What You Need To Know
El Camaleón Golf Club in Playa del Carmen hosts the 10th edition of the OHL Classic at Mayakoba — Mexico’s only PGA Tour Event.
Chris Stroud will be teeing it up for the 10th straight year and is the only golfer to play in every edition of this tournament. Jerry Kelly is making his ninth start here. Kelly may be a guy to watch this week, as old guys have traditionally played very well in Mexico. The average age of the nine winners of this tournament is 37.8 years — an average brought down considerably by John Huh (age 22) in 2012. Three of the last five winners have been crowned in a playoff.
Top finishers at El Camaleón have traditionally driven the ball accurately and scored well on Par 4s. That’s what we will concentrate on this week.
Driving Accuracy
High-Priced Tier: $9,000 and Higher
Señor 58 Jim Furyk leads the high-priced tier and is fourth overall with a 68.4 percent Long-Term Driving Accuracy (LT DA). Furyk’s 68.6 LT Adjusted Round Score (Adj Rd Score) is the best in the field.
Furyk has had five top-25 finishes in his last 10 starts.
Since 2014, Furyk has produced a massive +13.28 Plus/Minus with 70.4 percent Consistency when he’s been priced at $9,000 or higher. He has scored more than 100 DK points in seven of those events.
Russell Knox lost in a playoff here last season. His 67.6 percent LT DA ranks sixth, and his -0.2 LT Par 4 Average Adjusted Strokes (P4 Avg) is 20th.
His 69.2 LT Adj Rd Score is tied for third, and he is the favorite (6.7 percent Odds to Win) to win this week. Knox comes in hot: He has two top-10 finishes in his last two starts, and his 67.7 Recent Adj Rd Score is second overall.
Knox is playing well and has great course history at El Camaleón: He’s playable in all formats.
Mid-Priced Tier: $7,000 to $8,900
The aforementioned Kelly leads the field with a 70.3 LT DA percentage. His 70.4 LT Adj Rd Score isn’t amazing but ranks inside the top 50 this week.
Kelly has played a ton here and has sixth- and fifth-place finishes on his resume. He has missed the cut here only once in the past seven years. Kelly is an excellent play in guaranteed prize pools.
Huh’s 67.5 percent LT DA is eighth, and his 69.1 Recent Adj Rd Score is 18th. He has made the cut in seven straight tournaments.
Huh missed the cut at this event last year but played well every year prior to that, winning the event in 2012. His 69.7 Course Adj Rd Score ranks 11th among golfers who have made more than one start at this course.
Golfers in this pricing tier with LT metrics comparble to Huh’s have historically produced a +3.11 Plus/Minus on DK with 59.1 percent Consistency.
Value Tier: $6,900 and Lower
Chez Reavie ranks fifth overall with a 68.3 LT DA percentage, and his -0.6 LT P4 Avg is 12th. Reavie’s 69.7 LT Adj Rd Score is 13th, and his 69.8 LT Greens in Regulation percentage is 18th. He is a tremendous value this week.
Reavie is coming off a 24th-place finish at the Shriners Open last week in which he scored 94.0 DK points. He has been absolutely destroying his salary-based expectations in the PGA’s fall season.
Par 4 Average Adjusted Strokes
High-Priced Tier: $9,000 and Higher
Jon Rahm leads the high-priced tier and ranks 16th overall with a -0.3 LT P4 Avg. Rahm hasn’t been incredibly accurate off the tee but that hasn’t prevented him from creating scoring opportunities: His 70.1 percent LT GIR is 15th in the field.
Rahm has two straight 15th-place finishes this season and finished 10th at this event last year. Rahm’s 68.6 LT Adj Rd Score is second overall and he has the second-best Odds to Win (5.3 percent).
Rahm feasts upon the DK scoring system: He has scored at least 100 DK points in five of his last eight starts and has averaged 84.94 DK points per tournament in that time frame. Tee up the Spaniard in Mexico with great confidence.
Mid-Priced Tier: $7,000 to $8,900
Grayson Murray is not your typical polo-shirt-wearing country-club-type dude. He wore a t-shirt to his PGA Tour card ceremony and pulled out his own front tooth after biting into a chicken leg.
Murray’s -2.4 LT P4 Avg is the best score in the field, as is his mammoth 320.5-yard LT Driving Distance.
Murray sandwiched two missed cuts around an eighth-place finish at the Sanderson Farms Championship in his first three PGA Tour starts this season. He had an epic stretch on the Web.com Tour this past summer in which he had first, second-, third-, and seventh-place finishes in the span of seven tournaments.
Murray is a boom-or-bust GPP play this week.
Value Tier: $6,900 and Lower
Trey Mullinax has started off this season in excellent form, making the cut in all three of his starts and finishing 22nd at the Safeway Open. Mullinax trails only Rahm in the field with 78.0 DK points per tournament over the past month.
Mullinax ranks 11th in the field with his -0.7 LT P4 Avg, and his 70.2 LT GIR percentage is 14th overall. His 69.7 Recent Adj Rd Score ranks 33rd this week.
Mullinax is an intriguing option for a stars-and-scrubs roster strategy.
Good luck!
