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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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