Brief Notes
The Mexico Open is here and a Zurich look back
The Zurich team model yielded solid fruit, identifying the winning team as well as giving us five teams in the top 10. Roughly a 70% made cut rate out of the smaller pool of teams, but a lot of high end results in a wonky format. We’ll take it and move on to our traditional tournament formats.
Vallarta Vidanta, home of this weeks Mexico Jon Rahm Open is a very long course checking in at close to 7,500 yards. It is among the easiest courses on tour around the green as well as not penalizing golfers for missing the fairway. We won’t be factoring around the green measurements this week.
We need golfers who carry quite a bit of distance to allow for shorter approaches. There are four par 5’s on this course and utilizing the scoring on these holes will be absolutely vital for high finishes. There are also five (!) par 3’s and one 297 yard par 4. The other eight par 4’s on the course are quite long and play as some of the more difficult par 4’s on tour. This is why we’re lending ourselves to distance and ball striking — essentially golfers who are going to give themselves opportunities to score and make their lives easier in avoiding mistakes.
Greens are rather larger, but while they aren’t slow by any means, they will not roll like Augusta type greens. You can utilize putting as a tiebreaker if you so choose or are stuck between two similarly profiled golfers, but it’s not something I’m heavily (if at all) factoring in the final field choices.
Weather does not appear to be an issue and it will be quite warm. I’m expecting the ball to carry moreso than usual, and because of that, I still continue to favor distance, approach and ball striking if you’re doing independent research.
These spaces will be more utilized in the manner you’re accustomed to this week as we return to a more typical schedule and can utilize the data more than last week.