Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – OHL Classic at Mayakoba

The Sleeper Report: Fantasy Golf Sleepers, Long Shots, and Undervalued Picks for the 2017 OHL Classic at Mayakoba

The 2017 OHL Classic at Mayakoba Fantasy Sleeper Preview

Many hot young talents have come and gone from golf over the years: hyped one minute, disappearing without a trace the next.

So it’s with great trepidation that we write this next sentence, but did we witness the birth of another potential major winner last week in Patrick Cantlay?

The 25-year-old’s route to the top has been littered with obstacles – not least the back injury that almost paralyzed him as a younger man – but he has displayed plenty of character, and not to say some outstanding ball striking qualities, as he has climbed back up the world rankings and earned his exemption status back on the PGA TOUR.

And after winning the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open last week, the sky could well be the limit for this young talent. Not only did he show tremendous bottle to win a three-man playoff, he also showed a real maturity in playing sensible, grinding golf on Sunday when the winds were getting up and heads were being lost by his fellow combatants at the top of the leaderboard.

Patrick Cantlay poses with the winner’s trophy after winning the…

Patrick Cantlay poses with the winner’s trophy after winning the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open at the TPC Summerlin on November 5, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

It’s another box ticked for Cantlay, who has now shown he can play high quality golf two weeks in a row and on opposite sides of the planet, despite ongoing concerns about his back.

He won’t attempt to make it three weeks on the spin in Mexico this week, however, as he has decided to sit out the OHL Classic; an event headlined by defending champion Pat Perez, Rickie Fowler, and Patrick Reed.

Played at the aesthetically-pleasing El Camaleon GC in Playa Del Carmen, the players will this week look to tackle one of the shortest tracks on tour – one of the few sub-7000 yard layouts used. It’s typically easy to conquer – Perez won in -21 last year – and with damp conditions predicted from Friday-Sunday this tournament may become a wedge-based shootout. He who approaches best, wins!

The last three champions of this event – Perez, Charley Hoffman and Graeme McDowell – are all tidy players who are comfortable playing in the wind, and the trio boasts supreme course management as you would expect from such an experienced bunch; the average age of the last ten OHL Classic winners has been 38. Crucially, they are to a man all handy at putting on Seashore Paspalum, too.

So who are the sleepers we are backing to perform well in Mexico at a lengthy price with the sportsbooks?

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2017 OHL Classic at Mayakoba Fantasy Sleeper Report

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The 2017 OHL Classic at Mayakoba Fantasy Sleeper Report

Mix and match these players with your usual rosters (or play them separately) to get the most out of your picks this week.

Graeme McDowell – Vegas Odds 50/1 – GMAC bounced back to form with a T10 finish at Shriners last week – a return aided by a final round of 66 in challenging conditions.

The Irishman won here at El Camaleon in 2015, and it’s not hard to see why. He can handle the wind thanks to his experience playing Links golf, and he has played numerous rounds on Seashore Paspalum thanks to his time on the European Tour ad their globetrotting scheduling.

What is particularly pleasing about McDowell’s chances this week – in addition to the fact he’s in form and returning to the site of a previous victory – is that he is putting incredibly well at present.

He ranks second on the PGA TOUR for SG: Putting during the wraparound season, and that is exciting ahead of an event where landing putts has been essential in the past couple of years.

Russell Knox – Vegas Odds 55/1 – It will take something of a rather sharp upturn in fortunes for Knox to win in Mexico, but his previous record in this tournament and elsewhere on Paspalum suggests he can do it.

The Scot has made five starts at Mayakoba, making the cut in each and finishing no lower than T37 and bagging consecutive top-three finishes in his last pair of starts here. His record in the CIMB Classic speaks volumes, too.

Knox has a habit of pulling a big performance out of the bag at surprising times too. Last season he went MC-62-MC-37-65-MC-MC before shooting the lights out in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational to finish T5, while in 2016 he won the Travelers Championship despite finishing no better than T22 in any of his prior five starts.

Ryan Armour – Vegas Odds 80/1 – Armour could have been forgiven for taking the week off following his Sanderson Farms Championship triumph; after all, that was the 41-year-old’s first elite level victory in more than two decades of triumphing.

But he carried forward his exceptional all-round stats from Mississippi to Shriners last week, also ranking 18th for Putting Average on his way to a T20 finish.

Those numbers suggest Armour’s form is sustainable, and that he is far more than just a flash in the pan winner. Putting well and ranking sixth on tour for SG: Tee-to-Green, Armour is a logical pick this week at an eye-catching price.

Nick Taylor – Vegas Odds 90/1 – After a T9 finish at the Safeway Open and decent turns on the Asian swing (including T13 at the correlating CIMB Classic), it was something of a surprise that Taylor didn’t kick on at Shriners last week and deliver another lofty finish.

Never mind though: Summerlin is not a course he has ever quite gotten to grips with.

Not so El Camaleon, where the Canadian finished T15 last year, and his proven love for Paspalum (he ranked 14-8 for Putting Average at CIMB ’17 and OHL ’16) is another handy angle in.

Taylor is one of that group of young players who will be looking to kick their careers on in 2018, and this event could well prove to be the perfect springboard.

Aaron Baddeley – Vegas Odds 125/1 – We drafted Aaron Baddeley as part of our DFS roster for the Sanderson Farms Championship, recognizing that despite missing the cut at the Safeway Open the Australian had actually played excellently from tee-to-green.

We were perturbed then when he would only finish T30, but thought no more of it.

Fast forward a week and Baddeley was bagging a T10 finish at Shriners; framed by his resurgent short game but enhanced by ranking 17th for Putting Average.

The Aussie’s game is in a good place right now, and his profile of age and haul of tournament wins converges nicely.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the 2017 OHL Classic at Mayakoba here.

Sleeper Report Predictions This Season (2017-2018)

[skill_bar heading=”Total Top 3s” percent=”0%” bar_text=”0 out of 25 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 10s” percent=”8.00%” bar_text=”2 out of 25 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Top 25s” percent=”36.00%” bar_text=”9 out of 25 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Winners Picked” percent=”0%” bar_text=”0 out of 5 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Runners-Up Picked” percent=”0%” bar_text=”0 out of 5 events” style=”background-color: #5fb341″][skill_bar heading=”Total Made Cuts (Includes Sleepers)” percent=”72.00″ bar_text=”18 out of 25 picks” style=”background-color: #5fb341″]

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