Best bets
2pts each-way Patrick Cantlay @ 10/1
3pts win Jon Rahm @ 7/1
1.5pts each-way Matt Fitzpatrick @ 28/1
1pt each-way Sahith Theegala @ 40/1
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Just two weeks to go before the third Major of 2023, the US Open, and we should get some clues about that at Jack’s Place, the Memorial tournament at Muirfield Village at Dublin, Ohio.
The Memorial has always attracted a strong field – it’s very hard to turn down “Mr Nicklaus” – but because of its new status as one of the eight elite $20m tournaments everyone who’s anyone has to be there. The one exception is world No. 6 Max Homa and he has a good excuse: his sister gets married at the weekend.
Muirfield Village has happy connotations for Europe as it was there in 1987 that they won the Ryder Cup for the first time on American soil. The unlikely hero was Irishman Eamon Darcy, the weakest player on the team, who sank a crazy-fast downhill six-footer at the last to see off Ben Crenshaw who snapped his putter in a fit of pique on the sixth and had to use sand wedge and 3-iron to hole out.
Known as the best putter in the world and nicknamed Gentle Ben, Crenshaw was neither of those that afternoon and captain Nicklaus was far from pleased.
Yet Justin Rose in 2010 and Jon Rahm in 2020 are the only two Europeans to have won at Muirfield Village which these days measures 7533 yards with a par of 72. Pretty generous of the tee, it’s a second-shot course like the majority of Nicklaus’s creations.
Named after the famous Scottish links where Nicklaus won the first of his trio of Claret Jugs in 1966, the only time I ever caddied in the Open. Thank goodness my man didn’t make the weekend – those pro golf bags are darn heavy!
As it’s an invitation tournament, a field of 120 is permitted instead of the normal 156 and among the famous names to have thrived there (Tiger Woods won five times) there have been plenty of head-scratching winners too.
A handful had never won anywhere else, the two most recent being plodder Will McGirt in 2016 and Swedish surprise packet David Lingmerth who beat Rose in a playoff the previous year.
The record books shows Rahm as a one-time winner but he should have had two. He was making an electrifying defence of the title in 2021 at a time when Covid was running riot. After three rounds the brilliant Spaniard had shot 69-65-64 to be running away with it but a Covid test proved positive and he had to withdraw when six ahead.
He had been told at the start of the week that he’d been in contact with someone who was positive but elected to go ahead, while being tested daily. Negative the first twice, the gamble looked like paying off but Covid had the last word, costing Rahm a $1.674m payday and his backers a king-sized hole in their pockets.
A four-time winner already this year but with the odd bad week at the office more recently, Rahm is well rested and the man to beat. He was T10 last year.
Although the two other members of the Big Three are there, I expect Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to prove less of a threat than course specialist Patrick Cantlay. He seems to win in odd-numbered years and this is 2023. In 2019 he defeated Adam Scott for the title and he was the one to profit from Rahm’s unfortunate withdrawal in 2021.
Fair enough, you could say Cantlay and Collin Morikawa were extremely lucky two years ago to be playing off for the honour of getting the winner’s handshake from the 18-time Major champion but the course suits him to a T, as he again demonstrated last year with a T3 to Billy Horschel.
It’s a minor worry that Cantlay hasn’t got a W against his name this campaign but he’s been second twice and third twice. Last time at the PGA Championship he posted a top-ten without impressing with the flat stick but he’s had plenty of time since to practise that aspect of the game.
Scheffler, third to Cantlay two years ago, is making only his third visit to Memorial and arrives on the back of missed chances at Colonial where he finished a shot out of the Emiliano Grillo-Adam Schenk shootout in what was a right comedy of errors, 66/1 shot Grillo surviving a double-bogey six at the 72nd after driving into an aqueduct.
A disobedient putter at Colonial denied the world No. 1 a third victory of the year – he ranked 71st on the putting stats – and he’s so consistent Fitzdares’ 13/2 favourite is hard to oppose.
This was the time of year for US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick in 2022 – a few weeks earlier he had looked the most likely winner for three rounds of the PGA Championship but untypically he failed to do himself justice when push came to shove.
Given his third place to Rahm in the 2020 Memorial, the Sheffield man is just preferred to Xander Schauffele (four times out of five a top-20 finisher here).
The best outsider (if you count 40/1 as an outsider) could be the loose-limbed Sahith Theegala who was T5 last year and is progressing at a rate of knots. A first solo triumph still eludes him but his body of work reads well, notably his fourth at Torrey Pines, fifth at Heritage, sixth at Riviera and ninth at the PGA. It’s not a question of if with him but when that breakthrough comes.
With temperatures in the 90s at times but thankfully no weather delays in the forecast, fitness as well as a full skillset will be needed by the winner.
Best bets
1.5pts each-way Kiradech Aphibarnrat @ 60/1
1.5pts each-way Edoardo Molinari @ 40/1
1pt each-way Rasmus Hojgaard @ 18/1
1pt each-way Thorbjorn Olesen @ 22/1
Once again on the DP World Tour the cast remains roughly the same, it’s the country that changes. This week we’re in Germany for the European Open at its usual home, the North course at Three Eagles, half an hour outside Hamburg at Luneberg.
This is the sixth time Three Eagles has taken on hosting duties on this 7475-yard par 72 which was self-designed by owner Michael Blesch and opened in 1997. It’s unusual in having five par fives and five par threes.
There’s no obvious favourite so by default Fitzdares have come up with Pablo Larrazabal after his second victory of 2023 in Holland on SundayHe started at 55/1 last week and has long been underrated, probably because his ultra-aggressive approach doesn’t work everywhere. When Pablo is ‘on’ he is capable of defeating people who are technically his superior.
His take-no-prisoners golf has brought him eight victories in Europe, a phenomenal haul, and one more win this summer might well earn the loquacious Spaniard a surprise ticket to Rome for the Ryder Cup. He hit the big four-0 last month and that milestone often makes sportsmen suddenly take on board that their time at the top is limited.
While having no quarrel with Larrazabal heading the market, winning for the second week in a row takes a bit of doing and I prefer two lesser lights, Edoardo Molinari and Kiradech Aphibarnrat, two more who know how to win.
Molinari is hot stuff until he takes the putter out of the bag but his frailty on the green hasn’t stopped the Ryder Cup vice-captain placing third and fifth in the last two editions of this tournament. Expect him to scrap to the end.
The well-cushioned Aphibarnrat, a four-time winner and for many years Thai No. 1, has plunged down the world ratings after a disappointing time in the States. It was all going pear-shaped but Aphi has pulled it back in following a neat 15th in Antwerp with an eyecatching fifth at the Dutch.
As a multiple champion, Aphi is trending the right way after health problems and looks great each-way at 60/1. He is not involved in the race for Ryder Cup points whereas Victor Perez, Thorbjorn Olesen, Jordan Smith and Bob MacIntyre, all in action here, are finding it a long slog and ‘BobbyMac’ for one is looking a little desperate. Yet on his Hamburg form, a T2 behind Paul Casey in 2019, the ambitious MacIntyre may get it together this time but he is becoming expensive to follow and needs to show more to get the thumbs-up.
Preference is for the talented young Dane Rasmus Hojgaard, only 22, who pulled himself out of the doldrums with his best finish of the year, a T3 in Holland on Sunday. A small improvement on that should do the trick in a field lacking Adrian Meronk from last week.
A second Dane, Thorbjorn Olesen, makes up the staking plan. Once a Ryder Cup player, Olesen is slowly recovering his game. His victory in Thailand, third in Belgium and sixth in India, admittedly not in the greatest of company, suggest he still possesses all the tools that took him to seven tour wins, most of them in a flashy early career. With the defence of his British Masters title coming up next week, he will be extra-keen to shine in this warm-up.
The five past Hamburg winners include three big outsiders in Kalle Samooja, Marcus Armitage and Richard McEvoy, all recording their one-and-only tour success. Finland’s Samooja came from seven back to snatch it in 2017 but that was a long time ago and he has not built on that early success.
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