Corales Puntacana Championship Picks: Favorites Plus Longshots

While most golf bettors will be focused on this week’s RBC Heritage, the real golf betting sickos are breaking down the alternate-field Corales Puntacana Championship.

Y’all are my kind of people.

This is a spot where we’ve seen veterans such as Graeme McDowell, Hudson Swafford and Joel Dahmen pounce upon a less experienced field, and defending champion Matt Wallace fits a similar narrative, parlaying four DP World Tour wins into his first on the PGA Tour.

Let’s build a card based on experience and some longshots.

Corales Puntacana Championship Picks

Alex Noren (+1400) is the co-favorite alongside Nicolai Hojgaard and a guy I’ve backed a few times recently, but being 0-for-171 in his PGA Tour career doesn’t exactly make me too confident at this price. Instead, I’ll start with the player just below these faves, Billy Horschel (+2000). 

Quite frankly, Horschel’s talent level should have him at the bigger event this week, but there’s no better way to make that jump than to feed off an inferior field such as this one. There are very few proven winners in Puntacana, so backing a seven-time winner makes sense.

I’ll go next to Mark Hubbard (+3000), who owns some serious Dahmen vibes. Like his good buddy, Hubbard has toiled at the highest level for years, showing spurts of brilliance interspersed with bouts of mediocrity. He’s hardly a player who would shock if/when he does win and while he finished just T-29 here last year, he did post four under-par rounds.

Seven years ago, Nate Lashley (+3000) won here when it was a Korn Ferry event. Since then, he and Brice Garnett have been my favorite alternate-field targets – especially on resort courses in tropical locales. Garnett is already on the board with a victory in Puerto Rico this year, which means it could be Lashley’s turn next.

If I was simply looking through this field list and picking the most talented players, Sam Ryder (+5000) and Taylor Pendrith (+5500) might each rank in the top-five, without being priced like it. I think Ryder’s game probably fits this course better than that of Pendrith, but if you’re looking to blindly go with the old NFL/NBA Draft axiom of “best player available,” they each fit the bill.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that Ryan Palmer (+10000) was recently very excited about the direction his game is heading. After two decades on the PGA Tour, it takes a lot to get a guy excited, which means his triple-digit number should have us excited, as well.

Ben Kohles (+10000) was the best player on the Korn Ferry Tour last year, and he’s already showed some glimpses of returning to that form this year, with a T-6 in the first alternate-field event. I would’ve expected a price about half of this one, so I’ll buy at this number.

The last play on this card is Harrison Endycott (+17500), a young Australian who was medalist at Q-School last year. His results have been about what you’d expect for a guy who’s 175/1 in an alternate-field event, but he’s proven he can get hot and go low for a few days, so he’s worth a sprinkle at this price.