Last week’s Bermuda Championship featured only three of the world’s top 50 players, but this week’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba is serving tasty names such as Justin Thomas, Abraham Ancer, Brooks Koepka, Viktor Hovland, Tony Finau, Shane Lowry and Billy Horschel.
Here’s a look at five sleeper picks, however, who could be good bets to emerge victoriously in Mexico (odds courtesy PointsBet).
Matthew Wolff (+4500)
After a turbulent season on and off the course, the 22-year-old is now in a ‘happier spot’ and has the results to show for it in his two starts this season. He nailed a 36-foot putt to make the cut at the Sanderson Farms and eventually tied for 17th, following a solid weekend. He backed up that performance with a solo-second at the Shriners Children’s Open.
Last year at Mayakoba, Wolff’s Oklahoma State teammate, Hovland, earned the win. Wolff could be ready to follow suit and put an exclamation mark on his comeback.
Full-field tee times from the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba
Maverick McNealy (+5500)
The former Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Fred Haskins award winner looks to celebrate his 26th birthday Sunday with his first PGA Tour win. McNealy held the Fortinet Championship’s 54-hole lead, but finished one shot back of Max Homa. It was his second runner-up finish in his 67th Tour start (2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am). Seven top-20 finishes last season, plus two T-21s, show he’s ready to round the corner sooner rather than later and Mayakoba, where he finished T-12 last year, could be the place where he gets over the hump.
Harold Varner III (+6600)
Since his rare “bad attitude” at the Wyndham Championship (T-57), Varner has inched closer to his long-awaited first Tour win. The 31-year-old posted a T-11 at The Northern Trust and then a T-12 at the BMW Championship and has two top-20s in three starts this fall. After becoming a father in early October, maybe a new perspective prolongs an eventful month in a tournament in which he owns two top-6 results.
Carlos Ortiz (+8000)
The 2020 Houston Open winner looks to overpower the event’s betting co-favorite and fellow Mexican, Abraham Ancer, to win on home soil, just as Hideki Matsuyama did two weeks ago at the Zozo Championship. Ortiz has started the season slow and withdrew from the Zozo with a shoulder injury, but if a week off refurbished the 30-year-old’s health as he tweeted, he can build off his T-9 in 2015, runner-up two years ago and T-8 last year at Mayakoba to wow the home crowd.
Adam Long (+12500)
Understandably so, two missed cuts with a pair of top-30s this season hasn’t created much fanfare. But the 34-year-old has quite the track record at Mayakoba with a T-2 in 2019 and a T-3 last year. Maybe those two finishes were his peak, but the 2019 Desert Classic winner is clearly comfortable South of the Border and at +12500, it’s worth a flyer to see if he can keep the good spirit in Mexico while finally notching a win there.
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