Riviera Maya Open Tips

Nelly Korda won easily last week and I am sticking with her to double up in the Riviera Maya Open this week.

El Camaleón is not a course you figure out overnight. Chisato Iwai has already solved it. She won this event by six shots last year and returns with that knowledge banked. While the favourite arrives with major momentum, Iwai has something more valuable here: a proven recipe for this exact layout. History repeats at Mayakoba.

Nelly Korda was head and shoulders above the rest of the field when she won at the weekend. Minami Katsu finished five strokes behind her, but with a bit more consistency she could catch her.

A two-time LPGA Tour winner and with countless titles under her belt on the Ladies European Tour, as well as a win in a mixed event giving her a DP World Tour title, Linn Grant looks closer to getting back in the winners' circle than her results suggest. Her ball-striking is all but there in my eyes, and now she just needs to get hot with the putter. She is a standout at these odds to me, as she is in the handful of most reliable players in the field. Once she gets into contention she is a killer.

Melanie Green is a player on the rise in her rookie year on the LPGA Tour. She has wasted no time getting acclimatised to the level, with 4 of her 5 cuts made and a top-10 finish already under her belt. She looks like a winner in waiting.

This is not a course that will allow for incredibly low scoring and will instead favour more reliable ball strikers in my opinion. Lucy Li is one of these, with 6 of her 7 cuts made this season. The only question mark is whether she can find some flow with the putter once she gets to the majority of greens in regulation.

Weiwei Zhang has made 4 of her 5 cuts so far this season and showed her upside and that she is capable of competing at the business end of these events, as shown by her runner-up finish at the Blue Bay LPGA last month.