World Wide Technology Championship – Betting Preview
Ron Klos
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The PGA Tour wraps up its two-week Mexico swing this week at El Cardonal at Diamante in Los Cabos for the World Wide Technology Championship. Fresh off the VidantaWorld Mexico Open in Nuevo Vallarta, the Tour heads west across the Gulf of California to the tip of the Baja Peninsula for the 20th edition of this event and its fourth straight year at El Cardonal.
Opened in 2014, El Cardonal sits on 225 acres in the desert foothills above the Pacific and was the first course designed by 82-time PGA Tour winner Tiger Woods. He drew on the Golden Age layouts he grew up playing in Southern California, and it shows. Most holes give you more than one way to get to the green, so the course asks players to pick a line and commit to it rather than simply overpower it.
Diamante is a private resort at the southern tip of Baja California Sur, with Pacific views from nearly every hole. El Cardonal plays second fiddle there to the Dunes Course, the Davis Love III design that gets the magazine rankings. The World Wide Technology Championship spent its first 16 years at El Camaleon in Mayakoba, south of Cancun, before moving to Los Cabos in 2023.
With wide fairways, bunkering that’s more about positioning than punishment, and some of the largest, most contoured greens the Tour sees all year, El Cardonal is a resort course through and through, and the scoring reflects it. Erik van Rooyen won at -27 in 2023, Austin Eckroat went -24 in 2024, and last year Ben Griffin closed with a Sunday 63 to get to -29, two clear of Sami Valimaki and Chad Ramey.
The wind is the only real defense, and since most holes run north and south, it usually blows across the fairways instead of into the players’ faces. Between the breeze and the arroyos, a few shots will go missing, but the winner should still land somewhere in the mid-to-high 20s under par.
The Field
The World Wide Technology Championship doesn’t have the star power it had a year ago, but it still has a defending champion worth watching. Ben Griffin comes back to El Cardonal fresh off a T4 at Vidanta and looking to defend a title he won by two shots. He’s one of just two players in the field ranked inside the top 30 in the world, along with Ryan Gerard at No. 23. From there, the list of top-60 players runs only five deep once you add Marco Penge, Keith Mitchell, and Jackson Koivun.
There’s a strong crop of young talent in Los Cabos too with Koivun headlining the group. The 21-year-old turned pro after the U.S. Open, won the 3M Open in just his third start while holding off Scottie Scheffler on Sunday, and played his way onto the Presidents Cup team before the fall even started. Blades Brown is only 19 but already has a third at Puerto Rico and a handful of top-10s that earned him special temporary membership. Ben James, the top player out of this year’s PGA Tour University class, has contended several times since turning pro in June and sits 61st in the FedExCup, one spot outside the Aon Next 10. Beyond those names, the most recognizable faces include Harry Hall, Mackenzie Hughes, Nick Taylor, Billy Horschel, Tony Finau, Max Greyserman, and 2024 winner Austin Eckroat.
This is the sixth of eight fall events, which leaves three weeks to get inside the top 100 and keep a full card for next season. Greyserman’s T11 in Mexico pushed him up to 96th, and Kristoffer Ventura’s runner-up finish moved him 32 spots to 76th, which knocked Taylor Pendrith (102) and Brandt Snedeker (103) outside the line. Of the players teeing it up this week, David Lipsky (94), John Parry (95), Greyserman (96), Horschel (97), Kevin Yu (98), and Chandler Phillips (99) are holding on to the last few cards, while Hughes (101), Pendrith (102), A.J. Ewart (104), Lee Hodges (105), and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen (106) are all one good week from getting back inside. With 500 points to the winner and a course that gives up birdies by the bushel, the standings could look very different by Sunday night.
WWT Championship – Final Model
In each preview article and on Discord, I present my final model, which gives a detailed player ranking of the most important stats and splits for the week. My modeling is based on the PGA’s Strokes Gained data, which is categorized into SG: Off the Tee (OTT), SG: Approach (APP), SG: Around the Green (ARG), and SG: Putting (P). Learn more about Strokes Gained and why it can be so useful in analyzing the past and predicting future performance. Many of these specific metrics and conditions can be found in “The Rabbit Hole“, with my final model exclusively published here and in the Discord for subscribers.
Outright Betting Selections
For the most up-to-date picks, check out my Twitter and subscribe to our Discord at BetspertsGolf.com.
- B. Griffin +1600 (1.5u) – 365
- James +2300 (1.04u) – DK
- Kohles +4500 (0.52u) – Rivers
- Bauchou +5000 (0.47u) – DK
- Hoey +7500 (0.32u) – 365
- Yellamaraju +9000 (0.26u) – Rivers
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Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images