A surprisingly strong field heads to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, for this year’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba at El Camaleon Golf Club.
El Camaleon is one of the Tour’s shortest courses, and the scorecard shows a Par-71 track that can be stretched to 6,987 yards. The jungles and mangrove wetlands protect most holes from huge wind gusts, even though I’d still consider it a coastal course. Still, it plays slightly shorter than the scorecard indicates. A quick glance at the winning scores in past years shows that it’s not a difficult course to score on, with the winner routinely finishing at or around 20-under-par. These Paspalum greens are generous and typically raise the baseline putting performance for even the Tour’s bottom-tier putters. This is one of the few courses on the PGA Tour regular rotation that truly chokes down the advantage of distance compared to the average course, which brings a lot of the field into play.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bAccuracy off the tee is vital even though the rough isn’t overly penal. The Par-5s are the easiest holes on the course, so play on the Par-4s will be crucial this week. A well-positioned tee shot will allow golfers to have a scoring wedge into these short Par-4s. Playing from the wrong side of the fairway or rough puts you at a disadvantage, and when scoring gets this low, you can not give shots back to the field. Even without the advantage of Shotlink data here, we know most approach shots will be under 150 yards due to the length of these holes.
For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview, but here’s an important tidbit:
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 among the shortest and easiest on Tour. The longest plays at just over 570 yards making all three reachable in two shots provided the wind cooperates. However, the course does show some teeth with five par-4s over 450 yards that have a bogey or worse rate of over 22%.
There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week.
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*Betting lines are accurate at the time of publication.
Noonan’s Mayakoba Betting Targets
Aaron Wise
This is the week.
Aaron Wise has finished inside the top 15 in four of his past six starts and has done the same at Mayakoba in three of the past four seasons. He was in contention last time out at the CJ Cup, but a poor Saturday put him too far behind Rory McIlroy at the start of the fourth round, and he finished alone in sixth place.
With an emphasis on shot-making and Par-4 scoring, it’s no wonder Wise has done well in previous starts at Mayakoba. Regardless of the sample size of rounds, Wise is among the best in this field in strokes-gained approach (SG: APP), strokes-gained tee-to-green (SG: T2G), and Par-4 scoring average. He improved his putting quite a bit from his spring issues on the green, finishing 2022 as an above-average putter at 0.12 strokes gained per round. He’ll put it all together this week and take home his first win since the 2018 Byron Nelson.
To Win: 20/1 BetMGM
Andrew Putnam
The recent form for Andrew Putnam is terrific, and I’m looking to ride that wave this week at one of the few tracks on Tour that he could actually take down. After missing nine of 12 cuts from February to May, Putnam has strung together nine straight made cuts, eight of which have seen him finish T30 or better. His best showing was in Japan at the ZOZO Championship, where he finished T2, another course that minimized distance off the tee and rewarded accuracy. He’s gained strokes across the board during the swing season outside of the distance issues off the tee that lag him behind most weeks. Over the past 36 rounds, Putnam ranks third in this field in SG: Par 4s.
To Win: 66/1 BetRivers
FanDuel Finishing Position Parlay
Adam Long and Hayden Buckley- T40 (+383) FanDuel
I’m going to feature my other two outright selections here with Adam Long and Hayden Buckley.
Adam Long is available on DraftKings at 90/1, which is off-market and too steep considering his form and affinity for this place. Last season’s T22 was his worst finish after finding himself in the top 3 the previous two years. His current form is significantly better than it was heading into last season’s event, ranking 10th in my model this week over the past 36 rounds played.
The same can be said for Hayden Buckley, who’s bagged three straight T20s, including a T5 last time out at the ZOZO. He’s elite off the tee, both in terms of distance and accuracy, and his recent form on approach is good enough to compete here. I’m backing him at 80/1 on DraftKings to win this week.
Unlike most other books I’m familiar with, FanDuel allows you to parlay finishing position bets. Now, the very premise of the bet is flawed because the expected value is negative since players are competing for the same finishing positions. If the bet is two T20s like this one, when one leg of your parlay finishes above the threshold, there’s now one less spot available in that range for the other leg(s) to also come in. I know the math is terrible. Spare me. But let’s be honest. Some bets are just fun, and these are fun for me.
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