Straight shooters to star

Golf expert Ben Coley has tips ranging from 28/1 to 350/1 for the OHL Classic, in which he tipped the winner last year.

Events like the OHL Classic may not set the pulse racing, if for you golf's greatest gift is seen in battles between the best players in the biggest and most valuable events.

But make no mistake: as a punter, as someone who wants to make some money from betting on the sport, it is among the highlights of the season, one of a small collection of tournaments whose profile runs the opposite direction to the game in general.

It's impossible to watch those biggest and most valuable events without acknowledging the ongoing shift towards youth and power. Henrik Stenson might have took the Open Championship for the 40-plus brigade, but he's not your average 40-something and it's no surprise his victory came on a links golf course.

Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, and Dustin Johnson are the game's best players, all either young, powerful, or both. Hideki Matsuyama is on his way to joining them while the new stars who emerged at the Ryder Cup were the likes of Brooks Koepka and Thomas Pieters - two more youngsters with power at their fingertips.

If you cannot be powerful and you are not young, this is a hard sport in which to be competitive. Russell Knox is an example of what can be achieved against the odds - his runner-up finish here last year came on the heels of a breakthrough win, which he's subsequently added to - but when it came to Ryder Cup selection, it was Pieters' power rather than Knox's accuracy which turned the head of Darren Clarke.

This is no bad thing and golf will likely be a stronger sport for the athletic movement, but for those who play the game the old-fashioned way, it does mean chances to compete are reduced. Those such players, like us, will relish the arrival of the OHL Classic at El Camaleon, where straight hitting is king.

Last year's play-off saw three of the 15 most accurate drivers on the PGA Tour do battle and Graeme McDowell come out on top, while the likes of John Huh, Johnson Wagner, Mark Wilson, Brian Gay, Cameron Beckman and Fred Funk all put hitting fairways at the top of their skill sets when at their very best, and are all on the roll of honour.

Because this is golf, there's always room for an anomaly such as Charley Hoffman beating Shawn Stefani, while the statistics say that Harris English was not especially accurate when he romped to victory in the preceding renewal. But all three of these men stayed largely away from trouble, and to do so requires a degree of control from the tee.

All of which suggests to me that the 350/1 quoted about KJ Choi is an insulting misrepresentation of his chance.

Not to say it surprises me. So often, older players are swiftly cast out with the washing whenever their form wavers and that is the case with Choi, who performed poorly in two FedEx Cup Playoff events and then finished down the field in the no-cut CIMB Classic on his return.

Still, it's just four starts since he finished 22nd in a major championship, one dominated by power and youth, and two top-five finishes last season show that in the right set of circumstances, he can still be very competitive.

Choi was 20th here on debut in 2010 and while missing the cut on his return last year, he did so by just a couple of shots and had a handful of holes to blame, a double, a triple and a pair of par-five bogeys costing him a place in round three.

And while his scoring at the CIMB wasn't good, Choi was inside the top 10 for driving accuracy, having ranked 20th on the PGA Tour last season. He is not the player he was, but remains highly effective from the tee on these shorter, coastal golf courses.

Choi also chipped and putted well last year but key to this selection is his form at correlating course, which includes victory in the Sony Open, two titles at Innisbrook and a PLAYERS Championship. They confirm what we know to be true: that courses like Waialae, like Copperhead, like Sawgrass and like El Camaleon are those which bring out his best.

It also has to be a boost to Choi's chances to see 47-year-old Rod Pampling win last week while he's finished sixth in the Texas Open at TPC San Antonio, a course which, like this one, was designed by Greg Norman and has thrown up some very similar leaderboards and a double champion in Hoffman.

There is of course every chance that Choi's game is simply not in good enough shape to perform for 72 holes in what is a surprisingly deep field, but at anything in the region of 200/1 and upwards I'm prepared to have him on-side.

Jim Furyk makes his debut in the event and is another who should relish the challenge.

I don't believe it to be a coincidence that in just a few short weeks since the Ryder Cup, the European Tour has produced two winners who featured in non-playing roles at Hazeltine.

Padraig Harrington was a key part of Darren Clarke's support staff, while Thorbjorn Olesen was invited along by mentor Thomas Bjorn to get a taste of an event he may one day take part in. Victories for Harrington and Olesen owe something, I'm sure, to their involvement with Team Europe.

There's been limited opportunity to test this theory on the US, especially so given Tiger Woods' withdrawal from the Safeway Open, but given how well suited Furyk is to El Camaleon, I consider it to be a factor worth paying attention to.

Like Choi, Furyk has won at both Copperhead and Waialae, while he's also won twice at Harbour Town, should've won at Sea Island, and probably would've won at Southwind had he taken part in the FedEx St Jude Classic at any point down the years.

Furyk also has two top-six finishes in three visits to TPC San Antonio and despite having had to battle his way back to the PGA Tour after a significant wrist injury, still ended last season as one of the most accurate drivers around.

I must admit to being slightly concerned that this will be his first start since September, but the aforementioned near-miss at Sea Island came on the back of a similar absence and the last time he made his seasonal return through choice rather than after an injury lay-off, he contended before falling to seventh after a poor final round, again by the coast.

In other words, he's old enough and wise enough to know how to prepare and his very appearance here in Mexico is a signal of intent. I'll be disappointed if he doesn't go close.

I put up McDowell in this event last year and the case was based around a classy performer with form at all the right tracks who had started to show signs of a return to peak form.

There are a handful of contenders who fit that profile this week, and pick of them in my mind is Billy Horschel.

The Floridian wasn't far behind McDowell when the Northern Irishman won at Harbour Town, while he's got a fine record at Sea Island, TPC San Antonio and Southwind, too.

Last week, he made an electric start to the Shriners, played on a course far less suited to his game, and looked likely to launch a title challenge before thinning a bunker shot on his way to a momentum-sapping double-bogey during round two.

From there, Horschel was never quite at the races but it still goes down as an encouraging start to the season, particularly on the greens where a new PXG putter worked wonders.

Horschel only needs to putt to a decent standard to be very dangerous and he's clearly itching to prove that his 2014 FedEx Cup win, the product of the best golf of his career, was no flash in the pan.

I'm as certain as he is that there are more titles to be won and a ball-strikers' course like El Camaleon offers a good opportunity.

As with Furyk, it's significant that Horschel is even in the field and he clearly sees this as an opportunity he can't afford to miss, having finished 13th on his debut in 2011 despite being in awful form at the time, and 30th a year later on his only subsequent start.

On both occasions, Horschel struck the ball beautifully and if he can marry that comfort on this course with the putting he showed in Las Vegas, he'll go very close indeed.

This event has strong Spanish ties and we shouldn't be surprised if the awesome talent that is John Rahm gets off the mark this week, while Harris English will undoubtedly be popular after converting good ball-striking to a top-five finish at the Shriners.

Pat Perez has played marvellously well back from a lay-off and is respected, Zac Blair is another straight shooter who could plot a path to victory at a huge price while the Aussies, the pick of whom is Marc Leishman, are sure to be inspired by Pampling's achievements.

But I'll sign off with two more solid ball-strikers, starting with Si-woo Kim.

Aged just 21, Kim provided one of the stories of last season as he went all the way to East Lake, picking up his first PGA Tour title along the way.

The South Korean held off a bunch of vastly more experienced players to land the Wyndham Championship, a performance made all the more impressive by the fact he putted extremely poorly all week long.

Clearly, his tee-to-green game is outstanding and a season-long ranking of 57th for driving accuracy puts him well within the top third on Tour. It's also worth marking up slightly, as he had more measured rounds than anyone else on the list and played some extremely tight layouts.

Look back to this event last year, and you'll see that Kim sat third at halfway before understandably struggling at the weekend as he got used to playing at this level. What's particularly interesting about his performance over those first two rounds is that he hit 27 of 28 fairways and made not a single bogey which, around here, is truly amazing.

Kim also went on to contend at the Sony Open, ticking the box for form at a correlating course, and the Wyndham at Sedgefield wouldn't be the worst comparison either given the tree-lined nature of that old-fashioned layout.

My sole concern is that Kim played poorly in the WGC-HSBC Champions but that's one blip and it came after a break, while he also came home in 32 on Sunday to show that perhaps he just needed time to adjust to playing in exalted company for such a hefty prize fund having done so only rarely to date.

Now back on the PGA Tour, he's ready to kick on and confirm his status as one of the brightest talents in the world.

Finally, Fabian Gomez has to go in at three-figure prices.

The Argentine will love playing in the subtropical conditions of Mexico and his two wins on the PGA Tour have come at Waialae and Southwind, while he also has a top-10 finish at Sea Island.

Gomez was 23rd here on his last visit in 2014, a year prior to the first of his victories, and the congested nature of the leaderboard meant three bogeys over the closing four holes cost him a potential top-10.

The 38-year-old returns a much-improved player, one who bagged a top-five finish on a long golf course in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, and is considered far more likely to win than anyone around him in the betting.

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