Ben Coley's golf betting tips: Puerto Rico Open preview and best bets
Ben Coley put up the winner of the Puerto Rico Open last year and is following a similar formula in siding with proven winner Rafa Cabrera Bello.
Golf betting tips: Puerto Rico Open
2pts e.w. Rafa Cabrera Bello at 40/1 (Unibet, Betfred 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1.5pts e.w. Nate Lashley at 40/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Chan Kim at 66/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Kevin Chappell at 70/1 (Unibet 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Brandon Wu at 80/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
1pt e.w. Kelly Kraft at 100/1 (BoyleSports 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6)
In 20 years, when Charley Hoffman is able to hobble round the back of the field in the Puerto Rico Open, perhaps he'll realise that among the strengths of the PGA Tour is in fact its protection of players. Getting to golf's top tier is extremely difficult, but once you're there, one of the advantages is the web of safety nets put in place to provide some kind of security.
Returning to Puerto Rico, this week's opposite event offers places to John Rollins, Carl Pettersson, Carlos Franco, Heath Slocum, and many more whose best days are behind, and one day organisers may encourage Hoffman to get the clubs out of the garage.
Typically held when the best players in the sport are playing in a limited-field World Golf Championship, this edition is weaker still owing to the fact that it runs alongside a standard PGA Tour invitational, where plenty of Korn Ferry Tour graduates and low-priority players can get a game. Last year's field included eventual winner Branden Grace, plus Emiliano Grillo, Jhonattan Vegas, Ian Poulter, Matt Wallace, Andrew Putnam, Lucas Glover and Tom Lewis. Favourite for this is a player without a professional win to his name, Matthias Schwab, with 32-year-old maiden Mark Hubbard next.
It is then a fine opportunity for someone to ignite or indeed reignite their career but the man to beat in my eyes is someone who did the latter in 2021, RAFA CABRERA BELLO.
A Ryder Cup player who reached 16th in the world when finishing fourth in the Open Championship five years ago, the Spaniard, who has six professional titles to his name, is the undoubted class act at the head of this market. He has the only significant piece of recent, winning form, having triumphed in a play-off for the Open de Espana, and arguably boasts the strongest form this year courtesy of second place in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
These are heights Hubbard has never reached, and John Huh, for all he looks a live candidate himself, has been outside the world's top 200 for more than six years, never having reached the top 50. Schwab hasn't got higher than 78 and while the former amateur standout is a player I really like, one who is in good form after a top-10 finish last week, backing him as favourite for a PGA Tour event looks risky business.
We saw last year when Grace beat Vegas that proven class can go a long way, before which the event witnessed the emergence of a star in Viktor Hovland. There is nobody of Hovland's potential in this field and it makes sense at the odds to side with an equivalent to Grace in Cabrera Bello who, while less prolific, is more than capable of seeing off this rabble.
The fact he's played here twice, from similar spots in the world rankings, is significant and he contended en route to 24th place on debut, following that with 10th a year later. Across these appearances, Cabrera Bello referenced his upbringing in the Canary Islands and how comfortable he is playing by the coast, something we saw in January when second to Pieters, and when he won the Scottish Open in a play-off.
Having missed the cut by a single stroke last time, just as he did in Dubai late last year, Cabrera Bello is ticking over nicely and I love the fact he's been third at Bay Hill in the past. That event has long correlated with this one and so has form at Pebble Beach, where he played well in the US Open back in 2010, and was in the mix in the Pro-Am back in 2018.
A contender last summer at the Byron Nelson and the Memorial Tournament, the 37-year-old is the third-ranked player in this field and the best of the favourites whether you measure short, medium, or long-term performances. At 40/1 with one firm, Cabrera Bello has been dramatically underestimated with the general 28s more than acceptable, and he can make the most of a sponsor's exemption and go really well.
CHAN KIM is also here on an invite and he's the only player inside the world's top 100. Intent on establishing himself on the PGA Tour having been raised in Hawaii and gone to college in Arizona, Kim has been frustrated by a run of missed cuts this year but his worst round has been 71 and he was a good 15th behind Hideki Matsuyama in the ZOZO Championship back in October.
His power combined with some quality approach play makes for an appealing proposition at a par 72 which offers plenty of opportunities given a resort-style set-up, and conditions are forecast to be calm. That should suit a player who has long had plenty of potential and has won seven times in Japan, including the Dunlop Phoenix late last year when fending off some of the best players on that circuit.
I wouldn't for a second argue that his ranking equates to being the best player in this field, and I'll admit to some reluctance in siding with players who do not currently hold PGA Tour cards. However, I do suspect Kim is a good deal better than he's been able to show and that feeling has only increased with missed cuts on the number in both The American Express and the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Were he to play on the Korn Ferry Tour my view is that he'd do very well and soon earn a PGA Tour card, and such talent goes a long way in a field like this. We've seen glimpses of it, not least when just outside the top 20 in last year's PGA Championship, and this is by some distance the weakest event he's played in on the PGA Tour.
At 66/1 and indeed anything 50s and bigger, it's worth siding with a genuine talent in a field packed with those whose ceilings are lower.
Get on the Lash
Plenty of first-time winners have emerged here but that's something of a given based on the nature of fields. If you've won a PGA Tour event anytime recently you simply aren't likely to be playing in the Puerto Rico Open, where defending champions are extremely rare for the same reason. There's a good chance we get another first-timer – they account for nine of the top dozen in the market – but I don't think that's a reason to underestimate winning form.
NATE LASHLEY has that courtesy of his runaway win in the Rocket Mortgage Classic, and he looks one of the more likely types from that top section of the betting.
A winner of the Corales Puntacana when it was a Korn Ferry Tour event, Lashley has some nice seaside form to his name and that extends across to Pebble Beach, where he was 28th in the US Open and has since finished fifth and 28th again in the Pro-Am which takes place in early February.
There's a strong connection between that event and this one, with seven of the last eight Puerto Rico champions having finished in the top 40 at Pebble Beach just weeks earlier. It would be all eight had Steve Marino beaten Tony Finau in their play-off and the courses are both shortish, coastal par-72s which during the events in question are set up to play pretty straightforwardly. It's a trend which is less robust than it may appear, but a strong finish in the Pro-Am is a positive, and Lashley played well there again.
Since then he has missed back-to-back cuts but there was a lot to like about his narrow failure in the Honda Classic, where Lashley was comfortably the best player in the field from tee-to-green among those who did miss the cut. In fact, only five players were ahead of him in the entire field, and all of them went on to record top-10 finishes, which saw the likes of Hubbard, Schwab and Kurt Kitayama promoted to the front of the market.
Lashley is a few spots behind them despite the fact he was eighth on his sole previous start in this, leading at halfway and playing in the final group on Sunday. He does need to return to the form which saw him begin the season with back-to-back top-20 finishes but that's entirely possible based on the signs he showed last week, with his putting well capable of major improvement.
Luke Donald's approach play was outstanding during round two of the Honda and he was second in greens hit en route to 26th here in 2016. I maintain the view that he's got a big performance in him under the right circumstances, but having put him up at 200/1 for the Corales Puntacana last March, I can't bring myself top take 66s for all the field is undeniably weaker.
Another of last week's selections, Austin Smotherman, is third among this field in both strokes-gained off-the-tee and approach, and that kind of ball-striking suggests a bright future lies ahead. This course ought to suit and he played beautifully out of the gate at PGA National, only for his short-game to collapse and result in a frustrating missed cut.
Could this be the week Brandon flowers?
Again though I'm not sure there's much upside in the prices attached to his name whereas there could be in former standout amateur BRANDON WU who, like the above duo, was a bit of an eyecatcher in Florida.
Wu has endured a miserable start to life as a PGA Tour member, but after a narrow missed cut on the Korn Ferry Tour, his second round in the Honda was extremely impressive. Wu gained four strokes with his ball-striking and ranked fifth in strokes-gained approach in shooting 66, and would've made the cut had his putter behaved somewhat.
One round is very little to go on, but he also hit the ball really well at Pebble Beach only to putt hopelessly, and his approach play at the Stadium Course in the AmEx was excellent, too. Together, these paint a picture of a player who is getting there, missing cuts narrowly and enduring some struggles when it comes to scoring, but perhaps building the platform for something much better.
Sent off around the 28/1 mark in a much stronger renewal last year, Wu contended on his way to seventh place and while he doesn't have that recent Pebble Beach form which has been so reliable a pointer, he was 35th there in the 2019 US Open while still an amateur, and 38th after a bright start in 2020. Elsewhere he's shown good links form in the UK when qualifying for the Open, contended for stronger PGA Tour events when playing on invites, and has as much potential as just about anyone.
At 66 and 80/1 that makes him worth chancing and, like Kim, there's ample evidence that his game is closer than a string of missed cuts might suggest.
Pray for improvement from Chappell
At similar odds I'll take the classy KEVIN CHAPPELL, who made a spirited bid to earn back full status in his final start on a Major Medical only to fall to 43rd in Phoenix last time.
Chappell has made four cuts in five this year, building on the confidence an opening 63 at the Sony Open will have provided, and it's notable that his customary iron play has come back around. At his best, Chappell was a supreme ball-striker, finishing second in The PLAYERS despite losing almost five shots with his putter, and his two best approach play performances in more than three years have come in the last few weeks.
First he ranked 17th at Torrey Pines, then 10th in Phoenix, and while losing strokes in the AT&T Pro-Am remember that's one measured round: he hit 16 of 18 greens on day one at Monterey Peninsula and I would expect his numbers would look quite different had shot-tracking data been produced there.
Whatever the case, these are important steps forward for a player who has Pebble Beach and Bay Hill form, having been runner-up at the latter course, and who is a cut above many of these at his best. And while he's got no form here to speak of, both missed cuts came at during particularly bad stretches of golf and in stronger fields, whereas this time he's ticking over nicely and taking a big drop in grade.
Robert Garrigus started well here last year and could repeat the trick after an encouraging return to action at Pebble Beach and fellow veteran Bo Van Pelt can also go well at a course where he was 54-hole leader in 2007 and matched Grace over the final 36 holes last year. Others of note include big-hitting pair Callum Tarren and Curtis Thompson, plus proven DP World Tour winner Kitayama, whose third place in the Honda Classic came courtesy of some excellent ball-striking.
I had been very tempted to finish with a proper roll of the dice on Alejandro Tosti, a formerly top-class amateur whose professional career has shown signs of taking off without yet doing so.
The Argentinian qualified for this on Monday with a typically volatile round of golf and prior to that was 12th in the Estrella del Mar Open, continuing a nice sequence of results back in South America since returning from a trip to Europe last summer.
That trip didn't go to plan as he missed a handful of cuts by narrow margins, but it's worth saying that his ball-striking in the Canary Islands Championship (68-71) was strong (+4 SG) and eight birdies and an eagle again showcased his scoring prowess. After that he went to Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School and narrowly missed making it to Final Stage.
Earlier in the year he'd racked up a sequence of wins on a minor US tour before in fact topping the pre-qualifier for Puerto Rico while back in December 2020 he opened 63-63 to lead a decent event on the LatinoAmerica Tour which took place in the Dominican Republic. Ultimately my view is that he's probably a bit better than the rating he's been given and the 350/1 dangled in a place should tempt those who can take it, especially as fellow qualifier Patrick Flavin, who was behind him in that Estrella del Mar Open, is 80s.
That said he's far more likely to show flashes and finish down the leaderboard and I'll stick to the task of trying to find the winner, which is tricky enough as it is, with KELLY KRAFT the final selection.
A former US Amateur champion, Kraft's record in a handful of these opposite events is very strong. As well as finishing 15th in one appearance here, he's been third, fifth and 14th in the Corales and runner-up in the Barbasol, some return from a dozen appearances.
With two starts left on a medical exemption and Pebble Beach form both recent and distant, having finished runner-up there to Jordan Spieth in 2017, Kraft has most things I was looking for and while his results of late don't leap of the page, he was eighth at halfway two starts ago and held a similar position midway through the Houston Open before Christmas.
His displays since finishing 28th at Pebble Beach haven't been disastrous and he looks one of those players who can be relied upon to improve for a drop in class. That's exactly what happened when playing in the final group on his first Korn Ferry Tour start in a year last August, and Kraft is a 100/1 shot with genuine title aspirations.
Posted at 1245 GMT on 01/03/22
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