Puerto Rico Open offers hope
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2011 Puerto Rico Open presented by seepuertorico.com | Preview | 09 Mar 2011
There is little doubt that the focus of world golf this week will fall well and truly on the TPC Blue Monster Golf Course at the Doral Resort & Spa but the Puerto Rico Open presented by seepuerto.com is important for many of those not eligible for World Golf Championship event.
This is exactly the sort of event where those on the fringe of PGA Tour elite get their chance to show their stuff while the leading players are battling it out near Miami. The tournament offers the chance of PGA Tour security of tenure and monetary rewards for those who play well.
The Puerto Rico Open is being played at the Tom Kite and Bruce Bresse designed Trump International Golf Club in Rio Grande and was contested for the first time in 2008. Previous winners have been Greg Kraft, Michael Bradley and Derek Lamely.
Stewart Cink is the leading world ranked player in the field, the 2009 Open Champion certainly not the golfer he was then but he has however made 16 of his last seventeen cuts on the PGA Tour so maybe he is not going as bad as his drop in the rankings suggest. Given his standing in the game he deserves some respect this week.
Jerry Kelly is currently ranked outside the world top 100 but his third place finish at last week’s Honda Classic suggest he is playing better than that ranking at present. He also finished 9th in Hawaii in January and so is in good enough form to give this event a shake.
Bryce Molder finished 7th in this event last year and while very inconsistent of late his 6th place finish at Pebble Beach suggests he could play well.
Kyle Stanley is new to the PGA Tour but he has done well enough in his six starts to date that he could be a factor. He has yet to miss a cut in his rookie season and led at the halfway mark of last week’s Honda Classic before finishing 24th. Stanley was an outstanding amateur golfer and appears to be settling into a professional career.
The Australian contingent is not large this week with only five players in the field. It is one of the smallest representations of Australians in a PGA Tour event for some time and the late withdrawal of Matt Jones did not help in that regard.
Aron Price, Cameron Percy, Greg Chalmers, Mark Hensby and Rod Pampling are those who will start with perhaps Greg Chalmers the most likely to do well.
