3. Michael Kim
Possibly the most prolific poster on the PGA Tour right now, Kim has been playing some of the best golf of his career recently. A lot of his success the last few weeks (T2 at Phoenix, T11 at Genesis) has come from short game lessons with Joe Mayo (big bump for the No Laying Up guys), which has helped him only bogey 7 times in the last two events he's played. Kim has been able to round out his skill set by improving his play around the greens, and seems poised to fully breakthrough this year for a win. On top of recent performance, Kim does play well on courses with paspalum grass, so with his recent run of form, he should be jumping off the page this week to perform well at Vidanta Vallarta.
2. Maverick McNealy
His final round performance was astounding to watch for the front nine, but Ludvig just tracked him down like the Terminator (side note: the Ludvig breakout year is SO BACK). Admittedly, McNealy should have been at the very least in the honorable mentions in last week's rankings, so hand up on this one, big oversight on my part. McNealy has played super impressive golf since the fall, when he won at the RSM Classic. McNealy has a great all-around game, his putting stats have turned around big time (helped out by a great putting performance on Sunday at Torrey), and he played very well in Mexico last season. He'll probably be highly rostered in fantasy lineups this week, and with good reason. Tail Top Gun this week.
1. Akshay Bhatia
In 2023, Bhatia played four events at courses that play on paspalum grass: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Puntacana, and World Wide Technologies (formerly at Mayakoba, moved to Tiger's course El Cardonal in Mexico). These are his finishes from those events: 2nd, 4th, T10, and T24. Bhatia is also coming off of a season-best T9 finish at Genesis this past week, which I think is a good sign since the greens at Torrey were very receptive to approach shots, in a way that should be very similar to how the greens at Vidanta Vallarta will play. A lot of the approaches should be 175 yards or more (63.5% of all approaches at last year's event came from that range), and Bhatia is one of the better players on Tour from this range. If Bhatia keeps playing well and comes up with a win this week, he could make a serious case for the American Ryder Cup team this fall, so let's see that form continue for Akshay and have the lefty notch another win in his PGA Tour career.