The PGA Tour heads to the beautiful Mexican resort town of Playa del Carmen and to one of the more underrated annual golf courses, El Camaleon. In English, “El Camaleon” means “the chameleon” and was named thus because architect Greg Norman built the course with consistently changing scenery. There are three different landscapes that golfers will encounter at Mayakoba which include jungle, mangrove wetlands, and the scenic coastal beachfront.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bEl Camaleon is a narrow, positional layout where avoiding the penalty areas that line many fairways and hitting approaches to the right area on the large greens have been the keys to success. It’s definitely a course where accuracy is more important than the average PGA Tour course, and recent winners reflect that with fairway finders Viktor Hovland, Brendon Todd, Matt Kuchar, Pat Perez, and Graeme McDowell winning six of the last nine events.
Coming off the weakest-field event in months at the Bermuda Championship where Seamus Power emerged victorious, we have a much stronger field this week with 13 of the top 50 ranked players in the world in attendance. Taking it a step further, 24 of the world’s top 75 will be at El Camaleon.
Looking for a third straight victory here, the world’s 11th-ranked player, Viktor Hovland returns to Mayakoba and headlines the field of 132 golfers. Now known as the Prince of Paspalum, all three of his Tour wins have come on golf courses that feature paspalum playing surfaces. Hovland is trying to match Steve Stricker who is the last player to win the same tournament three consecutive years after he won the John Deere Classic from 2009-2011. Other high-ranking players in the field include #2 Scottie Scheffler, #9 Collin Morikawa, #14 Tony Finau, and #16 Billy Horschel.
Course History
The scenic El Camaleon is a resort course that was designed by Greg Norman in 2006 and has been the host course for this event each year since 2007. It is part of the all-inclusive Mayakoba Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico and sits about 50 miles south of Cancun near the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Over the first 15 years, this event has gone through several title changes: The OHL Classic, Mayakoba Classic, and since last year, the World Wide Technologies Championship at Mayakoba. The only change for this year’s event is a new tee box that was added to the par-5 5th hole which extends it by 17 yards
The Course
Coming off a week at Port Royal, the shortest course on Tour, El Camaleon isn’t much longer. At 7,034 yards, the par-71 track is the ninth shortest. Even though the course is near the coast, the wind is typically not an issue on most holes due to the trees from the jungle that guard many of the inland holes. Because it is a resort course, the rough is only two inches long and the greens are among the largest on Tour.
Yardage-wise, the course is short and it also plays that way due to the constant challenge of lurking danger areas from both the dense jungle and water hazards on seven different holes. Distance might mean less here than at any other course the pros play. With the course being wall-to-wall Paspalum grass, there also aren’t many bad lies. The ball tends to sit up higher on this grass which allows for elite ball-strikers to have the most success.
Scoring has remained quite consistent at El Camaleon with the winner reaching or exceeding the 17-under mark in nine straight editions. Overall, it has played as the 13th easiest course in the Tour rotation at -1.25 strokes under par. The field averages a birdie rate of just under 23% along with a bogey-or-worse rate of 14%, both much easier than the Tour average. While Viktor Hovland has been ultra-consistent in hitting fairways here over the past two years, he won in two different ways. Last year he was 10th in average putts per round but was 45th back in 2021. Last year, he led the field in GIR (Greens in Regulation).
As for the course layout itself, the four Par 3s are the easiest on Tour, averaging 2.87 per hole. Three of the four holes measure under 155 yards with the 116-yard 4th hole playing as one of the shortest anywhere. Meanwhile, the three Par 5s are also among the shortest and easiest on Tour as well. The longest plays at just over 570 yards making all three reachable in two shots provided the wind cooperates. The course does show some teeth with five par-4s over 450 yards that have a bogey or worse rate of over 22%.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
With the jungles, mangrove wetlands and canals surrounding many of the fairways, there aren’t many courses on Tour that put greater importance on accuracy off the tee. El Camaleon is definitely a “first-shot” course. Yes, accuracy on approach shots is still vital, but with the Driving Accuracy here being 56.3% (which is almost 5% tougher than Tour average), the “Fairways Gained” stat takes on a whole new level of importance.
While distance is not important here, players who miss the fairway regularly will be in huge trouble. There are only a few yards of rough on each side of the fairway before the hazard areas take over, including the aforementioned jungle, wetlands and canals that surround most holes.
Because of the danger areas and doglegs, there are numerous holes where golfers choose to club down off the tee to avoid trouble. As 2018 winner Matt Kuchar said, “If you’re missing fairways, it means you’re in the mangroves, you’re in the hazard, you’re taking penalty drops, you’re really in trouble. If you’re driving it well, you have a chance to perform well.”
Approach
With players often laying up off the tee, combined with the longer par-4s, there is a good mixture of both wedges and mid-to-long irons on approach. This also means most approaches are being funneled from the same range no matter the player.
With no strokes gained data again this week, we do not know the exact amount of approach shots from each range nor the average proximity to the hole. What we do know is that historically, El Camaleon has had soft greens. Along with the tropical moisture, the paspalum greens slow the ball down allowing players to hold the green. Of course, hitting into the ninth largest greens on Tour at an average of 7,000 square feet allows for a higher GIR% than normal.
Around the Green and Putting
As evidenced by Viktor Hovland’s back-to-back wins here, around the green play has typically been easier than average. Along with the greens being larger and typically very receptive, paspalum is much easier to chip from compared to the tighter lies on other surfaces. And with the greens running slow and mostly flat, golfers don’t have to worry as much about the ball running past the hole and can be more aggressive on their chips.
Finally, with the paspalum grass being known as a soft, spongy surface that is set to run really slow at around a 10 on the stimp meter, it tends to neutralize the playing field for both strong and weak putters alike. Hovland emphasized this by saying, “My success here has a lot to do with the Paspalum greens I’ve seemed to putt well at. It’s a bit slower than what we see every other week on Tour and I think that’s helped me just with where I kind of have grown up in Norway. We have flatter and slower greens and that sets up better for me here.”
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