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Many of World's Top Players Return to Mayakoba Golf Classic This Weekend

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Dustin Johnson withdrew from the Mayakoba Golf Classic, which would have been his first PGA Tour event since winning the Masters two weeks ago. The two-time major winner has been vacationing in the Caribbean with his family -- as one does after major win No. 2 -- and has almost certainly played his last golf tournament of 2020.

 

The Mayakoba field is still loaded. Justin Thomas (No. 3 in Official World Golf Rankings) will try to end 2020 the way he started it: with a win. A victory here would mean 12 in the last four calendar years, which is pretty insane to think about.

 

Brooks Koepka (No. 12), the four-time major champ, needs to regain some of the momentum he grabbed at the Masters a few weeks ago. It's been a terrible year for Koepka, but he can salvage what's left of it with a win here. 

 

Tony Finau (No. 19), is somehow still trying to break the Puerto Rico Open Curse. Nobody who has won in Puerto Rico has immediately gone on to win a different tournament. Finau is the class player of that list of winners. 

 

Viktor Hovland (No. 26) is in the Finau crowd of trying to break the Puerto Rico Open Curse.

 

Rickie Fowler (No. 49) is playing to get into the 2021 Masters. With a bad showing here, he could fall out of the top 50 in the world by the end of 2020 and begin 2021 with no status for the April Masters. There will still be ample opportunity to play his way in at the beginning of next year, but he undoubtedly wants to lock that up before the calendar flips.

 

D.J. is absolutely destroying the golf world right now -- the gap in OWGR points between him and No. 4 Rory McIlroy is greater than it is between McIlroy and No. 50 Mackenzie Hughes -- and the void he leaves at this tournament will likely be filled by one of these golfers to touch off an improbable but great golf season.

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