Colombia Championship

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Country Club de Bogota is where the Web.com season opens and where the Pacific Rubiales Colombia Championship will be played this week. The Par 72 Los Fundadores course is shortened to a 71 for this tournament and in years gone by the scoring average for the course has been touching its original par value but last year it played a lot easier, coming in with an average of 71.017. Despite this, I will still favour angling for those players who have ranked highly in bogey avoidance and scoring average over the last six months. Last year's winner Patrick Cantlay only sacrificed 5 bogeys over 72 holes and the year before that Skip Kendell yielded only 7.

Other than Scoring Average and Bogey Avoidance, I'm not going to worry too much about other stats. As the Bogota Country Club is the second highest golf course in Latin America, 2600m above sea level, driving distance will not be a premium as the altitude will give those who are shorter off the tee more distance and therefore negate the big driver's advantage. Looking at the scorecards from the last couple of years, both winners were 8 under for the 12 par 5s  and if we combine this with the fact that there are three birdieable par 5s, leads me to look for a player who ranks highly in Par 5 birdie or better or Par 5 performance stats. Cantlay and Kendell also avoided scoring too highly on the par 3s (+1 and -1 respectively) so we should also factor in par 3 performance.

Los Fundadores seems to favour the more experienced player as opposed to the 'young gun' (as long as we ignore Cantlay's impressive win last year). Those who are patient and able to plot their way around, strategically laying up shots rather than bombing the ball down the fairway and aiming for the pin. The leaderboards for the last four years that this tournament has been played are a who's who of seasoned pros who had been grinding it out on the PGA or Web.com tours for years. Winners Skip Kendall, Brenden Pappas and Steve Pate are all journeymen who have flitted between the senior and junior tours and who all have steady records that include numerous wins over the years.

One final thing to possibly consider is that there is another annual tournament of note played in Colombia and more importantly in Bogota at the El Rincon GC, the Arturo Calle Colombian Open. Although this features on the Latin American Tour, the course, like Los Fundadores, is played at altitude (2500m roughly) and will typically play to the same conditions expected this week. It may be worth bearing those players who have performed well here in mind.

Andrew Svoboda - 2pts e/w @ 50/1

Svoboda has the advantage of most of the field this week in that he already has four PGA tour events under his belt for the year. Although he missed the cut in three of these outings, he did manage a credible 38th in the Humana with all four rounds in the 60s and amongst much better company than he will face this week. He also boasts decent form here in Bogota, finishing 2nd in 2012 and 31st last year and posting five of those rounds under par. In terms of stats he sits 9th in Scoring Average with 69.35 over the last six months, has a Par 5 average of 4.58 over the same time period and sat 4th in Par 3 Birdie or Better Leaders for the whole of 2013 on the PGA tour (a feat in itself at a grade above).

Nick O'Hern - 1.25pts e/w @ 80/1