.5 LT SC percentage is 14th overall this week. Outside of DFS, Jaeger currently has +12,500 moneyline odds in the prop market to finish as the first-round leader. Why not throw down a couple Coors Lights on a dude who popped off a 58 in a first round not long ago?
The Bump and Run
Choke up and take a narrow stance.
Chesson Hadley ($9,900): He’s on fire. Hadley hasn’t finished worse than fourth in three starts this season and had a win to go along with a runner-up finish in the final three events of last season’s Web.com Tour. He missed the cut here in his only appearance, but that was 2013 and Chesson is much improved since then. His 70.3 LT GIR percentage ranks seventh, while he is tied for fourth with his 68.4 Recent Adj Rd Score and ranks third overall with his 19.3 Recent Adj Bird Avg.
Austin Cook ($8,100): Cook has started the season with two top-25 finishes and scored at least 70.5 DraftKings points in each. Moreover, Cook ranks second overall with both his 72.5 LT GIR percentage and 71.6 LT DA percentage.
Brice Garnett ($7,600): Garnett ranks third overall with his 72.0 LT GIR percentage and quietly notched two finishes of seventh or better here at El Camaleón in 2015 and 2014. His 69.4 Course Adj Rd Score ranks seventh among golfers with more than one start at this track.
