Some family issues, injuries, and maybe the water or the back-and-forth across North America have combined to somewhat thin out the field at this week’s World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship. It’s a very good field but not a great one. Included are eight of the top 10 and 10 of the top 15 in the current week Hawley Ratings. Not in attendance are Jason Day, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama, and Henrik Stenson from the top 15.
The top pick here is Dustin Johnson, who has been solid four out of four times this year. Next is Paul Casey, out for the third time in 2018 and coming off of his worst finish in over a year, barely inside the top 50 at the Genesis two weeks ago. Next are last week’s winner (and monitor of fan behavior), Justin Thomas, and Phil Mickelson, who is playing his best golf since, well, his early 40s.
There are a number of players in the field who have shown quite a bit more in recent appearances than would have been expected based on their established form. Tops among these is Alex Noren, playing the PGA Tour full-time for the first time this season. In his four 2018 starts, Noren has been a playoff loser at the Farmers, just outside the top 20 at Phoenix, in the top 20 at the Genesis, and third last week at the Honda. Mickelson is at his highest rating level in several years. Others in this category are Kevin Chappell, a top-10 finisher in the Pebble Beach, and South African Dylan Frittelli, 11th at the Honda and with six straight top-20 finishes.
Headed in the opposite direction are Francesco Molinari, Kevin Kisner, and Sergio Garcia.
The event has been played at the Club de Golf Chapultepec, a little west of Mexico City, only once, so there is not a lot of data for analysis of what type of play fits best. Based on last year, greens in regulation was by far the statistic most strongly correlated with success, and driving distance correlated to a lesser extent. The elevation is about a mile and a half, so presumably the long hitters will really hit it a long way. The players whose statistical profiles are the best fits for the course, per the Hawley course fit statistics, are Tyrrell Hatton, Ross Fisher, Jorge Campillo, Tommy Fleetwood, and Frittelli, in that order.
It’s a little more complicated than this, but the field is composed of the top 50 players from the Official World Golf Ranking, the top 30 from last year’s FedEx points list, the top 10 from this year’s FedEx points list, plus varying numbers of players from the money lists of the European, Japanese, Australasian, South African, and Asian tours. The top native-born Mexican player in the OWGR (Abraham Ancer) is in, too.