Event: 2018 Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship
Date: March 21 – March 25th, 2018
Location: 2018 Corales Puntacana Resort & Club , Dominican Republic
Defending Champion: Nate Lashley
TV: Golf Channel
There are going to be a lot of players teeing it up for this week’s Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship that are unfamiliar names looking to get their first career victories.
This has been a popular Web.com Tour stop each of the last two years, but 59 of the top 64 players in the Official World Golf Ranking are participating in this week’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play event at Austin Country Club, in Texas.
Favorite Emiliano Grillo is certainly a well-known name. Grillo, who played the Match Play event last year, heads to the Dominican Republic as a 10-1 favorite. Grillo is easily the highest-ranked player in the field and an easy choice as favorite.
Grillo was just outside the top 25 last week at Bay Hill, but was eighth at the Honda Classic a couple weeks ago.
The course in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic is a picturesque behemoth of a course. This par 72 is nearly 7,700 yards in length, but it is a stunning course that runs right along the water.
This is truly a tremendous course, with large bunkers that sometimes span the length of the fairway and some very wide-open holes that allow players to really go for it off of the tee.
The first part of the back nine leaves the waterfront and goes into something that more closely resembles a tropical jungle, but the course winds back to the water at the end.
Players can really put up some outstanding scores here. Dominic Bozelli was 24-under for the inaugural Web.com event in 2016.
Nate Lashley was 20-under for the win last year.
With the lesser field and fewer FedEx Cup points, no invitation for the Masters will be given for this event, but this is a good opportunity for the players that don’t normally contend for wins to snag one.
Tony Romo
The biggest story in this tournament is the last name on the odds board, as former NFL quarterback and now analyst Tony Romo will make his PGA Tour debut on a sponsor exemption, although Romo is at odds of 1000-1 to win the tournament.
Of course we do expect he’ll get some novelty bets from the public. Romo is a scratch golfer, but this is a PGA-level course, so we’ll see how he fares in his first event.
Romo is quite a golfer. He reached the US Open qualifying sectionals in 2010 and has played well when he has teed it up in pro-am events. Romo has a +0.3 handicap and any player with a handicap of 0.0 or better can get a sponsor exemption, plus Romo will be fun to watch.
Other Favorites
Jim Furyk is the second favorite at +1600. The 47-year-old played a couple weeks ago at the Valspar Championship and finished seventh in just his third event of the season.
Injuries have hurt the Pennsylvania native, and he only averaged 276.6 yards per drive at Innisbrook, which is a pretty big concern with such a long track here at Corales. He is not a guy you should back in our opinion.
Then there’s Trey Mullinax seems like a decent bet at +4000. Mullinax was eighth at the Valspar a couple of weeks ago and ranks second on the PGA Tour in driving distance behind Tony Finau.
He isn’t the most accurate player from the box, but this course is pretty wide open and very flat, so errant tee shots aren’t the worst thing in the world. Mullinax has hit just over two-thirds of greens in regulation.
Going with bombers at this event seems to make a lot of sense, considering the length of the course and also the problems that wind may present with a coastal course.
ODDS TO WIN
Emiliano Grillo +1000
Jim Furyk +1600
Scott Piercy +2000
Patrick Rodgers +2000
Rory Sabbatini +2500
Graeme McDowell +2500
Chris Wood +2500
Harris English +3300
Paul Dunne +3300
Kelly Kraft +3500
Kevin Tway +4000
Robert Garrigus +4000
Corey Conners +4000
David Lingmerth +4000
Trey Mullinax +4000
Fabrizio Zanotti +4500
Harold Varner III +5000
Tony Romo +100000
