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We take a step into the unknown this week as the PGA Tour ventures to the Dominican Republic and the Corales Golf Club. The PGA Tour has signed a 4-year contract with Grupo Puntacana, the owner of the Puntacana Resort & Club, which will see this tournament on the schedule through the 2020/21 season. An alternate event alongside the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, as per all alternate events it offers a $3million prize fund (the same as the prestigious Abu Dhabi and Dubai Desert Classic events on the European Tour) and 300 FedEx Cup points to the winner. However rookies, veterans and PGA Tour journeymen flying into Punta Cana this week all have the opportunity to grab a PGA Tour victory and, more importantly, full playing privileges until the close of 2019/20. It’s a huge prize for plenty of players but equally a pressure that a large number of the rank-and-file in attendance will struggle to handle mentally if and when they hit the front.

Course Guide: Corales Golf Club has played host to a couple of web.com events, although no player statistics were recorded which isn’t most helpful. Set by the coast, it plays to a long 7,668 yards and is a Par 72, but with temperatures pushing 30 degrees Celsius each day, the ball travels a mile in these parts. As part of the Puntacana Resort, the course is not the most difficult even at web.com Tour level, so expect plenty of attacking play this week. The inland front-9 is where the heavy scoring happens, with the back-9 featuring plenty of coast-lined holes and some long par-3s, par-4s and par-5s.

Corales Golf Club, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic: Designer: Tom Fazio 2010; Course Type: Resort, Coastal; Par: 72; Length: 7,668 yards; Holes with Water Hazards: 4; Fairways: Supreme Paspalum; Rough: Supreme Paspalum 2″; Greens: Supreme Paspalum; Tournament Stimp: 11ft; web.com Course Scoring Average 2016: 69.67 (-2.33), Difficulty Rank 25 of 26 courses. 2017: 70.34 (-1.66), Difficulty Rank 22 of 28 courses.

Course Designer Links: For research purposes, other Tom Fazio designs include:

• Atunyote GC – Turning Stone Championship 2007-10
• Eagle Point – Wells Fargo Championship 2017
• Raptor Course Greyhawk GC – Fry’s.com Open 2008/09

Fazio has also had re-design input into:

• Conway Farms GC- BMW Championship 2013, 2015 & 2017.
• Seaside Course at Sea Island – RSM Classic
• Quail Hollow – Wells Fargo Championship to 2016 & 2017 PGA Championship.
• Riviera Country Club – Genesis Open 2009 onwards.

Course Overview: Unless you’re a keen viewer of the web.com Tour, the Corales Golf Club is probably a total step into the unknown, so let’s try to establish what we’re dealing with as the PGA Tour makes its first ever trip to the Dominican Republic. The Corales course opened in 2010 and is a Tom Fazio design. A little like El Camaleon which hosts the OHL Classic in the autumn, the Corales is split between inland and coastal sections. Away from the shore, the course features a number of water hazards and fairways marked with coconut trees, but in the main, the inland section is more than scoreable. 6 holes play along the coast, including the home stretch across holes 16 to 18, known as the Devils Elbow. From a grass perspective this week we are dealing with Paspalum greens, so for PGA Tour stop-offs think again about El Camaleon, Coco Beach G&CC host of the Puerto Rico Open and TPC Kuala Lumpur which has hosted the CIMB Classic since 2013.

As part of the Corales Puntacana Resort complex, the course is clearly designed around the needs of amateur golfers, so this isn’t a hard test. The outbound set of 9 holes is where some serious scoring is essential. With the longest par-4 measuring 465 yards and 2 par-5s which only measure 563 yards (4th) and 515 yards (7th), the front side of the golf course is there for the taking. Indeed it averaged 1.50 (2016) and 1.66 (2017) shots below par across the 2 web.com renewals hosted here. The inward 9 is more stringent with both par-5s playing over 600 yards and the closing Devils Elbow putting up far sterner resistance.

Winning scores here so far have been -20/268 and -24/264. The par-3, par-4, par-5 split was -2 -9 -13 for Bozzelli in 2016 and a more level -5 -8 -7 split for Lashley in 2017. With a slightly stronger field playing this week, but a split weather forecast, I’m thinking the strong wind over the weekend might bring the scoring down a tad on what we saw here in 2016 and 2017.

web.com Winners: 2017: Nate Lashley (-20); 2016: Dominic Bozzelli (-24).

Published Predictor Model: Our published predictor is available here. You can build your own model using the variables listed on the left hand side. Top 10 of my published predictor are Harris English, Rory Sabbatini, Emiliano Grillo, Graeme McDowell, Jim Furyk, Scott Piercy, Alex Cejka, Kelly Kraft, Jason Bohn and D.A. Points.

Recent Player Skill Rankings: These rankings are based on a 10-tournament window that stretches back to the Sony Open and includes both PGA Tour and European Tour events. Players must have played in a minimum of 2 Tour events to be included and rankings are based on performance relative to the rest of the field:

• Driving Accuracy: 1) Ken Duke; 2) Emiliano Grillo; 3) Jim Furyk; 4) Johnson Wagner / Xin-Jun Zhang; 6) Kyle Thompson; 7) David Lingmerth; 8) K.J. Choi; 9) Fabian Gomez; 10) Richy Werenski; 11) Brice Garnett / Graeme McDowell / Rory Sabbatini; 14) Tim Herron; 15) Ben Crane; 16) Scott Piercy; 17) Alex Cejka / Joel Dahmen / Tyler Duncan; 20) Davis Love III.
• Greens in Regulation: 1) Scott Piercy; 2) Sam Ryder; 3) Emiliano Grillo; 4) Corey Conners; 5) J.J. Henry; 6) Denny McCarthy / Rory Sabbatini; 8) Kevin Tway; 9) Andrew Putnam; 10) Nate Lashley; 11) Davis Love III; 12) Tyler Duncan / Xin-Jun Zhang; 14) Jonathan Byrd; 15) Brett Stegmaier; 16) Tim Herron / Adam Schenk; 18) Martin Flores / Keith Mitchell; 20) Harris English.
• Putting Average (Putts per GIR): 1) Ricky Barnes; 2) Emiliano Grillo; 3) Lanto Griffin; 4) Andres Romero; 5) Greg Chalmers / Michael Kim; 7) Scott Piercy; 8) David Lingmerth; 9) Troy Merritt; 10) Harris English / Trey Mullinax; 12) Jim Furyk / Tom Lovelady; 14) Fabian Gomez / Mike Weir; 16) Martin Flores / Ethan Tracy; 18) Robert Garrigus / Ricky Werenski; 20) Johnson Wagner.

Historical Weather:

2017: Thursday: Light rain shower early AM. Dry rest of day. High of 85. Winds out of the E-E/SE 8-16 mph with 0.05 inches of rain. Friday: Dry. High of 85. Winds coming out of the E/SE 7-14 mph. Saturday: Dry. High of 84. Winds coming out of the E-SE 7-15 mph. Sunday: Very light rain shower AM. Dry rest of day. High of 85 with winds coming out of the ESE-SE 7-15 mph.

2016: Thursday: Partly cloudy with a high of 85 degrees. Wind WSW 7-12 mph. Friday: Mostly cloudy with a high of 88 degrees. Winds SSW 7-12 mph. Saturday: Mostly cloudy. Afternoon gave way to scattered showers totalling 0.25” of rainfall. High of 82. Wind SW 10-15. Sunday: Scattered showers in the morning followed by partly cloudy and breezy conditions in the afternoon. High of 80. Wind WNW 10-15.

Weather Forecast: The latest weather forecast for Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, is here. I’m expecting typical equatorial conditions with temperatures approaching 28 degrees Celsius. It will be calm over the opening 36 holes so expect low scoring. A front though arriving during play on Saturday will see rain and wind, with Sunday looking particularly gnarly. Here’s hoping for a Sunday finish.

Path to Victory: Below are the end of round positions for the last 2 web.com Tour Corales Championship winners:

• 2017 – Nate Lashley: Round 1: 53rd, Round 2: 8th, Round 3: 5th.
• 2016 – Dominic Bozzelli: Round 1: 45th, Round 2: 5th, Round 3: 1st.

For the record, here’s the breakdown of Paspalum PGA Tour victors in the field since 2008:

• 1 – Alex Cejka, Harris English, Graeme McDowell, D.A. Points, Johnson Wagner, Mark Wilson.

I would preach being sensible this week at a course we know very little about and with a field quality the likes of which I cannot recall being so poor on the PGA Tour. Yes the Corales Golf Club has hosted a couple of web.com tournaments across 2016 and 2017, but apart from the leaderboards there were no additional player statistics captured whatsoever. Reading names like Cameron Beckman, Michael Bradley, Robert Gamez, Jonathan Kaye, Len Mattiace, Parker McLachlin, Shaun Micheel, Chris Smith, Marc Turnesa, Omar Uresti and Mike Weir in the field also does little to quicken the pulse. NFL superstar and respected TV analyst Tony Romo also makes his PGA Tour debut. Naturally though despite the tournaments clear frailties, this, as ever with these alternate events, is a huge opportunity for many in the field who can use this as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Recent alternate tournament winners and odds since the new style wrap-around PGA Tour season was put in place can be seen here: Armour (100/1), Stroud (80/1), Murray (66/1), Points (175/1), Gribble (125/1), Baddeley (55/1), Chalmers (300/1), Finau (50/1), Piercy (25/1), Henry (80/1), Cejka (125/1), Ogilvy (40/1) and Hadley (50/1). Chesson Hadley was the highest ranked of these in 2014 when he won the Puerto Rico Open at 92nd in the OWGR.

Since 2010, only Cody Gribble (125/1) at the 2016 Sanderson Farms Championship and Scott Brown (50/1) at the 2013 Puerto Rico Open have won one of these alternate events after entering the tournament off the back of a top-10 finish. So selecting a player based purely on strong immediate form has not been the differentiator across the vast majority of the events. That philosophy links in well to the psyche of players who enter these second tier tournaments knowing they can win – a pressure that they generally aren’t comfortable with.

My selections are as follows: