By RickRunGood

The Mexico Open has been Mexico’s National Championship since 1944 but only rose to the PGA TOUR in 2022. That gives us two years of history at Vidanta Vallarta with heavy favorites (Jon Rahm and Tony Finau) coming out on top each time.

There’s only two years worth of data, but the stats point to one thing that matters this week – approach play. There are only 12 courses on the PGA TOUR schedule where SG: Approach is more highly correlated to success than Vidanta Vallarta.

More than that, almost every stat that ranks higher than that is some sort of approach metric.

Look at that list! The first eight (!!) stats are all some sort of second-shot metric. It’s also 11 of the first 12! Now – there’s a reason that I separate these stats from the big boys like Strokes Gained, Driving Distance, etc. These stats can be wonky. They have small samples and they don’t always provide a lot of value. However, when you see that many related metrics on this list, you have to pay attention. 

Below is a list of the best approach players over the last 50 rounds (35 round minimum). It includes measured rounds from both the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour. The “Rank” on the left is the overall Strokes Gained rank for the player during that time period.

For example – Chez Reavie is the 2nd best approach player but 59th in Strokes Gained Total.

Vidanta Vallarta is a statistical outlier when it comes to proximity buckets. Over 46% of approach shots come from over 200 yards, by far the highest rate on TOUR. Over 19% of shots come from 175-200 which is the 4th highest rate on the schedule. This is a test of distance and long approaches.

If you’d like some anecdotal evidence about big hitters and their results at this event – here we go. Jon Rahm, Tony Finau, Cameron Champ, Patrick Rodgers have all finished inside the Top 10 in each of the last two years! Throw in Kurt Kitayama and Akshay Bhatia into the mix and you’re talking about some pretty lethal hitters.

Here’s the best players at the Mexico Open in the last two years, who are in the field this week:

We don’t have an official Strength of Field number yet, but it’s safe to assume this will skew on the lower end of that scale. There are only four players in the field ranked inside the Top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings and zero players inside the Top 20.

Here are the best players in the field in events with a SOF+ under 100 – meaning it’s a field strength weaker than average. This dates back to 2019 and requires 20 rounds to qualify.

 Notably, Norrman, Finau, Palmer, Champ, Ramey and Reavie have all won (1) event during that period. No others on the list have a victory.

Whether it’s true or not, weeks like this feel wide open. Two years of evidence show us the best player is going to win – but hey, who knows?! Someone could conceivably catch fire for a few days and steal this away from Finau and Zalatoris. If anyone were to catch fire, it would likely be someone off this list:

Alejando Tosti, Jake Knapp and Hayden Springer all gained 5+ strokes to the field in more than 10% of their rounds. It’s a pretty monster rate! Now, that doesn’t come without tradeoffs – look at Hayden Springer. His ceiling might be very very high but his floor is also quite low and much lower than his peers.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this week plays out, good luck this week!