Matsuyama, McIlroy, Aberg – three Signature Events, three superstars. Two-point-five if you still need Aberg to go and win a major championship before you're willing to describe him as that. As Jay Monahan and everybody else involved in 'the framework agreement' seeks to bring everybody back together under one banner, there are in some ways two PGA Tours now, never mind that other thing you hear about sometimes.
The Mexico Open is very different from what we've witnessed of late but that's just fine and although we do have an in-form favourite in Akshay Bhatia, the fact that the second-favourite shot 82-77 last week tells you plenty. This is a steep drop in grade, a chance for Korn Ferry and DP World Tour graduates to begin to find their feet, and that is precisely what happened last year as Jake Knapp beat Sami Valimaki with Robert MacIntyre among the chasing pack.
Knapp was not a surprise champion having played so well at Torrey Pines and that course, used twice this year, could be a good place to hunt for clues. The trouble is that not many in this field played there last week, while the Farmers Insurance Open was coloured by strong winds and a significant draw bias. Still, with Tony Finau and Jon Rahm having battled it out in the first two tournaments staged here, there are reasons to believe that form there is worth marking up.
Smalley is a strong, long driver who was sixth here on debut when ranking eight in the strokes-gained tee-to-green statistics. He gained more than 10 strokes with his ball-striking that week despite arriving on a run of three missed cuts since he'd been second under similar conditions in the Dominican Republic.
His subsequent two appearances have resulted in missed cuts which definitely help with the price this time, but he had no top-20s in 10 starts for the year when arriving here in 2023, then last year produced even better tee-to-green numbers than he had on debut. Unfortunately, he was not only in the middle of another poor run of form, but a longstanding putting funk to boot.
Jaeger in fact has five top-threes since the beginning of last year and as well as here, they include that win plus third place at Torrey Pines, so in terms of correlating form he has it all. Not that we really need it: having been 15th, 18th and third in three starts at Vidanta Vallarta, the course self-evidently fits.
Only last year did he drive it anywhere near as well as he can though so there's scope for Jaeger to do what he did in Houston and properly capitalise on the way he's revamped his game. Once a self-declared chip-and-putt specialist, he's a poster boy for speed training having become one of the longer drivers on the PGA Tour.
One of the very longest drivers in this field, he could be a perfect fit and I'm drawn to the fact that he's another who did OK against a big enough draw bias at Torrey Pines. In fact that undersells his performance: 25th there having been fourth at halfway was a very good effort.
Since then he's missed the cut in Phoenix but only narrowly after three dropped shots at the end of round two, and following a pipe-opener at an unsuitable Sony Open to begin the year, two of his three rounds in the AmEx were excellent, the other admittedly terrible.
There have ultimately been enough positives to believe this streaky but highly capable player isn't far off and as he can both mash it off the tee and putt really well on his day, I find that quite an attractive combination around this specific course.
Again I wouldn't read too much into it but there are other reasons for liking his chances, including the fact that he drove the ball so well to finish 24th here on his sole start to date, ranking first in distance and fifth in strokes-gained off-the-tee.
That was his best start of the season to that point and the event took place in April. Come the end of the year he'd bettered it only once and that was also in Mexico, at the similarly wide-open El Cardonal which is pretty similar albeit a fair bit easier than this place in general.
Also third at El Camaleon, Mexico has been kind to Gordon and he returns after a recent and welcome top-10 finish which came at Torrey Pines, where he'd impressed as well on debut back in 2020.
That effort a month ago was his first PGA Tour top-10 in more than two years so I'm not getting carried away by any means, especially as the putter remains a bit of an issue, but Gordon is really well-suited to this test and three-figure prices look worth taking.
The putter has become a big issue for Chan Kim but for which he'd be interesting and the same goes for Rico Hoey. The latter is a fabulous driver of the ball who has winning Torrey Pines form from his junior days and was among my selections for the Farmers at 100/1, a field headed by Ludvig Aberg and Hideki Matsuyama. Two missed cuts later and he's 80s in this considerably lower grade.
At least Hoey has putted consistently well relatively recently whereas Vincent Norrman has lost strokes in 24 of his last 25 measured starts, which will continue to undermine the improvements in his long-game unless something changes. He was 18th on debut here and has certainly shown signs of life since Christmas, but after a good putting week in the Sony has reverted to type since.
Perhaps seeing Aberg win will help Norrman but he's left out in favour of TREY MULLINAX.
Like Norrman, he won the Barbasol (now ISCO) Championship for his PGA Tour breakthrough, an event Hoey should've won last year and a great one for long drivers such as this trio.
Mullinax then suffered some injury issues which set him back just as his career was finally about to take off and he's playing on a major medical extension now, which Rob Bolton tells me leaves him with 18 starts to earn 310 FedEx Cup points, or 149 for conditional status.
He has time then but this big-hitters' event will be one of his best opportunities and, a few months prior to that Barbasol win, he ranked 11th in strokes-gained tee-to-green here to finish 24th. As with Gordon that was at the time his best performance of the season.
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