Puerto Rico Open Picks: Favorites Plus Longshots

Admit it: If Niklas Norgaard Moller and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen each walked into your living room right now, you’d have no idea who was whom.

Maybe that’s just a you problem.

Norgaard Moller, from Denmark, is the 90th-ranked player in the world, with three made cuts in four worldwide starts this year. Neergaard-Petersen, on the other hand, is from Denmark, the 88th-ranked player in the world and has two made cuts in four worldwide starts this year.

I really can’t believe you didn’t know the difference.

Oh, there is one similarity between ‘em, though: As of Monday afternoon, they were running 1-2 atop the BetMGM odds board for this week’s Puerto Rico Open.

That’s right. Since selecting a single winner on the PGA Tour has been wayyy too easy lately, we’ve been given the chance to pick two winners this week, with this event being played opposite the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Over the last decade, the winners’ list in Puerto Rico has been littered with big hitters (Ryan Brehm, Viktor Hovland, Martin Trainer, Tony Finau) and a few short knockers (Brice Garnett, D.A. Points), but very few in between. I’ll give a little more consideration to those who bomb it, but it’s not a strict prerequisite this week.

Perhaps more concerning – or appetizing, as the case may be – is the fact that we’ve ranged from field favorites to complete longshots over the years. With that in mind, I’ll offer a healthy spectrum of picks, from top to bottom.

Puerto Rico Open Picks

Nobody asked me, but if I was handicapping this field, I would’ve enlisted Ryan Gerard (+2500) as the favorite. He owns three top-25s in five starts this season and his iron play has ranked above the field average in all of ‘em. I don’t think a victory would lead to a Finau or Hovland type of career, but he’s at least comparable with Joe Highsmith and Brian Campbell, each of whom won full-field events over the past two weeks. If you’re making one top-of-the-board play, he’s the one I would advise.

If we’re following the Highsmith model, then Vince Whaley (+5000) makes some sense. Last week’s winner crushed the fall schedule, but took a few steps backward to start this season until a made cut led to his first win. Whaley similarly played really well in the fall, but has struggled a bit this year. Maybe last week’s T-32 could do for him what a made cut the previous week did for Highsmith.

While Gerard is my pick to win without any odds, Taylor Montgomery (+6600) is my favorite play based on the price. Last week, he needed a three-way tie for 13th place to retain his PGA Tour playing privileges coming off a medical exemption, but an early final-round title contention devolved into a T-25 result, thanks to a triple-bogey on the 16th hole. He’ll be disappointed about that one, but at an event where the winning score has been between 19- and 21-under par for the past five years, one of the game’s better rock-rollers should be able to make plenty of birdies.

There are currently two PGA Tour pros who are outfitted in Sun Day Red – and yes, Tiger Woods is one of them. The other is Karl Vilips (+8000), a wildly talented Stanford product who went from college to conditional Korn Ferry status to a winner on that circuit to a PGA Tour member all in the span of a few months last summer. He fits the profile as a big hitter and this price is tantalizing. There are going to be plenty of full-field events in coming years where we wish Vilips was available at 80/1. Grab him at this number in an opposite-field event while you can.

Perhaps employing the Cameron Champ theory of success, Davis Riley (+12500) seems to show up for one week every year, winning the Zurich Classic alongside Nick Hardy two years ago and the Charles Schwab Challenge last year. There were some thoughts that last week could’ve been that one week, but he dropped to T-48 at the Cognizant, his 17th straight finish outside the top-35 since that win at Colonial. He does, though, know how to win, which is more than we can say about most of the players in the triple-digit range.

That said, I’m going to select a few more guys with big odds who at least have some trophies on the mantle at home. Brandt Snedeker (+15000) is gradually veering into golf purgatory, as the 44-year-old doesn’t hit it long enough to contend at most PGA Tour stops, but is still six years away from being a PGA Tour Champions superstar. He’ll have to putt like Garnett did last year, but Sneds is certainly capable of getting hot on the greens.

Not gonna lie, it’s been ugly for one of my personal faves on the PGA Tour, Ryan Palmer (+30000). I can understand if you don’t want to spill a few bucks on him right now, but he knows his opportunities these days are limited and just might be a little extra motivated to have his best stuff this week.

While I’d love to offer you a bunch of massive longshots for this one, those with big numbers next to their names have ‘em for a reason. There’s not much toward the bottom of this board worth backing, but I don’t mind a play on Austin Cook (+50000), a former PGA Tour winner who was T-10 here last year and was T-11 on the KFT just a few weeks ago.