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For the second straight week, the PGA TOUR is in Mexico. We go from one beautiful place in Puerto Vallarta to another in Cabo San Lucas. There are 120 golfers set to tee it up this week at El Cardonal at Diamante, which is a Tiger Woods-designed course.
The placement bets continue to come through for us, but I'm ready to hit an outright. Let's try to get one this week.
Let's take a look at my World Wide Technology Championship picksand PGA Tour predictions for this week's tournament at El Cardonal at Diamante.
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This is one of the more unique courses on the PGA TOUR. El Cardonal at Diamante is a Par 71 that measures 7,452 yards. The course is right at sea level, so it plays all of those yards. Despite the length, this is one of the easiest courses on TOUR. There have been three events here, and the winning score has been at least -24 every time.
We don't have any ShotLink data from past events here, so we don't have a true course fit to lean on. However, we do know plenty about the course. The fairways are extremely generous (60 to 70 yards wide). With the length of these holes, this is certainly a driver-heavy course.
In 2025, the field hit the fairway on 82% of tee shots, which was one of the highest marks all year. You would think this would benefit the bombers, but we've seen shorter hitters contend and even win here.
The greens here are massive (averaging 8,300 square feet) and feature paspalum grass. They are on the slower side (11.5 on the stimpmeter) and easy to hit in regulation. With golfers hitting 80% of greens in regulation, scrambling isn't high on my list of priorities this week.
I'm looking for good drivers of the ball, good iron players, and good putters. More than anything, I'm looking for golfers who can make birdies in bunches.
Let's dive into this week's picks.
As always, here are the results of my 20,000 simulations for this event:
It should come as no surprise that I am betting James this week, as I have done so every week since turning professional.
He's essentially as talented as Jackson Koivun, but the masses haven't heard of him yet. He won everything you could possibly win in college, and he's already made a name for himself on the PGA TOUR.
He rattled off 3 straight top 5 finishes before missing the cut in Bermuda. He nearly missed the cut again last week, but he made it on the number and then went on a run over the weekend to finish in the top 20.
His statistics are elite across the board, and he's 1st in this field in strokes gained per round on driver-heavy courses.
As mentioned last week, Brown is only 19 years old. He's 2 years younger than Jackson Koivun and 4 years younger than Benjamin James. He has an incredibly bright future on the PGA TOUR.
He's not a bomber, but he's an elite iron player with a great short game. He's rattled off 4 straight top 20 finishes, including a 2nd at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship.
He's 1st in the field in my Expected Hole Performance metric based on this week's course and 3rd in Birdie or Better %.
Suber has some of the best tee-to-green numbers in the field.
He's not a good putter, but he's not a golfer who regularly bleeds strokes on the green. When he has a positive week putting, he tends to contend.
He's had 3 top 6 finishes in his last 14 starts on TOUR, and he finished T11 here last year.
This is one of those plays where I am blindly trusting the model.
Yu has played this event twice and has missed the cut both times. He's also coming off back-to-back missed cuts this fall. He doesn't have the best recent form or course history.
However, he still projects well in my model, especially at these odds.
He's excellent on driver-heavy courses and is 1st in the field in Birdie-or-Better % over the last 8 months.
Hodges is an average PGA TOUR golfer who does two things well — hit good approach shots and make putts.
He tends to be streaky with his irons and putter, but when he gets hot with both of them in the same week, he offers a ton of upside. He's a short hitter off the tee and struggles around the green, but those haven't really been needed at this course.
Everyone hits fairways and greens here, which often means it comes down to an iron-and-putting contest.
Last but not least, we have the man who has finished in the top 30 in 15 of his last 16 events.
Despite the truly elite form, we are getting him at +195 to finish in the top 20 in a very weak field. Kohles is the best iron player in the field, and he's top 5 in both Birdie or Better % and Bogey Avoidance.
Golf is pretty easy when you make a lot of birdies and rarely make bogeys. He made the cut here in his debut last year.
