The WGC-Mexico Championship will instead be the WGC-Workday Championship this week because the PGA Tour will not be playing in Mexico. Instead, the Workday Championship will be held at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida.

There won’t really be any course form data, at least not from a professional event because this course has never hosted one. The 2015 NCAA Men’s Golf Championships were held here and that event was won by none other than Bryson DeChambeau. He is one of many star players in the field for this WGC event and the start of the Florida swing that will include the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the PLAYERS Championship, and the Honda Classic.

We’ll survey the odds from BetOnline Sportsbook and put together some betting thoughts for the WGC-Workday Championship. Even with a limited field, we’ll save those for the end.

The Field

This is a WGC event, which means a big prize purse and a lot of FedEx Cup points. The winner gets 550 points for an event of this magnitude and the prize purse has $10.5 million in it.

There are only 72 players eligible for the WGC fields. The top 50 players from the Official World Golf Ranking, the top 30 from the PGA Tour FedEx Cup list, the top 20 from the European Tour, and then two each from the Asian Tour, Japan Golf Tour, PGA Tour of Australasia, and the Sunshine Tour. Travel factors obviously come into play with COVID still a thing.

The highest-ranked player from Mexico still gets entry into the field, even though this year’s event is in Florida. This WGC event was at Doral from 2007-16, so playing a WGC event in Florida is nothing new.

There is an alternate event in Puerto Rico that has drawn some fairly big names, especially from the European Tour as those players look to settle into the Florida swing in preparation for The Masters in April.

If you can name a PGA golfer, he’s probably in the field. Phil Mickelson is playing the PGA Tour Champions event, but Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, Rory McIlroy, DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, Daniel Berger, Tyrrell Hatton, Viktor Hovland, Webb Simpson, and Brooks Koepka are just some of the names in this field.

Course Profile

The Concession Golf Club is a par 72 that comes in at just under 7,500 yards. There are going to be four par 5s on the course this week and those will be scoring holes for the long hitters. The fairways are wider, but the greens are much smaller than what we’ve seen in recent events.

A lot of luck will come into play this week. There are lots of hills and undulations on this course. Bunkers are in play on just about every hole and getting a good lie on flat ground would be a lot better than an uphill lie into some high faces. Water comes into play on a few holes for guys that hit a fade. It would seem like a draw will be safer this week for avoiding the drink.

Wind could be something of a factor, but the course is far enough inland that it shouldn’t be as bad as some of the events we’ve seen in Florida and not nearly as bad as what happened at Riviera last week.

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Yay or Neigh?

Well, we don’t have course form here. Some Floridians have probably played this course and those that played in the 2015 NCAA Championship played here. The course will be set up a lot differently for a PGA Tour event to be sure.

DeChambeau won at The Concession for SMU in 2015. CT Pan finished one shot back at 7-under. The Washington product shot a final-round 67, but couldn’t run down DeChambeau. Texas Longhorn Doug Ghim was tied for eighth at 2-under and teammate Beau Hossler tied for 10th at 1-under.

DeChambeau is the only one that met the criteria to qualify for this event.

Handicap & Picks

Strokes Gained Approach is a huge deal every week, but that will be especially true of this week. The green complexes are really small here. Iron play will be essential and we’ll also need players that can scramble around the greens in case they wind up in bunkers or need to chip it close.

The fairways are pretty wide here, although they will play more favorably towards guys that hit a draw. Even though we don’t have course form data to go off of for this week, we can still put together a profile of a player that fits the mold.

I liked him last week and I like him again here. Patrick Cantlay’s iron play has not graded as well as others, but he’s sixth in SG: ARG and tied for 15th in Proximity to the Hole. He’s still a solid 50th in SG: APP. He shot an opening-round 67 last week, but struggled a little bit after that. Still, Cantlay has four straight top-15 finishes and fits this course profile well.

With so many terrific players in this field, price hunting is a bit of a challenge. Somebody like Collin Morikawa at 45/1 is listed at a price that you would almost never see. It is similarly rare to see a guy like Tommy Fleetwood at +5500. Morikawa has struggled in his last two events, but we all know what he’s capable of on a regular basis. Fleetwood is also an excellent player. Morikawa is 25th in average proximity to the hole.

There is a chance that this could also become a putting tournament. We’ll be on Bermuda greens this week. If that’s the case, maybe you look at a guy like Kevin Kisner at +10000 makes some sense.

The reality is that we probably see a short price win this tournament, especially on a new course that won’t allow guys really familiar with it to level the playing field as a result.

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ODDS FOR THE 2021 WGC-WORKDAY CHAMPIONSHIP FROM BETONLINE

Dustin Johnson +700
Jon Rahm +900
Rory McIlroy +1600
Xander Schauffele +1600
Justin Thomas +1800
Bryson DeChambeau +2000
Patrick Cantlay +2000
Tony Finau +2200
Tyrrell Hatton +2200
Viktor Hovland +2200
Brooks Koepka +2500
Daniel Berger +3000
Patrick Reed +3000
Webb Simpson +3300
Sungjae Im +3500
Collin Morikawa +4000
Joaquin Niemann +4000
Scottie Scheffler +4500
Cameron Smith +5000
Hideki Matsuyama +5000
Harris English +5500
Tommy Fleetwood +5500
Adam Scott +6000
Jason Day +6000
Matthew Fitzpatrick +6000
Justin Rose +7000
Will Zalatoris +7000
Louis Oosthuizen +7500
Max Homa +7500
Sergio Garcia +7500
Abraham Ancer +8000
Ryan Palmer +9000
Billy Horschel +10000
Christiaan Bezuidenhout +11000
Marc Leishman +11000
Bubba Watson +12500
Carlos Ortiz +12500
Jason Kokrak +12500
Kevin Kisner +12500
Kevin Na +12500
Matthew Wolff +12500
Robert MacIntyre +12500
Shane Lowry +12500
Victor Perez +12500
Gary Woodland +15000
Lanto Griffin +15000
Rasmus Hojgaard +15000
Bernd Wiesberger +17500
Brendon Todd +17500
Lee Westwood +17500
Mackenzie Hughes +17500
Thomas Detry +17500
Andy Sullivan +20000
Cameron Champ +20000
Erik van Rooyen +20000
Laurie Canter +20000
Lucas Herbert +20000
Matt Kuchar +20000
Sebastián Muñoz +20000
Rafa Cabrera Bello +22500
David Lipsky +25000
Sami Valimaki +25000
Aaron Rai +30000
Chan Kim +30000
Jason Scrivener +30000
Brad Kennedy +100000
Danie van Tonder +100000
JC Ritchie +100000
Min Woo Lee +100000
Trevor Simsby +100000
Wade Ormsby +100000
Yuki Inamori +100000