Find Me a 100 Winner: Improving Pereira can emulate Bryan at RBC

Steven Rawlings
12 April 2022
4 min read

Chile's Mito Pereira - fancied to go well at Hilton Head

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The PGA Tour moves from Georgia to South Carolina and from a major that tends to go to a fancy player to an event that's great for outsiders. Our man's picked out three...

"One of Mito’s biggest strengths is his short game around the green and that will stand him in great stead here given Scrambling is always a key stat."

Back 1.5 u Mito Pereira @ 160.0159/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1

We were up against it from the start at Augusta last week. We hadn't seen an outsider win there since way back in 2009 and fancied players dominated the final leaderboard with the top-nine players all going off at a double-figure price.

We have a completely different type of tournament to assess at the RBC Heritage this week and, having struggled to find selections last week, it's more a case of who to leave out this time around.

As highlighted in the preview, those towards the head of the market, who contended the week before at Augusta, have struggled here historically. Four of the last five editions have gone the way of a huge outsider.

Wesley Bryan won at 200.0199/1 in 2017, Satoshi Kodaira was a 500.0499/1 chance 12 months later and the 2019 edition was won by 460.0459/1 chance C.T Pan. Last year's edition went the way of former two-time winner, Stewart Cink, who went of at 120.0119/1, having been matched at twice that price. He'll do for me for this time around too.

Cink underestimated again

Cink came into last year's event on the back of an impressive 12th at the US Masters but he arrives as the RBC defending champ on the back of a missed cut this time around. That has to be viewed as a bit of negative.

He won the first of his three RBC Heritage titles in 2000 having finished 28th at Augusta and his second title in 2004 after finishing 17th in the US Masters, so having last weekend off isn't a plus, but has the market reacted too much?

On the two previous occasions he's defended the title he's finished 10th and 47th but for a three-time course winner, he really does have a mixed bag of results here, so they weren't poor efforts.

Stewart Cink RBC Heritage.jpg

This is his 23rd appearance and although he's won here three times, he's also missed the cut on five occasions and his three victories are his only top-six finishes.

It's anyone's guess which Cink tees it up this week. But given he was seventh in the Valspar Championship in his penultimate start, where he ranked first for Greens In Regulation and fifth for Scrambling, and that he absolutely hacked up last year, leading by five after rounds two and three and winning by four, should he really be 150.0149/1?

Back 1.5 u Stewart Cink @ 150.0149/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1

Improving Pereira can emulate Bryan

Chile's Mito Pereira became only the 12th player in 32 years to earn an automatic three-win promotion from the Korn Ferry Tour to the PGA Tour when he won the BMW Charity Pro-Am in South Carolina last June.

Pereira made an almost immediate impact putting up form figures reading MC-34-5-6-3-39-MC-3 which included a tied third in the Olympics before his form tailed off somewhat.

His tied 15th at the Genesis Invitational in February was a very fair performance and he returns to South Carolina on the back of a 27th in the Valspar and 13th at the Texas Open so he's starting to find his form.

One of Mito's biggest strengths is his short game around the green and that will stand him in great stead here given Scrambling is always a key stat.

And it's also worth noting that the last man to gain what's often referred to as "Battleground Promotion", Wesley Bryan, won this event on debut in 2017, 12 months after he'd made the step-up. Could Mito emulate him?

Back 1.5 u Mito Pereira @ 160.0159/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1

Options aplenty but it's Robert and Ben that make the portfolio

This is a great event for longshots, and I could have very easily put up a dozen picks. Recent winners, Sepp Strava and JJ Spaun look generously priced on recent form and others I've considered include Brendon Todd, Nate Lashley, Patton Kizzire, and Hudson Swafford but I'll finish up by putting up two really big outsiders - the two-time RSM Classic winner, Robert Streb, and the recent Corales Puntacana runner-up, Ben Martin.

ben martin day three corales.jpg