Hey everyone, welcome back. Mexico Open this week! Pretty weak field but these weeks seem more fun. Definitely some more uncomfortable clicks, but I think there’s a lot of edge in those uncomfortable clicks. We will get into some ugly clicks shortly, but as always lets talk through the course quickly.

Course Preview PRO

This week they are playing at Vidanta Vallarta. This course is moderately long, about 7,500 yards, Par 71. There are 5 Par 3s measuring just under 200 yds and 4 Par 5s just under 600 yards. The notable Par 4s are the driveable Par 4 Hole 7, and then the mix of really long holes:

Hole 2 is 498

Hole 4 is 520

Hole 8 is 496

Hole 10 is 475

Hole 16 is 505

 

This is important to note because this is where Distance comes in. As you will see in the Course Preview PRO, the Driving Accuracy is up, the Driving Distance is up, yet the GIR% is down. This course’s defense is by having a lot of approach shots over 200 yards. But even to get there requires a healthy amount of distance. We can work back from the green or from the tee here, and we will end up with the same conclusions:

 

Priorities:

Driving Distance/OTT

Long Iron SGAPP/GIR (190-230)

 

That’s really just about it. Of course we should be considering general recent form and some course history.

 

We only have 3 years of data but here are the top course history players by round with # events in paranthesis:

1.     Knapp (1)

2.     Bhatia (1)

3.     Kitayama (1)

4.     Valimaki (1)

5.     Rodgers (3)

6.     Hossler (1)

7.     Jaeger (3)

8.     Car. Young (2)

9.     Chan Kim (1)

10.  CT Pan (2)

 

Here are a few more views. First one is Driving Distance on Long Courses (2024 & 2025):

1.     Potgieter

2.     Tosti

3.     Norgaard

4.     Gotterup

5.     Thorbjornsen

6.     Widing

7.     Fox

8.     List

9.     Rodgers

10.  Fishburn

 

*Surprised the Hojgaards aren’t here, but probably because they haven’t played any courses that fell into the long yardage category.

 

2 more to go…just trying to keep this clean this week.

 

Top long iron GIR with decent sample size:

1.     Rasmus Hojgaard

2.     Gotterup

3.     Hoey

4.     McCarty

5.     Jaeger

6.     Bhatia

7.     Perez

8.     Norlander

9.     Gordon

10.  Moore

 

And last one, prox from 200+ with healthy sample size.

1.     EVR

2.     Kitayama

3.     Schmid

4.     Sigg

5.     Griffin

6.     Svensson

7.     Meissner

8.     Hoffman

9.     Ryder

10.  Kim

 

I find those last 2 list interesting. As much as we would think proximity with long irons would correlate with GIR, it simply doesn’t. Lot goes into it, but at the end of the day it is simply an average Proximity, and to me GIR is checking the primary box. Even that list passes the eye test, in my opinion.

 

CORE PLAYS

ELITE TIER

Alright, let’s get into my Core Plays. These will be the players I am overweight on OR clicking in SE. Sometimes it’s the same thing, other times I will play someone in SE and avoid them in large-field GPPs.