WGC-Mexico first round preview and three-ball selections plus latest tips

Recommended bets

2pts Aaron Wise to win his three-ball at 11/8

2pts Emiliano Grillo to win his three-ball at 5/4

1pt double Wise and Grillo at 4.35/1

Qualification for the WGC-Mexico Championship can be achieved in a number of ways, most of which entail being very good or playing very well in the first weeks of 2019.

As with all elite events, the world's top 50 are here if they want to be - it's a little surprising that Justin Rose turns down the opportunity - while there are places reserved for those inside the top 10 of the Race To Dubai a fortnight prior to the tournament, good news for a player like Aaron Rai.

While his place in the standings owes much to his victory at the back-end of last year, Rai has maintained a strong level of form since and has the profile of one whose success in Hong Kong will serve as a springboard to bigger and better things.

There are others in this field who qualified because they played well some time long ago and who arrive in an altogether different place, and one such example is the Australian journeyman Matt Millar.

He played some of the best golf of his life at an opportune time to earn a place in this World Golf Championship, but so far in 2019 has been missing cut after cut, including in his homeland, and he's one of those in the running for the ignominy of the wooden spoon.

Therein lies an opportunity, because he's taking out 25 per cent and more of the book in his three-ball despite playing with the improving Shugo Imahiri and the potentially top-class Aaron Wise, whose place in the field was harder earned and whose talent is far superior.

Wise might not look to have started 2019 much better than Millar, but of course he's been playing in a much higher grade and while a run of missed cuts isn't ideal, he's been short by one or two shots - that's very different from someone who simply can't get anything together.

What's more, being young, being aggressive, he is prone to such sequences yet capable of snapping them in style. Last year's two-one run, runner-up to Jason Day followed by a brilliant victory in Texas, came after an apparently bad spell while his sixth place at Firestone - a no cut, WGC event - again represented marked improvement on the sequence of missed cuts which preceded it.

Confidence is further enhanced by the fact that Imahira, awarded an invite to the Masters on the back of some excellent golf over the last year or so, returns to action here having been off since Singapore five or so weeks ago.

The Japanese withdrew from that event at six-over through 13 holes of the first round, golf so poor from one so consistent that it surely reflects some kind of physical issue. And the fact that he returns here may not reflect total recovery: this is a World Golf Championship and this will be his second start in such an event; it would be extremely hard to pass up the opportunity providing he can stand up.

There's risk attached with Wise - when is there not - but he's no 11/8 chance, in fact he ought to be odds-on. Even the numbers he's been shooting, with an average just over 71 through this run of missed cuts, should be competitive and there's a definite chance he springs to life. Living at altitude can't hurt, either.

Erik van Rooyen is here because of his play in Sunshine Tour events and while this South African remains a player of potential, I can't help but think the odd round in good company has added some kind of mystique which makes him more than he perhaps is.

I think he's very good, but a distance behind Brandon Stone when it comes to the next wave from that part of the world and in the more immediate, rounds of 77-74 in Saudi Arabia, which followed 74-73 in Dubai, suggest he's likely to struggle here.

So too might Kyle Stanley, who has missed three cuts in succession for the first time since he was forced to drop down to the Web.com Tour for a spell in 2015.

Unlike Wise, he's been failing by a troubling distance and he's such a solid ball-striker that we've come to expect a level of consistency which has been missing throughout the last couple of months. And it's not just the putter: he's lost strokes off the tee in two of his last three starts and on approach in all three, virtually unheard of and deeply troubling in the short-term.

That means Emiliano Grillo has no excuses here, especially as he's been so reliable out of the gates for such a long time now, shooting 70, 67, 67 so far this year - the first and worst after a Christmas break.

Outside of majors, he's failed to shoot 72 or better just twice in the opening round in more than two years now, and both of those were in Asia towards the end of a very long campaign. That's a remarkable level of consistency and it's reflected in sharp improvement in his round one scoring rankings.

Grillo finished a modest 52nd here in 2017, his sole start to date, but after a couple of tough rounds seemed to figure things out with a pair of weekend 69s. At a similar price to Wise, he looks a solid bet and it's also worth playing the double at 4/1 and bigger.

State of play

This is a World Golf Championship and the market is strong, which is why you can still get prices similar to those advised about most of the selections from high-profile tipsters, which are listed below.

As has been pointed out by Ian of Sports Betting Index, drifters don't really seem to happen these days - at least with the fixed-odds firms. They do on the exchanges, though, and it's Jordan Spieth whose name stands out like a beacon at close to 50/1.

Rewind to last Friday morning, and every punter on earth would surely have been interested in that as an antepost price. Spieth had just carded the best score of the morning wave at Riviera and the putter looked more magic wand, less, well, impotent, than it had before.

Then came two modest rounds of 70 - enough to confirm he isn't quite there yet, without removing the promise of round one - before Sunday's shocking 81, his second-highest score as a professional.

Make no mistake, that will have hurt and I'm a big believer not just in Spieth as a golfer, but in the idea that his powers of recovery are stronger than most. It's why I considered putting him up in his three-ball and will spend every minute from now until his tee-time asking myself that question: how big is too big to resist?

For what it's worth, among his many remarkable transformations Spieth followed the worst round of his career, an 82 at the Memorial, with a Sunday 68. Less than a month later, he won his first PGA Tour title.

I believe in Jordan Spieth.

Selections box

My selections: Willett, Noren, Rai (R1 lead), Sharma (R1 lead), Bjerregaard (R1 lead)

Steve Palmer: Fowler, Koepka, Grillo

Dave Tindall: Leishman, Howell III, Smith

Steve Rawlings: Koepka, Mickelson, Watson, Li

Niall Lyons: McIlroy, Westwood, Fitzpatrick Grace

Paul Williams: Schauffele, Leishman, Fitzpatrick, Willett

Posted at 2030 GMT on 20/02/19.

Related links

• WGC-Mexico outright preview