The Tour heads to Mexico for the first World Golf Championship event of the 2019 Season as Phil Mickelson looks to defend his title!

My name is Josh Thomas, and I am a PGA and NFL Coach here at DFS Army! Welcome to the 2019 PGA Season! We here at DFS Army have got you covered this year with my weekly preview out on Sunday Nights, Chalk Donkey article breaking down the ownership projections, where to pivot, and GPP strategy out Tuesday Nights, and our Research Station that is full of more information than you could ever need!

What a week…the weather made this an interesting one and for the first time in my memory, we saw a tournament completely reset. Players were out on the course Thursday morning, and the horn sounded and pulled them in after only a few holes. In a somewhat unprecedented move, the Tour decided to completely reset the tournament and start over. The deluge of rain had washed out some of the tee boxes and hole locations and it was necessary to move them. To protect the field they reset the scores and started over.

Players were barely able to play any more holes on Thursday and the whole tournament got thrown off kilter. Some players finished Friday morning and weren’t back out till late Saturday morning. Others had to play as many as they could Friday, and finish the second round Saturday morning. All in all, it was a long grind for many of these players and took quite a toll on some. The leaders had to play 34 holes on Sunday which is NOT something they are used to.

J.B. Holmes slowly grinded his way to a victory while Justin Thomas blew a four-shot lead in Rickie Fowler fashion. While he was still great with his irons, his putter let him down, losing almost 3 strokes with his putter on Sunday. J.B. meanwhile led the entire field in putting.

Pre-tournament tip, Si Woo Kim kept his solid form going and had a fantastic Sunday, shooting 66 in the final round to wrap up a solo third place finish. Hideki Matsuyama also had a solid final round 67 to sneak into the top ten. Tiger Woods just ran out of gas after a long Sunday to fall out of contention and finish T15.

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One of the big Sunday stories though was the collapse of Jordan Spieth. I was someone who after three rounds felt like Spieth was starting to figure it out and was looking at his odds at Augusta and thinking about pulling the trigger. He wiped all the confidence I had in him on Sunday with a brutal 81. He completed the Am-Slam with a bogey, double, triple, and quad, all on the same card. He really struggled around the greens, and couldn’t quite find a way to fight back. Adam Hadwin was similarly bad, but he did it over two days, shooting 77 on both Saturday and Sunday to kill some DFS players dreams. He actually hurt players by making the cut.

We get a 72 player no-cut WGC event in Mexico City this week so while we don’t have the cut sweat we do need to nail the top of the board with our DFS picks. The one benefit though of these smaller events though is that there are some values on the Outright board. Typically anything over 150-1 is a real long shot, but we get players this week with a legitimate chance to win.

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Course Breakdown:

The WGC-Mexico Championship takes place at Club de Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City, Mexico. A 7345-yard par 71, but plays much shorter given that it’s at 7800 feet above sea-level. That makes it the highest altitude tournament on the PGA Tour’s schedule. At that altitude, the ball flies anywhere from 8 to 12 percent further than normal. So essentially this course plays at well under 7000 yards given the altitude adjustment. Players will have to adjust and club down often, given those who have played here before a distinct advantage, though I’m sure all of the players will have the trackman out on the range getting their yardages dialed in prior to teeing off on Thursday.

With such a short course, there’s not much to defend from a low score and you can see that from the scoring average being over half a stroke under par last year. In the two times they’ve played here, the winning score was -18 and -14 and only 17 of 64 last year and 31 of 76 the year before shot over par.

While the course is short, players who hit it a long ways still do have an advantage around here, especially if they are somewhat accurate off the tee. The tree-lined fairways provide some defense, but players who are long, aggressive, and accurate can have a short chip or pitch into a lot of these greens. They also can find themselves dead to rights behind some trees if they miss. Players have found success here doing it both ways. DJ has found success relying on his distance (T49 in fairways hit), and so has Phil (T55 in fairways hit) in their wins, but guys like Tyrell Hatton (T3 in fairways hit) have had success just hitting fairways and finding greens.

The other defense is difficult to read green complexes. Not only are they difficult to read, but they are poa annua, which as you know gets quite bumpy as the day goes on and players will struggle with the bounces. Last year, it seemed like everyone needed tap ins to make birdies with how bumpy they were. For example, last year’s winner here Phil Mickelson only made 304 feet putts for the week and was top 15 in the field. Last week at Riviera Justin Thomas was pretty poor in terms of putting, especially Sunday and made 342 feet of putts. It’s a tough week for putting, but if you can read the greens and don’t get so frustrated with the putts not dropping when they should you can have a good week.

One way to beat the greens though? Stick it tight. Which is what we’ve seen on the leaderboard here over its two iterations, ballstrikers galore in the top ten. Sergio Garcia, Justin Thomas, Tommy Fleetwood, and Tyrell Hatton have back to back top 15’s here. Daniel Berger has had quite a bit of success here as well.

With Kikuyu Grass fairways/rough and Poa Annua greens we can likely give a bit of a bump to players who had a solid week at the Genesis Open as that is similar conditions. Other courses that we can look at in terms of correlation are Valderamma, East Lake, and Firestone. Tree-lined fairways, kikuyu grass, and small greens are the main factors you need to consider when looking at courses that are a good match.

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Key Stats:

Key Stats to look for this week – Driving Distance, SG – Approach, Birdies Gained, Par 5 Scoring, Long Par 4 Scoring, Course History, and Projected Course Score.

You can find all of these key stats in our DFS Army research station accessible ONLY for our VIPs.

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The Field:

In this section, I’ll cover who is in the field this week, the odds, any pricing discrepancies, and a few of my favorite plays on first look!

JT leads the way after a solid outing last week despite the tough Sunday, and looks every bit the favorite coming in here. He was excellent with his irons at Riviera and despite a tough Sunday putting, actually read the Poa greens quite well in rounds 1-3.

Rickie Fowler makes his return to the tour after winning in dramatic fashion at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. He has never really figured out how to play this course though and struggles on the greens here.

In his first appearance on tour this year Brooks Koepka pops off at 18-1 and is actually priced under 10K on DK. He played this event in 2017 and finished T46 after struggling in round one with a 76. He hasn’t had a fantastic start to the year overseas, but nonetheless, I would expect him to compete here.

The player towards the top of the card that I have interest in this week is Sergio Garcia. I ended up playing quite a bit of him in DFS last week after we projected him at low ownership. He’s an excellent ball striker and one of my favorite plays in DFS this week and I suspect you’ll see him on my outright card here in a bit. He has not been shy about his love of this course and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him contend again here this year after back to back top 15 finishes.

With such a small field (72 players) there is tons of value down the card. I’ve bet Byeong Hun An at similar odds in better fields and like him here again.

Matt Wallace is a name that unless you follow the European Tour you likely don’t know much about, but he has had a fantastic last year and outside of a missed cut in Saudi Arabia, hasn’t finished lower than 18th since last fall. In 2018 he won three times on the European Tour and almost played his way onto the Ryder Cup team, with captain Thomas Bjorn electing to go with 4 veterans over Wallace. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him there in 2020 at Whistling Straits though.

While the studs typically dominate this event, some of the Europeans end up going underowned because of name recognition. That makes players like Wallace, and Eddie Pepperell great DFS plays.

Check out this week’s Chalk Donkey article for our DFS Army VIPs!

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Beat the Bookie Betting Card:

Something new I’m adding each week to this article is my personal betting card for the week for Outrights, First Round Leaders, Top 5’s and Top 10’s. The real bread and butter with golf betting is a tournament and round matchups but I’m saving those for our Beat the Bookie VIPs!

As a rule, I typically don’t bet many outrights under +3500 unless its an extremely weak field (DJ at the FedEx St. Jude last year comes to mind) It’s just not a +EV most weeks when you think about 156 guys teeing it up. Hitting 3-4 outrights a year is a fantastic year for most golf bettors. The return on investment of hitting an outright at 50-1 can pay for a long dry spell (which is fairly typical in golf betting if you are only playing Outrights, FRLs and T5/T10).

We typically see the studs dominate here, but I really want to target a few deeper guys and wait on in tournament odds for some plays. It’s not a bad idea to go in on a guy like Justin Thomas who I think really sets up well for a win here, but if he has a mediocre round 1 I think we can get him at odds better than 9-1.

I love Sergio Garcia here this week. The 45-1 odds are juicy for a player who can easily win here and has shown to be in contention in the past. Was top 10 in SG: Approach last week and while he struggled a bit with the putter, it should be equalized this week, and he was top 15 in putts per GIR. So when he got it close, he was in good shape. I have a bit of concern about accuracy off the tee here. He has compared this course to Valderrama where has multiple wins and thats a good sign for a player who often rides emotion. I think 45-1 is too big of odds for a player of his caliber, regardless of how you feel about him personally.

Matt Wallace and Ben An both pop off at 66-1 and present good values. I’ve been both in better fields than this, and a no cut event is a great spot for both as they can make birdies with the best of them. Wallace is an excellent driver of the ball and should be able to put himself into position A around the course and while his approach statistics aren’t fantastic, he is an excellent putter and hopefully, that can carry him. An is similar off the tee, but he’s an excellent ball striker and can stick it tight. He gets in trouble with the putter so hopefully, he is able to be close enough where he doesn’t have to worry about it.

Finally, Erik Van Rooyen is just too good of a golfer to be 400-1 in this field. For whatever reason, MyBookie has him priced here and I had to bite. Most other books don’t have any players lower than 300-1, the value is too good. The South African is the 150th ranked player in the world, and growing up in South Africa shouldn’t have any issue adjusting to the altitude. Current form is poor but at 400-1? I’ll throw a bit on a lottery ticket here and hope for the best.

There’s no T5 Market, just T10/T20 on MyBookie so I changed up my strategy a bit and just took the value I found with my outrights in T10’s and hit the others T20. I also think Matt Kuchar is just an auto bet at +187.

Threw some darts on First Round Leaders outside of my main man Benny An at +5500 everyone is over +10000. Richard Sterne is a dark horse who has had some really fast starts lately on the Euro Tour.

Abraham Ancer in his home country is another fast starter, and Lukas Bjeregaard has a great game for here and is too long at +10000, especially given that he has been bet down to +8000 on most other sites.

I’ll have Head to Head and full tournament matchups posted for our Beat the Bookie VIPs on Wednesday. And there are some reaaaaly juicy ones this week! These are truly where you can make your money in golf betting, while not as sexy or as big as an outright win, they are much more profitable.

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Final Thoughts:

This is a fun week but there is quite a bit of variance with a no-cut event, especially one at altitude with poa annua greens. You can be winning all the money on Thursday and losing it all come Sunday. So is the life of a DFS Golf player.

We will have content for you all through the week at DFS Army. Our research station and domination station optimizer will be updated on Tuesday and I will have my full Chalk Donkey article breaking down all the ownership and GPP strategy for our VIP’s on Tuesday night! If you aren’t a VIP yet, use code UPNORTH for 20% your first month!