After drawing away the top 50 players, or the top 64 players, or however many are automatically allocated into the various majors and WGC events, who actually is left to win the small-bucks events that occur on the same weekends except deep in the shadows?

The alookatgolf.com analytics staff went to work on that question, looking at the top three finishers in each of the smaller events over the past 12 years. Obviously there is a fair amount of diversity among the 162 players who finished in a tie for third or better in those 42 events, yet some commonality emerges:

• They range in world ranking (per the Hawley Ratings) from Daniel Berger who was 41st when finishing second in the 2019 Puerto Rico event down to over a dozen players who hadn’t qualified for the ratings by appearing in eight events over the prior two years. The average top-three finisher had a rating of 315, which corresponds to about 185th in the ratings.
• They range in age from John Cook, who was 53 as runner-up in the 2011 Mayakoba to Robby Shelton, who was 19 when third in the 2015 Barbasol, and Jordan Spieth, also 19 when runner-up in the 2013 Puerto Rico. The average age of a top-three finisher in these events is 31.
• There were only 22 instances of a prior top-10 finish in the same event in the prior four years, and in fact only 96 instances of a player finishing in the top three with a made cut within the prior four years.

So, to summarize, a world ranking in the 120 to 170 range, a guy in his early 30s, and somebody who might have played the event once previously. The 2021 Puerto Rico Open has two players who fit that description:

• Branden Grace, 159th in the ratings, age 32, no prior appearance in the event.
• Xinjun Zhang, 168th in the ratings, age 33, finished 14th in the event last year in his only prior appearance.

A couple of other guys are fairly good matches for the profile above:

• Chesson Hadley, 152nd in the ratings, age 34, appeared in three of the last four iterations of the event and won in 2014.
• KH Lee, 144th in the ratings, age 29, played the last two years. Lee was runner-up at Phoenix.

The computer pick, based on “normal” criteria, is Scott Brown, 204th, age 37, largely on the basis of past performance in the event. He has been in the top 10 in three of the last four events and won it prior to that, In 2013.

The event is back at the Grand Reserve Golf Club for a second consecutive year. The golf course is in Río Grande, east of San Juan, by the sea and overlooking El Yunque U.S. National Forest.