Fantasy Golf Picks and Predictions – Puerto Rico Open

2019 Puerto Rico Open Preview

With no European Tour tournament this week, the DFS sites are serving up the PGA TOUR’s alternate event – the Puerto Rico Open – as their appetizer course.

This is your classic alternate, which attracts a strange field of formerly quality operators looking to find some form, talented youngsters, and Web.com Tour graduates seeking their maiden PGA TOUR victory, as well as a few grizzled old veterans perhaps seeking one last major payday before the Champions Tour comes a-calling.

The leaderboards of this event generally back up that notion. There was no edition in 2018, but a year prior to that D.A. Points roused himself from cold storage to win by two strokes from 48-year-old Retief Goosen, 41-year-old Bill Lunde and some young whippersnapper by the name of Bryson DeChambeau.

Corey Conners of Canada plays his shot from the bunker on the 14th…

Corey Conners of Canada plays his shot from the bunker on the 14th hole during the final round of the Sanderson Farms Championship at The Country Club of Jackson on October 28, 2018 in Jackson,… Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images

In 2016, Tony Finau won his maiden – and still only – PGA TOUR title here against Steve Marino, a player that hadn’t contended in an event for more than seven years.

And in 2015, the 45-year-old Alex Cejka finally landed his first PGA TOUR win in a five-man playoff that also included then 23-year-old Emiliano Grillo and Sam Saunders.

So, there is a narrative, as such, to how the Puerto Rico Open pans out; that’s the good news. The bad news is that finding out who the protagonists might be is a hefty mystery to unravel.

When the sportsbooks have Daniel Berger and Peter Uihlein as their favorites at sub 20/1 prices, you know you’re going to have to get your thinking cap on.

What else do we know? Well, the event will unfold at the Coco Beach Golf and Country Club in the suburb of Rio Grande, with the course being a composite of four mini courses designed by former US Open champion Tom Kite.

Happily, any notions of this playing like a US Open track can be quickly extinguished, with plenty of room off the tee and minimal rough in play. There are water hazards, but these are mostly for aesthetic purposes rather than gobbling up errant golf balls.

The course’s key defense is its length (7,569 yards for its Par 72), particularly as the fairways are largely flat and there isn’t much run to them. Also, there is some rain in the forecast which will lengthen proceedings further.

Oh, and the wind is another defense mechanism: we may get gusts of up to 16mph, which is significant.

The greens are of an average size and the same Seashore Paspalum strain used at the Mayakoba Classic and CIMB Classic. And if you’re looking for another course correlation, the Corales Punta Cana Championship is played just across the water in the Dominican Republic.

It’s a tough nut to crack, but here are six plays that might just work at the Puerto Rico Open.

[membership level=”0″]

This Week’s Puerto Rico Open Fantasy Picks & Predictions

You must be a Premium Member to view our exclusive fantasy golf picks.

Already a member?  Sign in Here.

[/membership]

[membership level=”1,2,3″]

This Week’s Puerto Rico Open Fantasy Picks

Corey Conners – $10,300 – When flicking back through the leaderboards of previous editions of this event, we see quality young ball-strikers who have enjoyed their chance to shine: Finau, DeChambeau, Grillo and co.

It’s possible, rather than probable, that one day Corey Conners might be held in such esteem too.

The Canadian ranks eleventh for Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green this season, which puts him in some rather illustrious company, and confirms he has the game to really leap forward in 2019.

He’s long and straight off the tee (15th for Total Driving) and unsurprisingly makes lots of greens (8th for GIR), and as often tends to be the case with young players it’s only the mysterious putting part that holds them back.

Stats don’t win golf tournaments, as we know, but this is a good guide for a young player that has missed his last two cuts. But aside from the manic pro-am format at Pebble Beach and the wide-open expanses at the Desert Classic, and we’ll find Conners has a penchant for island golf (T3 at the Sony Open) and can prosper in weak field events (solo second at the Sanderson Farms Championship).

If he can make some putts in Puerto Rico, he could go very well indeed.

Matt Every – $9,000 – Floridians have a tendency to do well in this event, and so Matt Every’s renaissance is timely.

The 35-year-old has been in the golfing doldrums for a long time, but he has show tangible green shoots of recovery this term. In three starts on the PGA TOUR this term he’s finished 14-15-20, and with eight out of twelve rounds in the 60s we know he is feeling good about his game.

Ranking inside the Tour’s top-40 for Strokes Gained both from Tee-to-Green and Putting, Every also sits eighth in the list of Par 5 Birdie or Better Leaders, and shooting low numbers on the longer holes might just be the difference between success and everything else in Puerto Rico.

Nate Lashley – $8,300 – A former Corales Punta Cana champion and three-time winner on the Latinoamerica Tour, Lashley springs naturally to mind this week.

He’s got a neat and tidy game which features plenty of fairways (58th for Driving Accuracy) and greens found (26th for SG: Approach, 27th for GIR), and when you factor in that he can putt (21st for SG: Putting) it’s no wonder that he has performed so well this season.

Lashley has made five consecutive cuts, with a trio of top-20 finishes in the Safeway Open, Sanderson Farms and Desert Classic.

It’s the kind of consistency that will serve him well here, and at 36 Lashley fits the bill of the senior statesman looking to get their hands on a PGA TOUR trophy.

Kyoung-Hoon Lee – $8,100 – Statisticians will not have missed the fact that K-H Lee ranked first for Strokes Gained: Approach at Riviera last week.

After five missed cuts that T25 finish in the Genesis Open will have comes as a blessed relief, and we also like the fact that the Korean opened up with a pair of 66s at the Mayakoba Classic before finishing in T29.

The boy can definitely play, as confirmed by four top-three finishes on the Web.com Tour last season, so let’s hope we get ‘good Lee’ rather than the other version this week.

D.J. Trahan – $7,500 – If you’ve got a long old memory, you might just remember D.J. Trahan finishing T4 in the US Open back in 2008.

The sands of time were cruel to him thereafter, but this season he has found something akin to that ’08 form once more.

The 38-year-old opened up his campaign with T7 at the Sanderson Farms before settling for T18 at Pebble Beach last time out, and as a two-time PGA TOUR winner he clearly has that touch of class that not all are blessed with.

A US Amateur Links champion, a bit of wind won’t trouble Trahan.

Julian Etulain – $7,200 – The Argentine is a four-time winner on the Latinoamerica Tour and won its Order of Merit in 2014, and since moving to the States has enjoyed some success too.

He won on the Web.com Tour last year, and has done okay on the PGA TOUR this time around: making four of his last five cuts and serving up a T7 at the Safeway Open.

Etulain is a fantastic putter that ranks 41st for Par 5 Birdie or Better Leaders, and he should deliver a performance that outdoes his salary here.

[/membership]

Cover photo via Instagram