Four tied for first-round lead in Mexico

The first round was suspended because of darkness with 21 players still on the course. He is playing as a past champion, and got into the Mexico event through a top-10 finish last week.

Russell Knox is about ten times shorter than he was last week and is impossible to fancy at the price and Brendan Steele has been hopeless in-contention. Set amid the jungle and mangroves with views out to the handsome Caribbean Sea, it’s one of the most striking venues visited by the PGA Tour. As such they didn’t attract particularly strong fields. This year sees a purse of $6,200,000 and a first prize of $1,100,000. The last two winners, Charley Hoffman and Harris English, were -17 and -21 respectively at the end of the week.

The weather forecast doesn’t look great.

The only other courses encountered every year on the PGA Tour that have Paspalum grass are the Trump global Golf Club, host of the Puerto Rico Open, and the Kuala Lumpur Country Club, which recently hosted the CIMB Classic, so form at those events might be worth looking at but the two events that correlate best with this one are the Sony Open and, in particular, the St Jude Classic.

Matt Kuchar – Mr Consistent, Kuchar hasn’t played in this event since 2008.

Two starts, two top-five finishes. But he was tied third that time out. The Web.com Tour’s leading money victor from a year ago is well on his way to securing PGA Tour status for next season. He’s going to win sooner rather than later.

There was much to like about the Victorian’s game last week with three of his four rounds in the 60’s under hard conditions courtesy of constant delays in play. Anything just off line will roll off the surface. A few of the holes on the Greg Norman design are bisected by massive limestone canals, and the course even features a cenote, which is an underground cavern common to the area, in the heart of the opening fairway.