Corales Puntacana Championship
The course:
While the top 69 or so golfers will be over enjoying Hilton Head Island, the PGA Tour is hosting the Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic! This Tom Fazio-designed course plays to a par 72 across almost 7,700 yards.
Some interesting tidbits this week:
This is definitely what you think of when you hear resort golf
While it has a very long listed yardage, it tends to play much shorter
This course is 100% paspalum so something to keep in mind
This course is split between inland and coastal 9’s. The front 9 is inland and plays far easier, especially with 2 short-ish par 5’s. The back 9 is far more along the coast and includes a closing 3 holes called the “Devil’s Elbow”.
The green complexes are no joke and how you manage around those will be how folks win or lose this tournament.
As you can imagine given that this is a coastal course, we need to talk about the weather this week. It is the Caribbean and the weather can change on a moment’s notice, but as of right now, the weather looks pretty good, though Sundau looks like it could have some rain. The wind all looks like it should be in the 10-15mph range, which should not give these guys too much trouble.
Prior results:
2023 - Matt Wallace (25-1) shot -19 to win his first PGA Tour event when he beat Nicolai Hojgaard (30-1) by 1 stroke
2022 - Chad Ramey (50-1) captured his first PGA Tour win when he shot -17 and topped Ben Martin (150-1) and Alex Smalley (35-1) by 1 stroke
2021 - Joel Dahmen (40-1) captured his first and only PGA Tour win when he shot -12 and beat Rafael Campos ((125-1) and Sam Ryder (40-1) by 1 stroke
2020 - Hudson Swafford (200-1) shot -18 to beat Tyler McCumber (300-1) by 1 stroke
In 2023, the first-round leaders were Ben Marting and Brice Garnett, who each shot 66 on their way to both finishing in a tie for 8th. The eventual winner, Matt Wallace, was sitting one stroke back after the first round.
The bets:
We have the card for the RBC Heritage already out there (link to picks) so going to keep it relatively light here with only 3u of risk:
Outright:
0.35u Doug Ghim 35-1
0.35u Kevin Yu 35-1
0.35u Mark Hubbard 35-1
0.24u Joseph Bramlett 55-1
0.15u Mac Meissner 90-1
0.12u Lanto Griffin 110-1
Top 20 (0.25u):
Doug Ghim +130
Kevin Yu +150
Mark Hubbard +150
Top 40 (0.25u):
Joseph Bramlett -125
Mac Meissner -105
Lanto Griffin +105